Reuben V. Rice Jr.
HUM/186
04-02-14
Professor Robinson
Extra Extra
Many young people are members to many different kinds of social networking sites that cater to different specific needs ( Twitter for constant updates, Face book to keep in contact with classmates, MySpace to keep up with new musicians), thus people are able to remain in contact with others at an alarmingly increasing rate. The usage of PDAs and Smartphone’s has facilitated this increase, as many of them allow users to connect to social media sites easier and more often. The aforementioned websites have even gone so far as to establish phone applications of their technology to allow users to connect easier.
MySpace serves as a quintessential example of a successful entertainment social networking site. It reaches users from LA to Australia, from Japan to Jersey and exposes new movies, comedians, and artists to about two hundred and forty five million users. Through MySpace, the once distant connection between entertainers and their fans is bridged. These resulting connections have changed the traditional enjoyment of entertainment and allow the typical fan to have a closer, more personal experience. While MySpace is renowned for its open format, they have also run into some trouble with child predators. Larry Magid warns that parents must monitor their children’s interactions on the popular website, as our increasingly Internet based and influenced culture evolves (Protect Kids on MySpace, 2006). Blogs are updated much more often than most news sources, so they have begun to revolutionize how news is reported. Both Google and Yahoo have added a Blog Search to their homepages, which reflects just how strong of a presence blogs have established.
YouTube is a social media site that has millions of users and allows them to upload and watch unlimited amounts of videos. It can be seen as both a positive and negative social media form. On the one hand, it allows for global distribution of television shows, commercials, movie trailers, and music videos. YouTube has risen to an icon in our society due to the open sharing of opinions on politics, and learn various skills that can be found with a simple search. The negative side of YouTube comes in the form of copyrighted infringements. With the abundance of the free flow of information, much copyrighted material is distributed without proper permission. Monitoring the content of YouTube can be a difficult task but YouTube has taken action to rectify this issue as they have recently banned videos, which incite violence (YouTube Bans Videos That Incite Violence,