Week 2 // Social Media and Me

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First of all~

SORRY Y"ALL FOR THE LACK OF UPDATES! YOU'LL BE GETTING A HUGE CATCH UP ON POSTS THROUGHOUT TODAY! 

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Week 2 // Communication Technologies and Me

When I come to think of it, I have been using communication technologies since I could ever remember. My father is a seaman and I would frequently chat with him on the phone several times a week on telephone since I was a little child. Even back before we had the digits 55 in front of a landline number! When I was 11 years old, my father gave me my first mobile phone, a NOKIA 3210 and NOKIA 3315 shortly after. These phones were bricks and could withstand anything!

 

I’ve had an array of mobile phones growing up, and their advances in technology throughout time has been incredible! As of now, I have the iPhone 4.

Eventually, my household got broadband internet and I started to use internet social based media. MSN or now Microsoft Messenger was the first internet powered mediums I used. I remember spending hours on this! I probably wouldn't have used this if I wasn't influenced by my friends. Most kids my age at the time did use it. This was back when file sharing client ‘Lime Wire’ was king!! Honestly, it was the only reason why I bugged my Dad into paying for internet haha. I told him to give me the internet for ~educational purposes~ at first haha.

After MSN, I was introduced to MySpace. MySpace was great back in the day. I loved being able to share pictures, music and discover new artists who used MySpace as their platform to be discovered. Lily Allen, Lady Gaga, Tila Tequila and Tynisha Keli were all originally small MySpace artists! While you dont hear much about Lady GaGa much being associated with MySpace as one of her career beginnings, I remember her posting some of her demos on her page, and the hype of her first major debut single for Just Dance!

I remember 2008, when everyone started to really embrace Facebook and move away from MySpace. But this is natural in our world. When something new, better and bigger comes out, its ultimately replacing something else. After a year or two of the Facebook climb, privacy issues. Wikipedia has an excellent archive of these criticism.

Click here for Wikipedia's archive on Facebook's criticisms

With information collection, mining, whatever they call it, it makes you think twice about what you put on the internet. It’s scary that there are individuals out there willing to take advantage of your pictures and even your name for themselves. People have been victims of identify theft by cybercrims (which today tonight like to call haha), all starting from putting a little too much information on the internet. The internet is a very public place, so we all need to think why is this site asking for this? Why do they want my address? My Number? My 411? I ohhh so humorously put ‘ToTez PuTinG my AddRess in Fb’ on the section Fb requests.

But social mediums have been a great place to meet friends. I have made a few great friends on these, and probably wont stop using these to do so. Of course there needs to be a level of caution when doing so, but there are so many opportunities the internet really does offer.