Effects of social media in our society

Just as there are two sides to a coin, there are both positive and negative points to how social media has affected our society. As media has been known to be one of the four pillars of democracy, it has caused a huge on our society, and most definitely there will be positive and negative effects. Media has been known and used as such a powerful tool that it has literally govern the direction of our society. Using media or social media, opinions can change overnight and celebrities can be born with the exposure to media.

Social media has made communication and expression for more people in the world, in the olden days people would work a 9 to 5 job and meet family and friends during the weekends, but now with social media it has come to a point where even if a person or colleague is tied down at work they can still communicate at ease using social media such as Twitter or Facebook. Social media has made it that the line between work and home life are becoming blurred as social networking tools are a effective way of finding and interacting with one another.

As social media involve the whole world there is an opportunity that it would meet a limitless opportunity of vast information and interaction. Of course interaction and getting to know people online is not something new, in the past there are programs such as IRC (Internet Relay Chat), MSN (Microsoft Network) and forums but the main difference now is that social media uses real-time ways to communicate through instant messaging, Facebook walls and Twitter replies. These interactions closely mimic face-to-face conversations than interaction via email, forums or message boards but with this invite more problems with social gaffes and missteps. These interactions give users the feeling that they are actually having a conversation with the other party compared to writing an email where there is formality.

Social media brings numerable achievements that are going on in the country, its gives ordinary people the power and opportunity to reach out to the society as a whole, social media has significantly promoted social causes such as literacy, health management, anti-dowry practices, AIDS awareness and such.

New Media Landscape

Lionel Chin is the co-founder of Ripplewerkz, which is an all in one design house which offers high quality Web, Blog, Print and Corporate ID development. Boasting an impressive portfolio of projects such as Nuffnang, Prominent bloggers/Celebrities (eg. Allan Wu (The Amazing Race Asia), Wong Lilin (Mediacorp), Nico Chua (FM 933 DJ), Lunch Actually, Airtrade and The Eurasian Association (Singapore) etc, the name Lionel Chin certainly resonates in the digital industry.
With him sharing his expertise, experience in web development and the use of new media tools in the industry will help to inspire your learning journey and relate better to the subject itself from the commercial point of view.

5 key points-

1. Being careful with charging people, if its early in the career , it would be wise doing the work for free, as the work can be added into the portfolio which is very important in this industry.

2. Being prepared to be turned down, as you work may not be favorable to the client’s eye but do not feel discouraged after being turn down, just keep working harder and you will be able to excel.

3.Using various social media to promote oneself.

4. Putting together a good portfolio to showcase your best works .’

5.Knowing the the outside world is much more competitive and vicious then the schooling world.

3 Things that inspired me -

1. Being a web designer can be really profitable and fun at the same time.

2. The speaker looks very young but he is already on his way to a bright future.

3. At such a young age he has met or worked with so many celebrities.

Do you think its useful to have a guest speaker to share their expertise, experience and ” Tips & Tricks” of the trade ?

Yes, i think it is extremely useful and effective as unlike lecturers these guest speaker are appealing to us on a professional level and an up-to-date experience. Not that our lecturers are not good but having guest speaker backs up what the lecturers have been trying to explaining to the students.

Field Trip(Onsite): National Archives of Singapore (NAS)

Background of organisation

- Who are they ?

The National Archives of Singapore ( NAS ) is a place that houses the different collective memories of our nation. This memory allows current and also future generations of Singaporeans to understand the different culture and also a chance to explore our common heritage and educating others on how we became a nation.

-What do they do ?

The National Archives of Singapore do things like Image preservation, records management and archives conservation, etc. Such things are doing to preserve document of visual, audio or video to be kept as record to be used in the near future.

-What type of service they provide ?

They provide services such as Archives Services, Archives conservation, Records Management, Image Preservation,Audi-Visual Archives and Exhibition and lastly Oral History Centre

Do they use and Social Media & Web 2.0 technologies for public communication & education?

Yes, they do.
They use Social Media tools namely ,a2O (Access to Archives Online Singapore), a one-stop portal site on heritage information dating back to 17th century. a2O allows users to seamlessly search information across NHB’s databases and view photographs, maps and plans, listen to oral history interview samplers and watch snippets of audio-visual recordings, round the clock. Information on recently acquired materials by NAS, Online Exhibitions, how to access our archival collection as well as student programmes are also provided.

