Social Media - By Tan Shi Yuan

First of all, I am here to ask a question. Are you totally understand what is “social media” stands for? Social media is a phrase being tossed around a lot these days, but it can sometimes be difficult to answer the question of what is social media. If Myspace is a social media site, and Mag.nolia is a social media site, and Wikipedia is a social media site, then just what is social media? Is it social networking? Is it social bookmarking? Is it wiki? The best way to define social media is to break it down. Media is an instrument on communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social instrument of communication.

(Image on Twitter)

Twitter is an excellent example of a social media website.

Obviously, as we can see, social media have almost occupy the spaces of our daily life and even affecting by it blindly. Do you speak “social?” There is a lot of writing out there about the effects of social media on business, marketing, branding and customer services. But what about how social media communications is impacting our written communications, or even our oral communications? Anyone remember when email was going to destroy letter writing, and even the art of writing altogether? Well, it did destroy letter writing, but did it really destroy the art of writing, or just change it? 

Actually, it has made our word become more concise. When we first heard of Twitter and its 140 character limit, most of us wondered how in the world we could convey something meaningful in 25 to 30 words. Now we realize that Twitter pushes us to get to the essence of what we are trying to say. Who says you must have full sentences or paragraphs of text to make an impact or to drive people to action? The messages that we received nowadays are almost in short form, examples : btw - by the way, TTYL - talk to you later, etc. This may cause us slowly forgotten the proper and original word that we are going to use.

Due to some audiences reflection on how media social affect the society, almost 80% of them agreed social media have affected their attitudes, opinion and thinking through their life. Peoples started to make new friends via online more on face to face. They prefer on Skype than come out to have a meet. For them, this is a great way to stay in touch with their loved ones.

On the other hand, the vast growth of social media companies is inevitable. As you can see that many companies become more popular and produce great phenomena, from Wall Street to Main Street or from Facebook to Twitter. Those are privately-held social media companies that gain more investments even before they go public.

Last but not least, I would like to share a video : "How social media affects us" 

(UNC students discuss ups and downs of social networking)

click here to watch the video.


Enjoy^^