Social Media

My exposure to and usage of social media began in early 1997 when my family bought a new Compaq Presario from CompUSA in Henrietta. Along with that purchase, our family obtained Internet service at home for the first time. I began to use AOL Instant Messenger, which evolved into AIM to include non-AOL subscribers.

In middle school and high school, 1997 thru 2002, myself and most of my friends used AIM before & after school "like it was our job". AIM allowed us a way to collaborate, discuss, and debate on a whim. Conversation is addictive. If I had realized that then, I may have had something of substance to argue when my parents were peeling me away from the computer screen. I did not get into MySpace when some of my friends started to, because it was ugly and mostly catered to the music sector, ie. those in bands.

I joined Facebook in college when it first came out; I was taken aback by how exponentially better Facebook was than MySpace, in every respect. Facebook was a closed college-only network, and as it grew with us, it eventually opened to the public. I found this to be slightly annoying, because Facebook was trying to become something that it previously hadn't.

Today, I generally pour some daily attention into Facebook, keeping connected with people I've known for many years or just a few days--it doesn't matter. I do have a MySpace account now, although the only reasons I joined were to gain familiarization and to connect with some of my family who was not yet on Facebook. I am also on Orkut and LinkedIn, Youtube and Picasa, author a personal blog and contribute to some others using Blogger, I tweet on Twitter, was a Joost beta-tester, I extensively use Gmail w/ GoogleTalk, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and I am a member of several group-specific networking communities offered through Yahoo! Groups, Google Groups, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, Joomla, and Ning.