Social Media Day

I'm not the kind of woman who frequently go out for clubbing. Being a mother of three sons is already consumed my time. Then, my being involved in citizen journalism websites also took my leisure time to write in front of the computer. The very short stealing time to go out are usually to meet neighbours or to keep me active with the museum matter through Indonesian Heritage Society. Guiding in the museum might be once in a month, and attending tour guide meeting is also once in a month (yet, I skipped it more than attending it. I was more active before I had my twins). So the existence of the cyber world is something valuable for me. Yet, I'm not really sure where to stand in facing the social media.

I found mailing lists as informative medias, but I don't really like them. I prefer blog than mailing list to communicate. Lately I came into facebook and twitter too. Facebook is a nice tool to connect me with old friends and new acquaintances. Twitter seems nice to get the updated news from certain sources. Yet, I'm not really falling in love with twitter.

I gained more information through the cyber media. For example I've got "Aditi Shankardass: A second opinion on learning disorders | Video on TED.com There are some talks and seminars that I would love to join but I couldn't come. It could be because of my lack of free time, or also my limitation on budget, so the online speech is the great source of learning for me.

Well, social media in the internet helped me to go through lots of activities and information without really going out there. I missed the real meetings, but I had to be wise on using my time. On the evening of June 30, I joined others who came to the FreSh meeting to celebrate the social media day. It was fun to meet new friends, to know how those singers are using the social media to gain their new fans and keeping up with their old fans. I've been learning a lot from both the cyber life and the real life. Sometimes blog is not really about the content. Some people aren't really focusing in the content but in the popularity and economic intentions. I've been learning about this too. Yet, I aim to keep my idealism in blogging. It's great that I've found some bloggers who shared their personal stories and gave me another perspective in blogging. I still think that citizen journalism is important, yet personal blogging (also a part of citizen journalism) is also interesting and important. The need of news are varied and we are just presenting our news. There will be readers who need that news and there will also be more people who don't really find it interesting. It is really up to the writer to feel the reward of writing online journal like this. If it satisfies the writer's feeling, or it can arouse the communication that she/he wants...then, it is worth writing. For those who don't really have the time, or the energy, to write the microblog or other social media outlets can be used as their way of cyber communication.

I celebrated the social media day by enjoying the gathering with FreSh. I came back a little bit late that night, and I didn't even write any article about it. I would like to feel just like a blogger, I will write when I feel that I like it. I don't want to have a feeling of being obliged to write something after attending it as I usually had when I came to an event with a feeling of being a citizen reporter. I will still seek the balance of being a citizen reporter and a blogger.