Week 2 Entry: Social Media - Boon or Bane?

SPRING 2011 COM 125: Introduction to the Internet

Blog Entry 2

A.C. Joke of the Week: “Do people snigger at the mention of Friendster because it sounds like… hamster?”

Social Media: What exactly is it? The first thing that comes to my mind is – Facebook!

Facebook is a social networking phenomenon that gathered over 150 million members in the short span of only 5 years. I observed some close friends over the past few months and realized that the first page people usually open is none other than, Facebook, with the exception of Twitter, Gmail, SIM portal and UBlearns of course.

We started off the week discussing the definition of social media and the differences between social and traditional media. Social media are media that are designed for social interaction, and are highly interactive, accessible and scalable on a global network. Traditional media, on the other hand, is static, has a physical limit and has short-lived value, mainly surviving on advertising.

With social media, I can check up on my friends and family members and their daily activities. Through social media, I can find out about happenings in the world, and I can make my mark in web history just by commenting on it. Furthermore, there are a variety of social medium, where one can express his or herself in a myriad of ways.

SO, the BIG question is: Is social media a BAD idea?

I would say that I agree to a certain extent.

Over the years, as social media grew in popularity, there has been more news of cases of people in the younger generation getting addicted to the internet. Along with this addiction came other problems such as – “social isolation and the invasion of privacy”. However, whether or not we know the exact numbers of cases is a different story altogether.

No doubt, the people who use social media mainly lie within the younger generation. As my father as says, “You young people are lucky. Lucky to have cell phones, the internet, your own computers. Lucky that now, you don’t have to go through the trouble of face-to-face interaction… Especially in situations where you want to get to know a person of potential romantic interest!”

What my dad said was quite true. With the internet and social media, people “forget” how to behave in real social situations. Some would rather make all the “noise” they can on a social networking site. And still, there are others known as “page stalkers” that wouldn’t mind checking out another person’s profile page, thus invading the person’s privacy. Of course, privacy settings are now in popular use, but are they really effective in keeping a webpage ‘private’?

That aside, I believe that some parental control, guidance, and maybe even restrictions, in internet use is important. Adolescents should try to use some discretion when using social media because what you say on the internet will never disappear.

Is social media good or bad then? Well. It’s a conundrum in itself.

Week 1 Entry: COM 125 Lesson ONE

SPRING 2011

COM 125: Introduction to the Internet

Well we had our first lesson on the Internet with Mr Abel Choy (: We started off the lesson with a few jokes and a guessing game: "How much is Facebook worth today?" and; "Rank the top few websites". Turns out that Google ranks number one and is worth about US$199.7 billion. My uncle made a joke of Google once. He said, "If Google were to give shares to all their employees - I wouldn't mind working as their cleaner."

Aside from all the jokes, I found out that there's more to the internet than just clicking links and typing things into the search engines. Everything we see on the internet are actually packets of codes that are translated to give us whatever we see on-screen. I never knew there was a Internet and "Intranet" - a compilation of computers connected together to form a networked environment inside an organization. So technically, some of us have an intranet of our own right in the comfort of our own houses.

Over the years, the internet has penetrated many different forms of social media. One of the most common devices we see people using to access the internet, is none other than our mobile phones. Also known as "smart phones" today, people can easily upload pictures, download files and chat with their friends without having to drag around a heavy laptop. "Smart phones" can be used anywhere as long as there is a wireless or "wifi" connection, or a data plan.

Another interesting revelation was that of the the Web Versions: Web 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. From what I gathered from the class, a Web 2.5 should exist since a lot of the websites we see today are caught between versions 2.0 and 3.0.

Our first lesson ended off with a discussion on browsing and popular browsers. My personal favorite is Google Chrome. I like this browser because it is fast. And I mean. Really fast. You'll see what I mean right here in the video that I have posted. Google Chrome is also easy to use and it allows me to gain easy access to my Gmail account. Most importantly, Google chrome remembers the pages that I frequent, and it has not yet given me much trouble so far (:

Link for video:http://www.youtube.com/user/googlechrome#p/c/6C464642AA716B69/0/nCgQDjiotG0

During our second lesson, I heard some really familiar stuff that I learnt about in CSE 111. I honestly didn't think that COM 125 was going to be a module that looked into much technicalities. But I'm glad that the first two lessons have been good so far, and I really like the videos shown in class. They are highly informative.