Social Media are social software which mediate human communication. Social media includes web and mobile-based technologies which are used to turn communication into interactive dialogue among organizations, communities, and individuals - Wikipedia.
According to Nielsen, global consumers spend more than six hours on social networking sites. "Social Media Revolution" produced by Socialnomics author Erik Qualman contains numerous statistics on social media including the fact that 93% of businesses use it for marketing and that If Facebook were a country it would be the world's third largest in terms of population, larger even than the US, wow!!!
Social media has overtaken pornography as the No. 1 activity on the web, and that gives us joy, at least "something good" has overtaken pervs...lol.
In June 2011, it was reported that iPhone applications hit one billion in nine months, and Facebook added 100 million users in less than nine months.
According to Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein there are six different types of social media:
1. collaborative projects (for example, Wikipedia)
2. blogs and microblogs (for example, Twitter),
3. content communities (for example, YouTube),
4. social networking sites (for example, Facebook),
5. virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft), and
6. virtual social worlds (e.g. Second Life).
The main increase in social media has been Facebook. It was ranked as the number one social networking site. Facebook is a social networking service launched in February 2004, owned and operated by Facebook, Inc. As of June 2012, Facebook has over 955 million active users, more than half of them using Facebook on a mobile device.
These networking sites have been advantageous in so many ways e.g couples have met through Facebook, some started their friendship via these sites, business transactions have been made, we see procedures and videos on YouTube and so on and so on.....but, as good as they seem, we must remember that, there is a whole lot of personality we don't have the slightest hint about behind those lovely profiles we view. As Gordons rightly said, Jesus had 12 disciples but still had a "419" among them. If Jesus Christ, the saviour of the world can have few disciples yet, had a criminal among them, how much more Facebook or any other social media with millions of subscribers.
There has been a lot of terrible news about killings through Facebook. The most current being the 15 year old Dutch teenager who murdered a school girl because of comments she posted on his girlfriend's wall...smh. He was convicted and sentenced to a year in juvenile detention with subsequent three years' detention in a psychiatric institution afterwards. I just wonder why every white boy that murders suddenly had severe behavioural disorder with psychopathic tendencies, as their experts always say....."mtcheew!!!! awon ode". Though some may see this as justice being served, it won't bring back the little girl to her family.
Let's not quickly forget Cynthia Osokogu, a 24 years' old postgraduate student of Nasarawa state university, Nigeria, that was killed by her Facebook friends after having met them in real life at a hotel in Lagos.
The Guardian on 8th March, 2010 brought to our notice, a Facebook murderer, Peter Chapman, a 33 years' old man who posed as a teenager to lure his victim, a 17 years' old Ashleigh Hall. He had claimed to be a handsome teenager and used the profile to meeting him after he befriended her through Facebook. In order to entice her into his car, Chapman sent her a text message saying the boy's father would pick her up. He texted her to say: "My Dad's on his way, babe" and once in the car, he attacked her, kidnapped, raped and murdered her. Her body was found dumped in a farmer's field, her arms bound and tape was put over her face, suffocating her to death. Though he was sentenced to life in prison, imagine the effect of the cause of her death on the family.
Mail online news on 28th July, 2011, brought to our attention, a 16 years' old boy who killed his girlfriend for a bet.he was dared by Facebook friends to murder in exchange for a free breakfast, can you imagine, breakfast, possibly bread with scrambled eggs and bacon. The idiot killed a fellow human being because of food.
I can bring up a whole lot of other unfortunate news that cannot be written here, a couple even killed a family friend for unfriending them, "na wa ooh", is it by force to be a friend?.
Anyway, the main thing is that we have to be very careful how we make ourselves porous with the information to give out, the way we make friends on these sites, how we meet or transact with them and a whole lot of other cautious steps we must take to keep ourselves safe and impenetrable. Be wise!!!
Credit: Wikipedia, The Guardian, Mail online.
Oshine is making me proud as a friend and I wish him all the very best. I'm happy that his recently released single 'Ding Dong' is making waves on the charts. You can follow him on twitter @oshinealasheju.
.jpg)
