Everyone now has an online presence, you’re probably the odd one out in a room if you don‘t have one. Social media as a whole is entirely built around the idea that you can build your own profile and create your own virtual identity and online presence.
The use of different types of social media demand different parts of your personality for example, LinkedIn is a professional site which works as your very own online CV profile but is considered social media because of it’s “social networking” capabilities. LinkedIn is extremely useful when trying to connect with industry professionals and colleagues and is also used to help employ people and find employers. This is more common with an older audience for obvious reasons, you don’t see many 12 year olds trying to get a job and wanting to link with industry proffessionals.
a social media aimed for a slightly younger audience is snapchat, slowly rising as the most popular social media site engrossing young people from an early age ( 12+) being less professional but also not very personal this site gives the user the choice to show off certain parts of their life making the user seem more ‘interesting’. The main feature for this social media is to share 24 hour stories with friends, this gives the user the freedom to share whatever they want and the site also allowed them to keep adding fresh content.
snapchat gets a bad reputation for the ’seedy’ side to the social media, but anything can be misused but audiences in today’s society. People worry about keeping children safe but if they were taught properly how to use social media we could potentially have less problems around young people online. Many people believe that snapchat could enhance bonds;
“Snapchat could enhance family relationships, current friendships, and romantic relationships” and that “snapchat could make existing friendships “stronger” because the medium allows for more talking and interacting.” (Vaterlaus et al, p.598).
each social media obviously has different feature which then lend them selfs to certain audiences.
i.e
Facebook - tends to be connecting with friends and family, using the extension of the messenger app. It also keeps people updated on what’s going on in people’s lives
Twitter - surrounds current events and what’s going on in the world, and is made for the sharing of opinions
Linkedin - professional site used to find and share job opportunities and works as an online CV
I could go on but you get my point, every site is doing something different and asking for something different, and exploits different things from it’s audience. This then creates a world where a user seemingly has different identities depending on the social media that is being used at anyone time. It’s an interesting thought they we may give off different personas depending in what social media we are using at one time or another ...
check it it out next time you look at you FB page then go on your Twitter, do you write the same, do you post about different things.... it’s all counts towards your online presence.
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