Social Media Changing Lives

Image via CrunchBase

I found a good article on how social media is here to stay at mashable.com, a website dedicated to the latest trends in social media.

For those of you with less time on your hands, due to making alot of toast for guests, a very quick precis:

1) Social media such as Twitter et al  is becoming an increasing source of trusted information.

Image via CrunchBase

2) Is a new avenue to market for business and start ups with little budget – eg Facebook groups

3) Social media has created a new platform for creating and refining new and old friendships.

4) Tweets and status posts create greater opportunity to view personal feeling and “greater transparency to human nature”

5) The ability of the individual to influence the public has increased.

Image by NASchmidt via Flickr

Check out the article, indepth, below:

http://mashable.com/2009/10/16/social-media-changing-lives/

Funny Internet Behavior Update 2

Image via Wikipedia

The latest update on  categorising some silly sociological and behavioral reactions that the Internet has on us

humans….

POPUP INERTIA

Frequently going to a website that always spawns a popup which slightly annoys you every time. Being too apathetic to go to the tools to change your security settings to stop the popup from appearing EVERY TIME. Its the modern day equivalent of not wanting to fix the leaky tap or mow the lawn- you just cant be bothered, despite the fact that its easy to do.

HOMEPAGE HATE

Opening up the browser multiple times over the course of a day and having a gut reaction of loathing and revulsion for the homepage because it still hasnt updated with any new information. Then hating yourself for setting such a unhappening homepage.

STATUS GAUGING

Meeting a friend of a friend for the first time and finding them cute. Instead of asking your friend whether that person is single, you find yourself asking them what their status is (ala Facebook). The answer is nearly always “its complicated”.

Image by robleto via Flickr

SELF PROFILING

Making your Facebook profile as appealing as possible to attract a possible gf/bf e.g. culling your Facebook photos and other peoples photos of you with the specific purpose of keeping the photos appealing. Taking a profile picture specifically for the purpose of looking hot. Trawling and removing any comments which could scare away “prospects”. The modern day equivalent of cleaning your house for the wrong reasons and despite the fact that you really are a slob!

Internet Behavior

Alot of us have developed some silly, sometimes borderline meaningless habits and behavior when it comes to computing and using the Internet. Here is my attempt to categorise, quantify and describe some of them:

TORRENT WATCHING SYNDROME

Blankly sitting and watching the torrent download % by % even though there are literally hours left to go until the download is complete. There is an undercurrent of irrational feeling that watching the download will hurry it up.

DOWNLOAD PSYCHOSIS

Downloading movies that you aren’t even keen to watch because you’ve downloaded everything else.  This often results in unearthing gems of content or just meaningless movies stored on a harddrive for emergency occasions.