Time for task

Hi! Now is time for first actual task. We should blog entry about two social media tools or services that we use and then get to know one new. After that we should write how social media can be used in our line of study. So I am going to write about Facebook and Instagram, those are the ones I currently use, and new one will be Twitter. I previously had a Twitter account, but I did not use it and now is opportunity to learn and start using it.

First about Facebook. I learned from it mostly from Internet. I was one of the first of people I knew at that time who started using Facebook. It seemed to be interesting and helped to keep contact with friends in time when we had top send text messages and that was rather expensive. And of course sharing pictures was also part of my decision to join there. I used it mainly to chat and share pictures, I have newer been too keen to share status updates.

Nowadays I mainly use Facebook for chatting. It is good to keep contact when doing group work in school because of group conversation option. When everybody lives far away of each other, it is easier to meet online than work out time when everybody is at school. I use event making option too because I run one association and for that use it is very handy. We can also talk about decisions and agree on things because once again, we all live all around Finland. I have only one bad experience from Facebook. Once we made an event for members of our association. Somebody made that event and made a little missklick. Because of that event went public and got little bit out of hands when that thing happened.

Second social media tool I use is Instagram. I started to use it because my girlfriend used it and Instagram seemed to be nice app. It was nice to share pictures with friends. I do not have any actual use for it, I just use Instagram to mainly watch other peoples pictures. I do not have any good or bad experiences with it as I remember. For work tool it could be used (and is used) for advertising purposes.

As new social media tool I chose Twitter. After getting know to it I do not see it useful or amusing to me, but I see it very useful for work settings. Maybe not for internal use, but for external. It can be very powerful for marketing and as information channel for customers. This way many companies already use. If i would be responsible of company's Twitter account, I would use it to promote interesting offers or whatever company does. Also I could retweet, tweet or comment about latest news and inventions of that line of business. That makes company look active and interesting. Also general tweets like what is happening in company or what it is doing would be great.

And now comes summary how people use social media in my field of study. In Samk where I study, we use Facebook to communicate with each other because we live in different cities and do not always find time to meet in school. In my line of study, social media could be used for advertising in worklife. For bad examples people using social media I could say when companies take part in conversations that are firestarters for many. In my opinion companies should never do that, it just harms their image. Good example is Netflix, it really sees effort  in social media. It publishes things that its followers like and they are generally funny and interesting.

First task with social media

Hi! This is first time I'm writing blog, so basically this is training for me. First we should write about our experiences, preconceptions and expectations. So lets talks about that. I have been using social media pretty long time. I haven't been too active producing anything myself, I have mainly beem watcher. I use Facebook and Instagram, before I have had account in Twitter and Periscope. I deleted my account in Twitter because I almost never tweeted anything and I felt that i didn't needed it. Periscope was just not my thing.

When I first started to use social media, my choice was facebook long time ago. I cannot remember how old I was when i made my Facebook account, somewhere around high school age. I didn't had any preconceptions about it as I remember because at that point I didn't know what to expect from it. I remember that it turned out to be very usefull keeping contact to friends and option to make groups was very good when setting something up or making event. Also information moved lot quicker and easier than before, especially if that info had to reach multiple people. I was very happy about it, looking other people pictures and adding own ones was nice also. But the most important thing for me was tha groupmaking and chatting feature.

My second thouch to social media was Instagram. It was long after I started using Facebook, but once again I cannot remember exact age when i first made my account. It was when Instagram started to be big thing. Again i didn't had any preconceptions because so many of my friends already used it. Last year I deleted my account for short time. I got bored to social media so I had little brake from it. Then I learned that social media is addictive. In that short while I felt bored when I didn't have anything to watch when there was nothing to do.

When using social media I have learned its downsides. It takes concentration from surrounding world and what once happened there, neves disappears or is forgotten. For example sometimes in Facebook old pictures or status updates jump in news feed. Sometimes those pictures could revive memories from unpleasant moments or show old things that could be forgotten. And social media really takes time. When using it it sucks all of the concentration and then no one can reach that person. It makes conversation difficult and then user easily passes nice and cool things that he or she can see or experience otherwise.