Your social media footprint
11 Dec 2012
Social media is not necessarily about creating new friends, but getting in touch with old friends and keeping up with your friends' and family's lives.
Whether with your grandson, a high school friend you lost touch with 20 years ago, or even a friend who now lives overseas, social networks are the most convenient and inexpensive way of keeping in touch.
The four main social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They are quite similar at a very basic level; they are all about uploading user-generated content or sharing content created by others, whether text, photos or videos. Where they differ is in how users treat them.
On YouTube, for example, people upload videos for public consumption – absolute strangers around the world watch instructional videos on how to create the perfect hairdo or repair a cracked iPhone screen. On Facebook, most people only share their content with smaller groups of friends and family.
Get started
Create a social media account and you will be prompted to allow the social network to access your email contacts and link you with your friends or family. For your profile picture, it’s best to use a photo of yourself so that people can easily see who you are.
Finally, it is time to make your first post. Whether on Facebook or Twitter, it’s important to make your post something fun and current that will prompt your friends to comment.
Be social, but not too social
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are the lifeblood of the younger generation’s social groups. Before commenting on someone’s post, remember that all of their friends – including their workmates, perhaps even their boss – will see your comment.
It is not uncommon for people to delete family members’ comments or even unfriend their family members on social networks. So, to save your loved ones embarrassment and save yourself a friend remember a golden rule: if you wouldn't walk into a room and say something out loud, don't post it.
The platforms
Facebook:
Established in 2004, Facebook is the king of social networks with 845 million active users as at the end of last year. It is currently the second most visited website in the world.
Facebook allows users to create their own private pages where they can upload photos, chat publicly or privately to friends and family, and share information instantly with other users who are their friends.
Facebook also allows users to play games, create closed groups, create and invite friends to events, and create fan pages.
Like Probus South Pacific on Facebook: Probus South Pacific
Twitter:
Since March 2006, Twitter has grown to over 350 million registered users and has a significant demographic base of adults. Twitter has been described as the SMS of the internet with posts, called ‘tweets’, limited to 140 characters.
Because of its instantaneity, Twitter is often a great source for news, with big news stories regularly broken via Twitter before news agencies have time to write up and release them. Unlike Facebook, ‘following’ someone you don’t know on Twitter is acceptable, making it a great way to pick the brains of genius strangers from around the world.
Follow Probus South Pacific on Twitter: ProbusSthPac
YouTube:
YouTube is a social network where users can upload, view, share and comment on videos. Anyone with a camera can capture a world-changing event and upload the footage, and users can also make money by starting their own channels and creating videos that others want to watch.
Find Probus South Pacific on YouTube: Probus South Pacific
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