This teaching period, I chose to study Social Media as an elective for my degree. Let's just get one thing straight; I hate writing. So why did I chose a unit with so much writing? I'm not quite sure actually, but let's see how we go. This may well turn into a farce where everyone comes to find humour in my lack of writing skills.
Blogging. How could someone's usually meaningless ramblings be of any interest to a bunch of complete strangers? Blogs are basically just a public diary, where users can post their innermost thoughts and feelings to the world, maybe behind an alias so that they have the freedom to post anything they want without the constant worry of "will this offend/be inappropriate to my boss/family/friends?"Not to worry, they'll never know it's you posting.
Blogging opens up a whole jar of opinionated people who would otherwise just annoy their friends with their constant rambling. This blogging platform allows these 'ramblers' to post their opinions, start discussions (or arguments) with people beyond their friendship circle that might actually care about what they're saying.
All criticisms aside, blogging has evolved the social media world, with users from all across the world able to voice their perspectives and connect with like minded (or completely opposite) people. Rheingold (TED Talks 2008) presented the theory of 'virtual communities', which very accurately defines blogging. Many users from all over the world combine ideas to create posts and provide insight into other peoples' blogs.
Just imagine if blogging was a non-virtual tool. Streets would be lined with people on soapboxes, all trying to be heard over the person next to them, most of which we wouldn't want to listen to anyway. All we could do is try to be heard over all of them and provide our opinions on their opinions. The virtual world makes this much easier, by leaving comments instead of yelling at a person to try and be heard. Blogging online allows you to switch on and off to people and blogs you are interested in, while filtering out the ones you don't want.
To briefly sum up:
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