Highlight on Social Media

Is Twitter the new Facebook???

Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, or Tumbler, I bet those 30 people I talked about above most likely  have more than one of these. And truthfully this applies to people even older than 30. It seems like all of my older relatives are popping up on Facebook now and liking all of my pictures. When looking at all of the types of social media, each and every one are all so different. They all started for different reasons too. Lets take Facebook for example, it started out as a website for college students to get to know each other better. It was a place where people could post statuses and pictures that let people know who they were, it has an information place for people to put their hometown, their favorite movies, and where they work. Twitter on the other hand, started as a small version of Facebook. It was a place to make short little posts to inform people what was happening in quick ways. All in all they were all started as a way of communication, to keep those you don'f usually keep in touch that normally you wouldn't keep in touch with. 

So, now that we  have the background of social media, a popping questions strikes social media users and that question is "Is twitter the new Facebook?" . Here is  a graph that breakdowns the social demographics of those who use twitter and Facebook and how both differ. http://www.digitalsurgeons.com/facebook-vs-twitter-infographic/

This graph really shows what I think on this matter. Personally I think there is too big of a difference between the two to compare them, and in the graph you can see that different people probably use each of the networks for different purposes. Facebook has transformed into a long-term source of information. It's the place to go when you are checking up on high school friends you haven't seen in a while. Facebook generally has information that includes the whole life-span of a person. Whereas twitter is more of a short-term source of information. People generally post what they are doing in that particular second on Twitter. 

        When discussing which network is "better" for media and journalism, I think Twitter is the better fit. More and more reporters and journalists are using twitter as their gateway between themselves and their audience. Twitter is an easy way to get news to people and fast. 

         When dealing with media however, it is hard to maintain integrity. Therefore I don't think there is a media that really helps maintain the integrity of journalism and this is because  social media has transformed into a place where people can be whoever they want to be and say what they want to say, even if it's not true. So personally I think that is one of the main obstacles that reporters and journalists are going to face when using social media for their work. They are must really stress to their readers that their information is honest and accurate.    

Follow me on twitter here: https://twitter.com/daysarahm