I've been using the Internet since 1995 and I've seen great changes over that time. Perhaps the biggest change during my past 16 years of Internet usage has been the rise of social media and its impact on our day to day lives.
Once upon a time, the Internet was mostly a one way street, people posted to webpages and there was very little interaction with the content. Today, the Internet is different, a two way medium, with family, friends, colleagues and businesses all using it to its full potential. At the helm, social media has been a major driver of the two way conversation, sites like MySpace, Friendster, even the chat program ICQ paved the way to the more infamous sites we know today.
The likes of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Linked In dominate the social media space and with the emergence of Google+ onto the scene, social media is where it's all at right now. There's never been a time when everyone has been more connected than we are now. With the simple click of a mouse or opening an application on your smart phone you can be in touch with your family, friends and even liaise with real people in businesses you deal with.
Social Media even helped break news. Looking back at the uprising in Iran and Egypt where protestors were posting images and video on the ground as chaos ensued around them. It helped bring to light the plight of the people against hard line government crack downs. Then there's also more recent events, like the Japan Tsunami and even Cyclone Yasi being covered in real time by average users.
In more recent times, we've seen the uglier side of social media, like the riots in London and the ever increasing cyber bullying threat with teenagers taking their own lives after being tormented online. But these things shouldn't detract from all the good a two way conversation can impact how we get our news, chat to family and friends or do business.
I've been using social media for several years now, with my personal Facebook page to stay in contact with my friends and family. I also have my public facing business Facebook page at facebook.com/carloscomputers where I'm able to directly chat to like-minded tech heads and customers.
My Twitter stream @carloscomputers allows everyone to see a mix of my public and business life with discussions, links and updates relating to what I'm doing or interesting things I see. I also run the @cycloneupdate Twitter stream which became incredibly popular during Cyclone Yasi. See The Cairns Post's story on me for that one.
Other clever uses of social media include smart phone applications that post directly to all your streams. Picture applications like TwitPic, PicPlz and Instagram consolidate pictures across multiple platforms so you don't have to post the same thing several times for your friends or followers to see it.
There's also exercise applications that track and post your workouts where others can comment and encourage your progress. I use an application called SportyPal and my workouts are tracked and posted publicly as a way of motivating myself to keep up the exercise regime and not slack off. See my workouts here.
Technology is amazing; it's why I work in this field. The constant go, go, go and changing field makes it an interesting place to be right now.
How has social media changed your life?
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