Social Media

This week's topic, social  media, was very interesting.  Especially since I work in the I.T. industy sometimes I catch myself thinking I know all there is to know about the technology that is out there.  This is not the case with social media.  My first introduction to to social media was probably 7 years ago with MySpace.  I created a page just to do it, but then rarely did anything with it.  I never got hooked on the value of it.  Now, I use Facebook and LinkedIn all of the time. 

I use Facebook for a photo repository and a way to quickly stay connected to friends and family.  I remember when I first signed up for an account I was amazed because within minutes of creating an account, I was flooded with friend requests.  I was awe struck by the "blasts from the past."  Before I could even understand how it worked I was reunited with former college buddies, ex-girlfriends, grade school classmates, etc... Unlike MySpace, with Facebook I immediately felt the power of social media.  Since that time, Facebook is almost taken for granted.  I check it daily along with LinkedIn but I am over the intial "awe."  I am currently working with a group of students planning my 20 year high school reunion.  We are using Facebook as the primary way to contact and spread the news.  This is so much easier than mailings and email groups. 

I also use LinkedIn for work purposes.  The most powerful tool within LinkedIn, I feel, is the ability to write and read recommendations about people and their services.  When looking for a tech to sub contract, I was able to go on LinkedIn and get a recommendation of a solid technical resource to write Visual Basic code for one of our clients in less than one day.  Before Social Media, this process would have tken weeks if not months. 

I am also using Diigo as a a class requirement.  I was not awe struck when I first signed on and quite frankly, I am still trying to understand the full value.  I signed up for a group called Classroom 2.0. I do like the group because it has over 4000 members.  There is a lot of activity within the group, however most of it is people posting links to sites I really am not interested in.  I worry that people may be posting links to unsafe websites on these groups and am wondering if Diigo does anything to filter unsafe links.  I was, however, able to find some valuable information at something called the TeacherBuzz.com.  This site had a word cloud on the main page, so it caught my interest right away.  This site provides the viewers with a lot of information that people in the field of educational technology can use.  For me, the jury is still out on Diigo.  I need more experience with this before I can provide a fair evaluation.

My primary concern with all of these other social media sites besides Facebook and LinkedIn is that they are not as mainstream.  I feel as if the main purpose of social media is to connect with as many people as possible, then it is important that the mass population is aware of and using the media.  While some of these other social media sites may have more functionality and a better interface than Facebook, they still lack the fact that they are not as popular.  Google+ is a great example of this.  I am a member of Google+ and love the idea of creating circles for communication with others, however, so few of my friends and family use it, so I rarely use it. 

It reminds me of the time when my parents bought me laser tag as a child because I thought it was the coolest way to play "guns" in the neighborhood.  Well, I was the only one with a laser tag gun, so nobody else could play with me.  :)  I ended up going back to my plastic pistol because that's what everybody else had. In most areas of my life I try to avoid being a part of the mainstream community, however, in the world of social media, the power comes from the popularity.