Powerful lah Social Media!

Social media is a powerful tool. This phrase has already become a cliche, Social medias like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram has changed how we view friendships, how we interact with people and how we even behave. They owe their successes to the user-generated content that they host and cleverly streamline the vast content for social media users, showing you what you want to see. Facebook was the first to burst forth with international success with it's "like" function which made people feel that they were being recognised. I myself am an addict of social media! i spend a pretty substantial amount of time on facebook, scrolling through the news feed and stupidly refreshing the news feed every few minutes, thinking that something new will pop up. Facebook was clever enough to track which users you tend to "like" their photos or facebook groups that you frequent, arranging these items right at the top of your news feed! Hence, the moment i wake up and click on the facebook app, something of interest tends to pop up! and instead of washing up, i will find myself scrolling through facebook instead of closing the app. I guess this is the power of social media, allowing its users to stay glued to it! Also, almost everyone has facebook or twitter! this allows companies to advertise and reach the masses very easily. One thing i didnt know in the past is that you can actually track the statistics for your advertisement, which is a really powerful tool that can grant you great insights as to who in the world are more inclined towards your product! I never knew that facebook actually offered such a feature to tabulate the viewership of an advert. Also, facebook used to have advertisements at the side, hence it still allows the users to not be annoyed by the constant pop-up ads that other websites have. However, now they also do offer paid posts, whereby a user can post something and they will be charged according to how many people click on the link.

one thing that really caught on was the use of #hashtags. It used to be viral, with everyone hashtagging just about anything. I even saw friends posting one entire sentence with hashtags! Something like this: #you #should #totally #try #this. which to some extent was painfully annoying... but what hashtags do is that they categorize all of the posts that have the hashtag so that when you click the hashtag, it will simply bring up all the posts (most of the time) related to it! i really love this feature as sometimes when i post about my hobbies, i can also hashtag it so other users can see what i have done and all too! moreover, it also allows me to quickly view what others have done too :) 

Nowadays, the in thing of social media are the posting of posts from other websites like Buzzfeed and EliteDaily! These are really popular sites with the teenagers and young adults like me. :) They have posts that allows people to easily identify with themselves, posts like "The Pain of Loving Someone You Should Let Go of, for the Both of You". Below is an example of how my good friend tagged me in a post! :)

There are other interesting posts like "22 Things Only People Who Went to Harvard will Understand" or mouth-watering "How to Make The Easiest, Most Delicious Chocolate Lava Cakes" and this is just for Buzzfeed, let alone other websites that post similar information. Most of these posts tend to have a number in front and then words behind! like "5 Things You Should Never do on Valentines!" Since today is Valentines and i am spending it by blogging away. Such interesting websites do have users who frequent them, but what social media does is that they help to "advertise" for these websites as the users share the posts that they find interesting. This definitely helps to rake in more viewerships! Facebook sure is an amazing and powerful tool for us, that when we are on the go, many of us are always glued to our phones, scrolling through Facebook. Or even when we are with friends, 'liking' all those Instagram photos that our friends post! Moreover now, we can easily share posts across different social media platforms, hence all of these social medias help to complement one another and rake in greater profits! On the other hand, with many companies paying for their advertisements, they have allowed us to benefit as free users. :) and who doesn't like free things?! 

Not-so-small beginnings

The internet is something that we take for granted today, something that many of us even myself have addictions for it! We always expect lightning fast speeds, scoff when the video pauses as it buffers and whine continuously like mammoths when there isn't 3G connection. This is a familiar scene when my friends and I are in the food court at school where connections reach an all-time low.

Sounds kind of unbelievable, but the internet was first started off by the US Army. It was used to connect the wide range of computers that they had, quite similar to that of an ethernet in a typical office today. It was mainly used for military purposes. However as they progressed, it was soon made available for the average consumer. The internet became usable to you and me as the World Wide Web when an Englishman, Tim Berners Lee created HTML coding and with the working with others from CERN, enabled the World Wide Web to be used as an application on the internet and connect users from across the world. Since then, there has been many evolutions and 'upgrades' to the internet to make surfing more pleasant to our insatiable hunger expectations for more services online.

This gave rise to ISPs, Internet Service Providers like Singtel sprouting all over the world, offering consumers the ability to connect to the rest of the world. From the consumer's standpoint, connecting to the internet has changed leaps and bounds. With the rise of the ISPs also came big steps of modernization such as the laying of the transatlantic cables.


In fact, those cables then were copper cables which has a much smaller bandwidth and so much easier to lose quality as compared to the fibre optics that is now available.

I am a 90s kid and I must say i've pretty much experienced a great deal on how the internet has progressed! Here is my life story of my experience with the internet, from young till now. :)

First there was dial-up. Everyone got panicky whenever the phone rang as once you pick up the phone, your line gets cut off. And i remember using that ADSL 'stingray' Alcatel modem to connect my computer to the internet.

This, my friends can be your best and worst friend. I remember the times it would beep, and BSSSSSHHHHHHHT pretty much like a comic book strip whenever i tried to connect to the internet. and when our home phone rings, i'll shout "DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE" in those days, we had to connect directly to the phone landline RJ11 cable. Back then, i was so into MapleStory and I would always panic whenever someone called as i was in the middle of the game. 

Soon after, we converted from ADSL to a WLAN Linksys router that allowed us to connect multiple computers to the Internet with the help of trusty cat 5 RJ45 cables. WLAN was the days when facebook and youtube birthed forth, sparking a new trend of how people use the internet. 

This also allowed us to connect our mobile devices and laptops to the WiFi network available which was quite an eye-opener as this was the first time our devices went wireless and this also gave us a back-up option to connect to the internet when our cabled connection did not seem to work. Also then, we had a Mio modem to organize our internet connection with our telephone line, allowing us to have a peace of mind when phone calls came in. :)

Having a techie family also means that i get to enjoy the faster internet speeds that are available as my parents always desire the fastest internet speeds available. As such, Mum asked me about switching to fibre optics, with it boasting gigabit connection speeds! Soon after, I had to revamp my house network map to accommodate the new lightning fast internet speeds! After wiring up our house with the new and fragile fibre optics, my whole family was ecstatic! But still lots of work had to be done. 

TIP TIP TIP 

Many people tend to complain why they are still experiencing similar connection speeds to their usual Linksys router that they have at home while being already on fibre optics. Well that is because the router and cables they are using are unable to support the fast speeds that the fibre optics are capable of. I went to Sim Lim Square to buy a ton of cat 6 RJ45 cables along with a new high performance linksys router, an ASUS fibre optic router and a fibre optic modem. This configuration allowed me to rig my house up to 2 floors of lightning fast internet access and strong wifi signals around the house! 

As the internet begins to evolve, people even do have blogs based on flash instead of HTML coding as web browsers are now more high tech thanks to increased bandwidths hence being able to support a wider range of more intensive data-chewing services. From the evolution of copper cables and complaining buffering times, to fibre optics and downloading a full movie under 5 minutes, there is much for us to explore and take advantage of - provided we are willing to learn how to fully utilize the technology that we have.