New New Media Chapter 7- 12

First of all I really enjoyed these chapters because these chapters about tomorrow and what our world will probably be run on.  Facebook is such a huge part of our world now.  There are over 500 million users and still growing.  I joined Facebook when I came to College and now I am still finding friends that I was friends with when i was in junior high.  Both of my parents are on Facebook and so are my Aunts, they are in their 70's.  This medium is providing new opportunities for people to reach out, learn, grow.  Recently Facebook announced that they are adding something else called Deals to Facebook.  They said that they are making a test run out of it in 5 different cities.  These five cities are San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, Dallas, and Atlanta.  This means that Facebook is finding different places around where you live where they can give you a discount to your favorite restaurant or store.  Facebook is evolving so much that it will be hard to control in a couple of years. 

Another way Facebook is used is for campaigning.  When the 2008 election was taking place Facebook was filled with Obama/McCain bumper stickers, buttons, and advertisements.  There was an application where you could "Obamaize" yourself.  You could take your profile picture and change it to where it looked like his campaign slogan.  There were bumper stickers that were tearing down Obama/McCain.  It became a whole new way to campaign.  The candidates were able to tell how much support each candidate were getting just by what people were saying on Facebook and what things people clicked on.

I also find Twitter to be fascinating.  You get 140 characters to write whatever you feel like.  You can write what you just saw, ate, experienced.  It is "microblogging" in its finest sense of the word.  Because today all people care about is how quick they get their information or who quick something happens.  People love the immediacy that is Twitter.  It is also something that people can become someone completely different and just share their views.  In a sense it is liberating to experience these things.  I also really like the way Levinson discusses how Twitter is like jewelry.  It shows what mood we are in.  It is so easy to just post what your thinking so the whole world knows.