Social Media Writing Assignment

Having an assignment that requires you to be on Facebook, Twitter and read blogs is any college students dream. The best part about it is that for most students, checking Facebook, Twitter and a blog is a part of their everyday routine. Before this assignment, I had a lot of experience with Facebook and a little bit with a blog. Today it seems that everyone has a Facebook and like a lot of other people, I could spend hours each day looking at pictures and reading statuses from my friends. I think it is a great social media tool for people to use to communicate with their friends. I also think it is very interesting that many businesses are starting to use it to communicate with their clients. Creating Facebook pages for businesses is also a great source of free advertising. Your Facebook page can be made as private or as public as you want, it is just important for any social media user to remember that what they put on the Internet can be found and seen by a lot of people.

My experience with blogs is less than with Facebook. For my first year writing class here at Ohio State we were required to keep a blog for the class. Since then, I have not written my own blog but I have started following other blogs. As many people in class know, I like to bake and decorate cupcakes. I have found a lot of blogs relating to cupcakes where people share pictures and recipes. I thought I could only follow blogs that were created with blogger so until last week that is all that I have followed. However, after Callie talked about Google Reader in class I discovered how to subscribe to blogs that are created with any website. I am in love with Google Reader, the main reason is because all of the blogs I follow are contained in one spot and it shows the most recent updates in each one all on one page.

Previously to this assignment, I thought Twitter was stupid. But after creating one and beginning to follow different people and things my opinion has changed. I made my Twitter solely for this assignment and my boyfriend told me I had to delete it as soon as I was finished because he knows how I am with Facebook. But after using Twitter for a few weeks, I've grown to like it. I personally have not tweeted many things but I enjoy following famous people. It is interesting to read some of the things that celebrities post. The fact that farmers and so many Ag related organizations use Twitter and Facebook amazes me. I think this is because I think of my dad or uncle trying to use Facebook or Twitter and this is just something that I can not imagine. With my short experience with Twitter so far, I still find it to be a little confusing but everyday I think I learn something new.

I think it is great that so many people are starting to use these free social media tools for so many different things. There is no doubt in my mind that someday this could be the main form of communication between people. The fact that I found out about Osama bin Laden's death through Facebook and that #obl was the number one trend on Twitter just minutes after it was announced shows that these social media networks are dominating the way we communicate these days.