Blog Post #3

After reading Graham Meikle's article "What is Social Media?" in which he analyzes the convergence of public media and personal communication, I thought again about large of a role that social media, particularly Facebook, plays in our everyday lives but also how we have seemingly no influence over what aspects of our lives are exploited by Facebook. As Meikle highlights, Facebook more so than any other social media has "...been the firm that has best been able to capitalize on the affordances of social media..." (Meikle 20) by doing many thing effectively but mainly by continuing to draw in new markets. Even though most would argue that Facebook should no longer be considered the top social media platform as it trails in popularity to Twitter and Instagram, is it still controlling our behaviour more than we realize? When he mentioned how Flickr's claim to fame of being the world's largest photo sharing site was quickly crushed by Facebook when photos weren't even it's primary feature, this of course made me think of today's popular social media platforms. Facebook photos remain a primary feature despite the depth and popularity of Instagram, and important information still gets shared there despite the popularity of Twitter. So even while Facebook might not currently be "...relentless in adding new affordances for its users to commit more of their lives to its servers" (Meikle 20), I would agree that it remains "...the leading example of the sharing industry." (Meikle 20).

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