Social Networking Sites


As the title of the blog suggests, today, I’ll be briefly touching upon 4 media platforms I currently use for leisure: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

For anyone who doesn’t know what Facebook is, it is essentially a networking platform which serves to connect various individuals by allowing them to be “friends” online. For me, Facebook has continued to serve as a crucial tool to stay up to date with upcoming school events, group projects, and friend gatherings. In addition, because Facebook serves as an ad-targeting platform, I’ve also been able to come across beneficial products and services without having to scour the whole web. As ironic as it may sound, Facebook has inevitably improved my time management in regards to both my professional and personal lifestyle.

Instagram, on the other hand, has only helped me kill time during my long commutes to school and inevitable boring class lectures. Unlike Facebook, Instagram places a heavier focus on the visual side of social media. Users are strongly encouraged to post new photos to update their “followers” on any important moments in their lives. Personally speaking, I’ve never been too fond of the platform. But just to keep the show on the road, I’d post a few photos or two every other month.

The same goes for Snapchat as well. Similar to Instagram, Snapchat also focuses on improving its users’ communication via photo messages. However, unlike Instagram, which focuses on capturing the permanent beauty of a particular time, Snapchat emphasizes the excitement of viewing “fleeting” moments. To be more specific, users are able to send photo messages with a 10 second max time limit view; after the 10 seconds are over, the photo is gone forever. Due to this extremely short time limit, I’ve found myself to forget, or not truly comprehend, what my friends were sending me. As a result, the platform is barely touched on my phone.

Twitter has, by far, been the most inefficient platform I’ve used compared to all the other services I’ve listed above. I never truly understood the importance in making its 280 character updates, also known as “tweets,” online. Furthermore, because a majority of my friends do not utilize this platform, I’ve also come to see no sense in using it.

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