I got my first electronic mail (e-mail) address in high school in the '90s. I used Juno at first, and I believe I may also have had an e-mail address on my high school's domain. As I covered e-mail in my post on mail, I will not go into it here. But I mention it here for an important reason.
In 2003, my good friend Tom Anderson co-founded MySpace. I call him my friend because he was everyone's friend, as long as they had a MySpace account. I don't recall ever interacting with him, but he had a very recognizable profile picture with a friendly smile (I've seen it called "the Mona Lisa of profile pictures"), and his posts were always friendly and welcoming. At that time, social media was a foreign concept to many, and he got the pleasure of introducing it to the world. He described it as "e-mail on steroids."
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| Photo: @myspacetom/Twitter |
MySpace opened a whole new world that went beyond what e-mail could do. You could still send messages to people, but at that time, when writing an e-mail, could you set up a whole profile with a welcoming background, things you liked, your heroes, a profile picture, even have a musical soundtrack on your profile? Nope! (You can do some of that on e-mail now, but you couldn't at the time.) Was the founder of your e-mail domain so personable that you considered him your friend even if you had never met him or interacted with him? I imagine some had, but for the most part, nope! MySpace still exists, but I haven't checked it in years. I wonder if my account is still there?
In 2007, my second-cousin Aric and my friend Craig recommended a newer website called Facebook, founded by Mark Zuckerberg. It was supposed to be better than MySpace. It had a very different look and feel, and no music soundtrack (which I enjoyed on MySpace, but in retrospect, don't miss). I am still very active on Facebook, more so than other social media. But Mark doesn't strike me nearly as friendly as Tom. But as I've never met either of them, I can't say that for sure.
Twitter came along as a much simpler place where you could post short messages, no longer than 90 characters. At first I didn't get the point, but as I got into it, it started consuming all my spare time as I had to catch up on all my friends' updates. I finally pulled back because it was too much. But I had a Twitter account until recently when it was purchased by Elon Musk and became too politicized for my tastes. I deactivated it at that time.
My friend Jared, who I knew in the Philippines, introduced me to LinkedIn. It is more professional in nature, and has been a big help in connecting with friends, colleagues and others, as well as allowing a place for resumes. In my recent job search, I have also gotten into their online courses for work skills. It is a great tool. Up until recently, I mainly only used it for resume-related purposes, but lately I've been posting my blogs there, and I've also been encouraged by posts from former colleagues at Wireless Advocates, who have all been searching for work.
A few years ago, I got into Instagram. It's a place where you can post pictures, and it also has filters and other tools that other social media outlets didn't offer. It was eventually purchased by Facebook and has changed over the years (introducing video at one point), but I still enjoy posting there.
Google+
I loved Google+. My brother Aaron introduced me to it, and it had amazing potential. It was better than Facebook. However, Facebook learned lessons and adapted in response to certain features of Google+, and it sadly never really took off. They eventually closed it down.
YouTube offered a place to post videos. I have posted a few, but mainly I have used it to watch videos. It was eventually purchased by Google.
Similar to YouTube, Vimeo offers another place to post videos. I posted my movies and animations from my design classes there.
This is a place you can post pictures, either that you upload, or that you found online and liked. Many people also use it to post recipes and other things. They call their posts ideas, which you "pin" in Pinterest. I use it to post my artwork.
I learned about Behance in my design classes. It's a place where you can share art, in a more professional manner than Pinterest and others. In some ways it's a bit like LinkedIn for artists, though more for portfolios than resumes.
SnapChat was yet another place to post videos, but there was a catch: they had to be short (only a few seconds), and the videos only stayed up for a day. I enjoyed it for a while, but eventually lost interest and deactivated. I would rather my posts stay up longer than a day. It's possible it's changed since then, but I don't know.
Maybe it's just me, but this one creeped me out. It was a place where you could check wherever you happened to be at the moment. You could even be declared the mayor of a certain place. I never set up an account because I didn't really feel like telling the world where I was at a given moment. (You can also do this on Facebook and other social media, but it isn't the main point of those sites.)
Yes, that is spelled right. The letter B happens three times in that word. I just recently learned about this one. It's a similar idea to Behance, where you can post your art and design portfolio.
Social Media Concepts
Between social media outlets, there are several common threads:
- MySpace, Facebook and others have friends. You can friend and unfriend people. Friendships go both ways automatically, though you have to accept friend requests.
- Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and others have followers. Typically, you can follow people, and they have the option of following you back. Depending on your settings, you may or may not have to approve followers. (You can also follow people on Facebook, but it doesn't give you as much visibility as being their Facebook friend.)
- Hashtags offer a way of grouping concepts on multiple sites. You start with a hash mark (#) and type a word. I feel these can be #overused, but some people use them all the time. When you click on a #hashtag on sites that use them, you can see a list of people who have posted on that #subject. When I was younger, the # symbol was called a pound, hash or number symbol. Now most people know it as a hashtag.
- Most sites start profile names with @. (For example, I am @stevobaggins on most sites that I use. In a couple cases I'm @stevensauke where @stevobaggins doesn't seem professional enough.) Clicking on someone's @ name generally takes you to their profile. (Google+ used + instead of @.)
- In case you are wondering, the movie of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001, shortly before I joined MySpace. Being a Francophile, I ordered the French version of the movie on video from Amazon.ca as soon as I could. Frodo and Bilbo Baggins are Frodon Sacquet and Bilbon Sacquet, respectively. Sacquet sounds very similar to Sauke. It was a little freaky hearing the Ringwraith coming into the Shire and whisper sinisterly, "Sa - cquet!" What? What did I do?? Anyway, Stevo was an attempt at making my first name sound hobbity, and Baggins is due to the way Sacquet sounds like Sauke.
- If something is trending, it is being discussed or shared by thousands of people at once on a given social media outlet. Things generally only trend for a short period of time. Generally subjects or #hashtags tend to trend.
- If something goes viral, it is shared quickly and widely, sometimes by hundreds and thousands of people. It spreads like a virus, though some would prefer to go viral online to doing so by spreading a disease. Pictures, articles, videos, blog posts (hint, hint), and any number of things can go viral. The musical Dear Evan Hansen involves a video of a speech by the title character going viral online.
- You can "like" posts on most social media sites. Some sites, such as Facebook, offer other options like "love", "care", "angry", "laughter", "sad" and others. Used well, these can be an encouragement to the poster. Used poorly, they can be hurtful, so I recommend being careful with them, particularly since it's easy to accidentally select the wrong reaction. LinkedIn has a different set of reactions.
I put "ish" in the title of this post because social media is still new enough that I don't particularly consider it "yore" (though I imagine some of the kids today might disagree with me on that...now I feel old)...but it has changed enough over the years that I felt it fit in the theme.
I leave you with my favorite YouTube video on the popularity of social media. Though some sites have come and gone, the popularity has continued since then.
