Part I: My name is Jaymi Zimmerman and I was born on November 12th, 1998 and I am a female. From as long as I can remember I created my first social media account while sitting in an ice skating rink in 2011. I remember asking my mom but not my dad if it was okay, and she said it was fine as long as I only became “friends” with people I knew. I was on an ice skating team at the time so the real reason for making it was because we had a facebook group where we would post upcoming practices, thoughts, and just have a place to speak all at once with one another.
The second social networking site I made for myself was twitter. I made twitter around 2012 and I used it as a way to keep in touch with my favorite pop stars such as Justin Bieber and One Direction. I used to tweet at them at least 100 times a day in hopes that they would notice me, however, they never did. My parents at this point were fine with me making social media accounts because everyone was and I was 13 years old.
Next in my social networking world came instagram. I made my instagram in 2013 and I remember exactly what my first post was. I was out to dinner with my family and made a picture of the bread that the restaurant served us. I am not sure why I thought this was a good post, but it goes to show the evolution that has occurred throughout the years with instagram. I would never post a picture of a loaf of bread now because that is not the “trendy” thing to do. If the bread was really pretty or something different than a normal loaf of bread then I would debate “instastorying” it now.
I am struggling to pinpoint the year I made my snapchat because my parents were definitely not as lenient about me having an account. Because the idea of snapchat was sending pictures intimately to another person. If I had to pick I would say around 2014/2015.
The most current SNS account that I have made in 2018 was LinkedIN. This is because I am beginning to entire the working world and it is a great place to make connections and stay up to date with my peers or opportunities around me.
I currently maintain and frequently use Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat. My favorite SNS out of these would be Instagram because it is where I post my best pictures and where I follow people that I actually know. I also love memes and it is my favorite place to view and find the best ones.
Part II: My chosen social networking site would be Instagram. Instagram is a place where users can make their accounts public or private and share/exchange images with their followers. On instagram everyone has a news feed where the pictures of the people you follow appear, and have a profile where the pictures you post appear. On instagram people are able to like and comment on your photos. Instagram also has the option to make “stories” which are photos that are up for 24 hours and can be decorated using fonts, gifts, etc.
In my opinion Instagram extended a lot from the SNS that came before it. Instagram is owned by Facebook so therefore there are a lot of similarities between the two of them. The biggest extension that instagram took from Facebook was this idea of instantly sharing pictures with your social circle. However, what Instagram did was make these posts of pictures more intimate and people can really only post up to 10 pictures at a time. Therefore, they enhanced the pictures that people are choosing to post, making them pick the best ones.
Instagram almost made Facebook obsolete when it first was released because it was faster and a better way to see what others were posting. They took away the “status” that people can make on Facebook and just replaced everything with pictures. By doing so, Instagram took the upper hand.
In McLuhan’s Treated of Media Effects he discusses the idea of retrieval. This idea is focused on the fact that some media recovers what was lost in a previous one and make it better. I feel that with Instagram they did this by taking what was lost with Facebook and even twitter by taking away the noise of the words. They just focused on pictures. As I just said before, this idea of having a news feed that only scrolls through pictures of people (who can also add a small or large caption to their photo) makes it more simpler and to the point than other SNS.
Lastly, Instagram is always changing or as McLuhan would call it “reversing.” Instagram marketers and their team are so smart and so aware of what their audience wants that they are always making changes. When they feel that something is becoming outdated they instantly create an app update. Whether they are changing the format of the page, the algorithm that goes into viewing pictures, they are always testing their limits and abilities.
Overall Instagram is the best, smartest, most in line application with our generation and I do not see it disappearing anytime soon!
Jaymi Zimmerman Abroad 