Social Networking Sites

Most people today have at least 2-3 social media accounts that include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,  Linkedin or any other site. Between these most people are connected to everyone in their lives and many more that decide to follow them on any of these accounts. Between these social media accounts in my opinion Facebook is probably the one I like the best.

If we look at each one individually we see there are similarities with all of them however, each one has a unique feature that sets it apart from one another. Facebook can be used for a variety of things from liking your favorite musicians to posting about your day. The good thing about Facebook is that it allows you to connect with people and see what they're up to and you can keep up to date with important events around you. The downside is that it can be addicting knowing what goes in our friends lives and the same goes true for the rest of the social media sites.

Twitter is a good way to send a quick message to whoever is following you. Celebrities can use this to inform their fans of upcoming events or upcoming projects that they're working on. The limit of characters on twitter makes it so that people get to their point within less than a paragraph. The downside of this is that most of what people post on twitter is usually useless nonsense like what they had for lunch.

Instagram is for people who like sharing pictures of whatever is around them. Its like an entry course to photography for people who use it. They take pictures of anything and its shared and liked and passed around so it circulates around quickly. This is a great way to share pictures of things you like or might be interested in. In my experience most of what is on Instagram is food. I can't count the number of times I've gone out to eat with a friend and the first thing they do with the food is take a picture of it. For them its like saying grace and its immensely annoying.

Linkedin is very similar to facebook but more professional. Linkedin is really good for finding jobs and networking with people in your field of work. The great part about Linkedin is that you can network with a person and then you can network with people they know and so on. It makes use of the six degrees of separation. Most people you network with can introduce you to even more people and it can be very easy to find contacts in your field just by creating a profile on Linkedin. Downside to this is that you have to be extremely careful on what you put on Linkedin. Some of the people you are talking to could be your boss and the worst thing to do is make a bad impression.

Overall I see the positive uses for social media as a whole however, it could never beat real interaction. Social media as a whole can be a great thing to keep in touch with people you know that you might not see everyday.