003: Week 11 Exercise - Active Research Assignment: Social Networking Exercise Pt.1

History With and Use of Social Networking

I first started using social media about 7 years ago; the new online trend was xanga amongst my classmates and even siblings so I decided to give it a shot. I barely used it back then, finding the loading times atrocious especially when browsing fellow friends’ xanga as they would post multiple full size photos and have mp3/MIDI files playing as background music that would load incredibly slowly on our 56k speed internet at the time.

I also signed up for a livejournal account shortly after which I used a lot more compared to xanga as I found the layout for posting much more concise and they actually have a “respond to (other users)” versus commenting on others’ xanga to respond to what they said or on yours. They also have an “lj-cut” feature which involves putting large-sized images in a separate link within a post so you wouldn’t have to wait 10-20 minutes to actually read a post. I still use my livejournal to this day but mostly to read whatever news/tabloids/friends post than post myself as I’ve been finding less and less time to do so.

There was also the orthodox myspace that everyone had. I was a lot more reluctant to signing up for one since I was pretty happy with livejournal then but I had a lot more friends on the former so I signed up on whim and found it even more confusing than xanga. Aside from accepting friends requests and making at the most, 5 comments, I barely touched it.

As of November of last year, I got myself a last.fm. I really enjoy seeing the trend of music I listen to for self-analytical purposes along with comparing it with my friends while also seeing the pattern of music they enjoy listening to and what we have in common.

And of course, there was facebook I was told about by my friends that was limited only to college students at the time. It was a lot more organized than myspace and less chaotic too. On top of that, you wouldn't have to worry about music that may freeze your computer or humongous photos as they resized every one loaded onto it. There was a period when facebook finally opened to the public that I stopped using it as it was also when everyone was allowed to customize their profile in which many used this liberally to the point where it was almost a second take of myspace in the sense of erratic blinking images, music, multiple applications, and even what seemed like different walls to write on. After a while though, when all of that calmed down, I started using it again and still am as a method of communication and sharing images.