Throughout the semester I have worked on a variety of things in social media class: experimenting with new social platforms, a research paper, doing something courageous. We have also discussed a variety of topics such as the do’s and don’ts of social media, the risks and the benefits of social media. This paper will reflect upon these different aspects.
For social media techonology I chose three new platforms to experiment with. My chosen platforms were twitter, snapchat, and LinkedIn. When I began to experiment with twitter, I simply had an account, I followed no one, and no one followed me. Slowly throughout the semester I began to follow other people and others followed me back (I wish some would go away). By the end of the semester I have 17 followers and am following 56 people. I think this is kind of weird honestly because I only know about half of those people following me and only a few of those I follow. I suppose social media is a lot about getting to know people you don’t know. My second platform of choice was snapchat, which we later found out, might not really be a social platform at all, it’s up for debate. Snap chat is different, you send a photo and can view it for a few seconds, and then it’s gone. Just like that. I have received quite a few cats photo’s, and a wide range of selfie’s. I’m just saying selfies, are not the most desirable pictures, often times, they are way bad. I tried a selfie the other day, and yeah, not so much for me. My last chosen platform was LinkedIn. LinkedIn was probably the platform that I visited the least, which makes no sense because it’s probably the most useful. On LinkedIn I was able to make a few connections with people, but beyond that it was ignored. I will say I was really hoping for more guidance in LinkedIn, and how to use it to my advantage. I have enjoyed getting to know some new platforms and intend on continuing to use them, I also have begun to experiment with others on my own. I recently began experimenting with Instagram, I think that I like this platform above all; it seems to have less drama, and more happiness than the rest.
I have research women in game design this semester which was enlightening. I’m glad I did it. I was so informative and helpful to deciding where I want to go in life. After my research I think I can be quite happy without it. The research paper however, also gave me a great window to do something courageous. I reached out for my paper to the women in games jobs (wigi) for interviews. I was able to collect a total of four interviews with women that work in the industry. It was fun to make those connections, and I am glad that I did so because it was a very informative experience in different ways.
We also touched on the do’s and don’ts of social media. We had multiple class discussions, and in the end we really just decided that when using social media we should be using the same etiquette that we use in our day to day lives. It really boils down to “treat people how you want to be treated”. If you don’t want your personal information aired on the web for anyone to access then you shouldn’t do it to someone else.
We also discussed the benefits and risks of social media. When using social media there are always risks such as “going viral” in a bad way, if you say something and it offends people, there is a possibility that you might not make it our fully intact. Although there are good things about social media as well, different accounts of news, longer reach personally and professionally, free marketing, charity, and ways to get and find help.
Ultimately this semester we have focused on a broad range of social media technology topics and applications. I believe a lot of this is common sense, unfortunately apparently many people don’t seem to understand common sense, and hopefully they begin to understand social media to a better extent before they get to much further. I believe I understand social media and it’s importance and risks a little better now than I did at the beginning of the semester, but I know there’s still a ton more to learn.