Sources

http://www.nhb.gov.sg/NAS/index.htm

http://www.a2o.com.sg/a2o/public/html/

Is eBay Planning to Challenge Facebook with “PayPal ID”?

In this article there is two parts that were elaborated. Firstly, introducing the new PayPal X developer platform launched by PayPal at PayPal X Conference on 3rd
November2009. Secondly and lastly, the threat and challenges made to Facebook Connect when PayPal X was launched.

On 4th November 2009, second day of the Innovate conference, Chief Technology Officer of eBay, Mark Carges mentioned that PayPal X’s goal was ” to become the medium in which financial transactions occur across the web. The eBay subsidiary hopes to do this by wooing developers into integrating PayPal into their apps.” Mark also revealed that PayPal has an interesting ambition it hopes to achieve “and that Facebook Connect was part of the inspiration.” Having said that eBay soon may be challenging Facebook’s sign-in platform. Mark further discusses and gives an example of how eBay intends to reach their goal of becoming the ” consumer identity provider “. The example he gave was that under the project that is called “PayPal ID”, users can login to identify themselves securely to e-commerce websites and website applications unlike Facebook where you can create a fake ID and act as someone else. Facebook Connect was announced on 23 July 2008 and has been made available to users since 4 December 2008. The service enables Facebook users to login to affiliated sites using their accounts and share information. According to the review, “The audience reaction was mixed – some think it makes sense, but others worried that PayPal ID would be too “closed” of a system.” But nevertheless PayPal ID would still pose a threat and a challenge to Facebook.

From what i have researched about Facebook is that Facebook is a social networking website founded on 4th February, 2004 which offers many features like for e.g. Wall, Events, Pokes, Networks and groups and more. According to online sources, Facebook has currently more than 300 million active users worldwide and is the most popular social networking sites in many countries that include Canada and the United Kingdom and not forgetting United States.

My research on PayPal has shown that unlike Facebook that is a social networking website, PayPal is an e-commerce that allows payments and money transfers to be made on the Internet. In other words PayPal is the electronic alternative to traditional methods such as checks and money orders. PayPal was founded in December 1998 by a payments and cryptography company. Up to date, “PayPal operates in 190 markets, and it manages over 184 million accounts, more than 73 million of them active. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 19 currencies worldwide. PayPal operates locally in 13 countries.”

In context to how impactful these new media trends are it is needless to say that e-commerce such as PayPal and social network websites like Facebook as hit the world like a storm. PayPal has made payment so readily available, traditionally when people had to pay for something they had to go down to the shop to make payment by hand , then came check book and credit cards which moved our society to a cashless and electronic mode of payment. With PayPal it brings payment to a whole new level as it show the synergy of credit cards and the internet resulting in a very convenient way of paying for items bought off the net. Moving on to Facebook, for a website to have more than 300 million active users worldwide is not something to overlook. Facebook has become so famous it has almost come to a point where it is a house hold name. Everybody and anybody who is internet inclined would know about Facebook, more so if you are in school, where socialising always happens.

On a personal note, for Facebook, I believe that there is always a hunger or a need in all of us to socialize with others. Traditionally one would have to step out of his/her comfort zone in order to do that and meet new people but nowadays with these social networking sites that need or hunger is filled in a superficial and yet artificial way. Obviously meeting new people online is much easier then meeting them in person as one do not have to deal with the ‘awkward’ feeling and therefore the personal gain you get from removing yourself from your comfort zone is lost, but then again a shy person using Facebook can gain more confidence from using it and to meet more people to boost his/her moral and confidence.

In conclusion, I feel that major new media trends like Facebook and PayPal would just continue to grow and get more and more users as the world moves further into a state where almost everyone’s life revolves around the internet, and without a doubt these media trends would continue to affect how our society grows and matures. I mean seriously, nowadays in our life we use internet for everything and even if we are unknowingly using it, be it shopping, chatting , socialising or business. When it all boils down, humans love the internet because of its convenience.
(just for the record, i do not own a Facebook, twitter or MySpace account, and NO its not because I got no life.)

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

Article: http://mashable.com/2009/11/04/paypal-id/

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