Social Media Use

    Like most of my peers my age, I spent an obtuse amount of time on Facebook.  I use Facebook primarily for keeping in contact with my friends overseas, as well as overall snooping.   One thing I have always found a little discomforting are the ads on the side of Facebook's news feed.  The ads are always somehow reflect what I have been looking at on the internet, or posts I have commented on.  It is no secret that Facebook releases your personal information to outside sources, it is however, amazing how we all seem to be completely compliant with this fact.

   Facebook became a publicly traded company in 2012.  Facebook's creator, Mark Zuckerberg, still owns the majority of shares, (28% valued at 24 billion dollars).  The second largest investor (10% stake valued at 8.5 billion) is a company called "Accel Partners".  Accel partners also invests in a number of other companies, including the online slideshow website "Prezi".  As the investor list goes on, it appears many of the investors are former and current employees of Facebook, all under the age of 40.  For a complete list visit this website:  http://whoownsfacebook.com/ .

   I use Twitter nearly every day to interact with other Trumpet players and teachers around the world.  I find twitter to be an invaluable resource for connecting with like minded people.  Although Twitter does have a learning curve (learning all the hashtags, @ signs etc) once you understand it, it is quite handy.  Aside from using Twitter for professional development, I also rely on it as my main news source.  I follow "News1130am", "TheProvince" and "GlobalTVNews" to stay up to date with current events. It was actually how I learned about the recent earthquakes up north, and the pregnancy of Kate Middleton.

   Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey in March of 2006.  I was shocked to learn that the top investor is actor Ashton Kutcher through a company called A Grade Investments.  I knew Ashton Kutcher was the first person to gain a million followers on Twitter, now I know why he fought so hard to be the first, HE HAD MONEY ON IT! Craziness.  For more information visit the Twitter Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

    Unfortunately many people use Twitter to take extreme liberties with their freedom of speech.  Often tweets are insulting, nonsensical and useless.  I find this website that tracks how many times slurs towards homosexual and transgendered people is used.  It is updated live and is quite disturbing.  You can view the website here: http://www.nohomophobes.com/#!/today/