I found the trends of new new medias to be very
interesting. The author often gave the
reader tidbits of his own personal use of the technologies as well. This got me to thinking about my own history
with new new media.
I graduated from a high school in 2003, so my earliest memories
of the internet are from high school. I may have used it in 8th
grade but I just can’t remember. In
homeroom we had a lesson on how to conduct searches. You couldn't just type in what you wanted to
search for; you had to use quotation marks and the words “and” and “or” between
words. We have definitely moved away from that now.
My use in high school was for limited research and instant
messaging. My parents wanted me to stay
out of chat rooms, but I was allowed to talk to friends using Yahoo Instant
Messenger and ICQ. Not many of my
friends used this, but my boyfriend and I were on ICQ all the time. Also, none of us had cell phones at this
time.
When I graduated and went to college my father gave me a
laptop, but it never occurred to me to get a cell phone. I came to Fairleigh Dickinson University as a freshman and EVERYONE had
a cell phone! I used to give my new best friend’s number out so that people
could reach me! I also built a MySpace
page. I really enjoyed MySpace. The
customization options were vast; I even learned a little bit about coding so
that I could make my MySpace very unique.
LiveJournal was also popular at that time too. I started one but lost
interest in it very quickly. My friends
were using it like a journal or diary. I
had never been interested in diary keeping as a girl, so I didn't keep the blog
for long.
As soon as Facebook was available my best friend and I
joined up. We were some of the first people
at FDU to have a Facebook profile. I
also started using AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), since that was the chat program
everyone else was using.
Ten years later. I no longer keep my MySpace active, but I am
sure it’s still there, waiting for me to sign in. I am still very active on Facebook. I use it to keep in touch with high school
friends, family, and now old college friends as well. I used to play games on Facebook, but have
since moved to playing them directly off the Zynga website. It took awhile, but I eventually joined
Twitter. I don’t use it much, but once I start blogging next semester I will
use it to promote my blog. I also don’t use
AIM anymore. I still have it downloaded
on my computer, but no one is signed on anymore. I use my smart phone to text, send FB
messages, and a couple friends and I use Google Talk.
When Google + was first released it was on a limited
basis. A friend who works in the industry
invited me to join. It was pretty neat to be among the first to have a Google +
account. I don’t use it much, but I may
have to change that. I use Google Docs,
I also have a Yahoo account so that I can use the Yahoo Group function.
It didn't even occur to me how much of new new media I even
use until I started writing this. I almost forgot, I have a LinkedIn account
too! I find myself riding the same social media wave as everyone else. I don’t know how we keep up with all of
this. In today’s world, to be successful
you really need to be proficient in multitasking!
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