Name: Anonymous 2011-10-05 6:16
hey guys, I wrote an article for a student magazin about social media and facebook. initially i didnt intend to do this from a critical perspective but eventuelly it became quite dystopic. I dont have answer from the magazin yet (although its been 4 days -.- ) so i was wondering if anyone could give me feedback. and by the way: i'm native german, so the english might be a bit weird from time to time (yet i dont hope so).
The infinity of social media
Wikipedia, World of Warcraft, Facebook, Second Life, Twitter and YouTube are symbols of nowadays life and represent the entrenchment of Web 2.0 in most societies. Generally, all these platforms have one thing in common: they all fall into categories of social media. Social media refers to the interactive dialogue enabled by web-based and mobile communication technologies. Especially the use of social networking sites as for instance Facebook.com has shaped the way in which many people communicate. Invitations to parties, the newborn of your sandbox love, or unnecessary information about peoples’ hygiene practices only require few clicks. The actual use of the information we obtain daily on Facebook’s home screen is kept within small limits and for many people this is just a matter of how to overcome boredom. In theory, the user-generated content that Facebook’s servers are heavily loaded with solely belongs to its users. However, in practice it is questionable to what extent Facebook makes use of that foreign property. With increasing frequency Facebook comes into the firing line of privacy groups and politicians due to its recording and analyzing of user behavior. On the other side of the coin, marvelous innovations regularly overwhelm its more than 800 million active users (2011) and seem to be infinite and inexhaustible. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, recently introduced new ‘improvements’ to follow, as for instance the digital curriculum vitae. Users are supposed to feed Facebook with personal information on a daily basis. Accompanied by pictures and the involvement in friend’s ‘diaries’, a user’s life can be looked upon as a timeline. We ought not to forget that despite the increasing transparency of our own life’s for other people, the transparency of Facebook’s practices is fading enormously. If you don’t like one of Facebook’s innovations or if you don’t agree to renewed and restricting privacy settings, you are of course very welcome to back out of the community. Try to find the ‘delete account’ button. There is none. And you would of course lose all of your outstandingly good friends from 10 years ago. The good thing: your data is stored for eternity. So why don’t play their game?
The infinity of social media
Wikipedia, World of Warcraft, Facebook, Second Life, Twitter and YouTube are symbols of nowadays life and represent the entrenchment of Web 2.0 in most societies. Generally, all these platforms have one thing in common: they all fall into categories of social media. Social media refers to the interactive dialogue enabled by web-based and mobile communication technologies. Especially the use of social networking sites as for instance Facebook.com has shaped the way in which many people communicate. Invitations to parties, the newborn of your sandbox love, or unnecessary information about peoples’ hygiene practices only require few clicks. The actual use of the information we obtain daily on Facebook’s home screen is kept within small limits and for many people this is just a matter of how to overcome boredom. In theory, the user-generated content that Facebook’s servers are heavily loaded with solely belongs to its users. However, in practice it is questionable to what extent Facebook makes use of that foreign property. With increasing frequency Facebook comes into the firing line of privacy groups and politicians due to its recording and analyzing of user behavior. On the other side of the coin, marvelous innovations regularly overwhelm its more than 800 million active users (2011) and seem to be infinite and inexhaustible. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, recently introduced new ‘improvements’ to follow, as for instance the digital curriculum vitae. Users are supposed to feed Facebook with personal information on a daily basis. Accompanied by pictures and the involvement in friend’s ‘diaries’, a user’s life can be looked upon as a timeline. We ought not to forget that despite the increasing transparency of our own life’s for other people, the transparency of Facebook’s practices is fading enormously. If you don’t like one of Facebook’s innovations or if you don’t agree to renewed and restricting privacy settings, you are of course very welcome to back out of the community. Try to find the ‘delete account’ button. There is none. And you would of course lose all of your outstandingly good friends from 10 years ago. The good thing: your data is stored for eternity. So why don’t play their game?