Social Media

For our first discussion, our lecture gave us video titled Social Media in Plain English. This video is a metaphor explanation of social media using ice cream. According to the website http://www.commoncraft.com/store-item/socialmedia, this video shows us: 

• Social Media's role in giving people the power to produce video, music, etc. on the web
• How social media compares to traditional media
• How fans play a role in deciding what should be findable and popular
• The benefits of social media to individuals and organizations

Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. The term refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. There are so many of different social media around us now like Twitter, Facebook, You tube, Blogging, and more.

How's the social media affecting me? I think social media really have a great impact on me. Before the existing of friendster or facebook, i never spent a lot of time in front of my computer. Especially now, while I'm living far away from my family and friends, Facebook is really helping me to cure my homesickness feeling a little bit. With facebook, I can know how's my friends are doing, I can share my photos, I can also chat with them. It easier to keep contact using social media. Besides face book, youtube is very useful to me, I can watch my favorite artist's new music video, I can search tutorial for Photoshop, Illustrator, or anything that is related to my subject, or I can just watch any funny video that would really entertain me. 

How's the social media affecting life around me? Well, my father, who used to not interested in the latest trend of social media, ask me to teach him how to use facebook. Every time I'm home he always ask me how to post photos, how to comment, or how to tag photos.The social media virus has spread to my dad. 

Nowadays, there are so many people became famous because of social media. Look at Justin Bieber, because of posting his video on You Tube, that small town boy has became the most wanted boy among the teenage girl in the world. In my country, Indonesia, many people use this opportunities to be famous instantly using You Tube. One of them is Briptu Norman, he's a policeman from Gorontalo who post his lip sync video on youtube singing indian, and suddenly a while later he appears on national TV channel, singing on the big stage!  Not only youtube, another example is Raditya Dika, he loves to write his funny stories on his blog, and people really love it, and now his blog has become best-seller book in Indonesia. 

So, I think social media is really affecting our life and we can not live without it anymore. There's so many positive things we can get from it, we just have to use it properly.