Social Media

I admit, I cannot live without social media. I have been immersed in the world of social media ever since I created my first Friendster account. It was living proof of how small the world was, because you could see how you were connected to another person – are you guys 1st degree friends, 2nd degree friends or 3rd? Friendster was a place to "show-off" your popularity through the number of testimonials – not the best competition to have when you're a pre-teen struggling with self-esteem and longing for acceptance. My favourite part of it all? Finally a platform for me to post photos I've taken with my then-3.2megapixel-camera.

At about the same time, I created my first actual blog on Blogger, where I religiously blogged about my daily life in school and had a tag board where friends could talk to me and comment on my posts. Only when I received nasty comments on my tag board did I realise that there were other people, apart from my friends, who were reading my (admittedly, very boring) blog. Of course, 13 year old me was so affected and enraged that I might have had started a tag board war. Even though the internet was fairly new then, these keyboard warriors knew that the internet was a great way to speak their mind and put others down because computer-mediated communication (CMC) meant that their identities were protected (or so they thought, since IP addresses could be traced at that time when everyone was still using a desktop computer – tried and tested).

Along came Facebook and the early adopters hopped onto the new social media bandwagon. As for me, I grew so comfortable with Friendster that I refused to create a Facebook account – you could say that I was amongst one of the few laggards. Social media did not stop there. The novel idea of "micro-blogging" possessed me to create a Twitter account. Back then, our on-the-go-tweets had to be text messaged to a local @tweetSG number (I am SO thankful for internet data). Social media kept getting better. Instagram came about – also the reason why some people have abandoned Twitter, leaving the poor micro-blogging site solely for thoughts and rants. We all love looking at photos because words alone is never sufficient. Especially when it comes to food :P For example:

VS

Instavideos? Even better!

And the hashtags on Instagram help me find people who have same interests as me, allowing me to follow them so that my feed will be updated each time they upload a new photo

Even radio DJs make use of hashtags these days for song requests or to provide visual aid for a certain topic they're discussing on air.

However, with these social media sites, people have become more engrossed in the virtual world than in the real world. Social media has made us more social, yet less social. Using phones at mealtime is a common sight. Instead of talking to our friends when we're out with them, we're seen scrolling through our social media (guilty as charged). Solution:

The future of blogs... 

Over the years, I've witnessed the evolution of the blogosphere. Following that trend, I've moved to so many blogging platforms ever since I started blogging. And some of my blogs are still alive! TA-DAH:

With advertorials and sponsorships, blogs have become a money making platform, to the extent that many people have left their jobs and education to become full-time bloggers or blogshop owners. That is how much social media has changed our way of life. Even though I'm currently enjoying the perks of blogging (sponsorships, freebies), I believe that these benefits will be short-lived. In my opinion, the blogosphere is unsustainable. Their glory years have passed. Blogs will crumble, people will run out of jobs because they've been too reliant on them as a source of income. Now, much less people read blogs, let alone updating their own blogs.

Now let's see what's the next big thing the social media has in store for us.