Blog Post #8

For this week’s blog post I will be talking about how social media platforms that are so popular now, came about, but from my perspective. I will also be talking about how I was influenced to join these social media platforms and how be apart of them became such a normal thing for me overtime. First and foremost I would like to say that if so many people did not use social media, I would not either. I am not a big fan of the cell phone addicted culture that we currently live in, but when I’m out at dinner or something and I want to talk to people, but they are on their phones, what am I to do? Anyway back to the social media platforms. I encountered Snapchat before Twitter, so we’ll go over that first. If I remember correctly, I was in the 8^th grade. I had an android phone at the time, but I had an iPad. At the time, there would be a popular app for about a week or two and then everybody would stop using it and move onto the next popular app. I did not have very much storage on my iPad at the time, so I had to pick and choose my apps very carefully. At some point in the school year, Snapchat became the popular app. It was essentially texting, but with pictures. I did not like the concept of Snapchat because I am a very closed off person and I don’t like people knowing where I am or what I am doing, I wasn’t the most attractive middle schooler, so I didn’t like take selfies, and lastly I wasn’t used to using/having multiple social media accounts at the time. Also, facetime, skype, and oovoo were all big at the time, so why would I want to see someones face, but not be able to have an actual conversation and wait minutes or maybe hours for a response? For these reasons, I went a very long time without using Snapchat, but one of my bestfriends convinced me to try it out and so I downloaded it. I made my account and started snapchatting people. I hated it so much that I deleted it the same night I downloaded it. It wasn’t until the 9^th grade I believe, that I downloaded Snapchat again. Since I was in highschool now, lets just say the reasons why I downloaded Snapchat were much different than before. Overtime I used it enough where I became accustomed to it and it became like another instagram for me.

Now onto Twitter. Before I talk about how I started using Twitter, I want to talk about how I feel about Twitter today. Twitter is my favorite social media platform today, but that has a lot to do with features that have been added since I first joined. I was going to a party over the summer with my friends from high school. When we got there, there weren't too many people there yet, so after we said hello to everyone, we sat around for awhile just talking to one another. Eventually, the phones came out and we started talking about social media. My best friend to this day named Donovan, showed me a video he was laughing at on Twitter. I thought it was hilarious and he asked me why I hadn't seen it before and I told him I didn't have a Twitter account. After acting like he was the creator of Twitter himself, he grabbed my phone and immediately downloaded Twitter onto my phone. He proceeded to create my entire profile for me, including my username, which was changed just recently so before that I kept the one he created (that's why I remember this story so well). He told me to just try it out and if I don't like it, I can always delete it. I kept it for awhile, but it was never really that fun. I didn't see the same funny videos Donovan had been seeing and I was on the verge of deleting it. My older brother was also a big advocate for Twitter and when I brought up my issues with it to him, he told me its all about who you follow. This was great advice as from then on out, Twitter was by far the funniest and most informative form of social media I had ever used. Today I do still use both Twitter and Snapchat, along with Instagram. I still do not like Snapchatting people, but I have a few streaks that I snap at least once a day. Twitter and Instagram are great for me.