LamaHQ's Blog

What does Social Media mean to you?

January 17, 2011 at 3:54 pm (LAU Social, Social Media, University) (dana qaddah, facebook, lau social, saad kanaan, social media, twitter, yasmine dabbous)

The aim of this project was to pick 3 different people from different age groups, and find out whether they use social media and how they use social media. (Video at the bottom!!)

The Subjects

The first person I spoke to was 15 year-old Dana Qaddah. She is a student in IC, and she explained that she was active on both Facebook and Twitter. She mentioned that she used Facebook to socialize and keep in touch with friends. It was interesting to see that she also used Twitter for the same reasons, only with shorter updates. She referred to it as a “mini-Facebook”.

The second person I used was 21 year-old Saad Kanaan. He is a Business Marketing student at LAU. He mentioned that he uses Facebook and Twitter, and Myspace for a while, but didn’t end up liking it. He mainly uses Facebook to keep in touch with all of his friends, specifically the ones that are in different countries. He uses Twitter to follow his favorite artists and stay updated with all their news. He rarely contributes on Twitter, he mostly just gets information off of it. He does think that in the near future he will have to be more active than he already is, as he’s noticed that many companies use social media for a wider reach of audience.

The third person I used was Dr. Yasmine Dabbous. She is an assistant professor at LAU and the journalism chairperson. She mentions that she has a Facebook account, but rarely uses it due to lack of time. She isn’t active on Twitter though. One reason she mentioned was also because she didn’t have time, but she also said that she wasn’t interested in the speed that the news was getting to her. She was more interested in reading long, detailed articles rather than short updates.

Analysis

Dana Qaddah

I think that, for her age, Dana is on the right track with her usage of social media. She may be unaware, or at this time uninterested, that you can get a lot of information on platforms such as Twitter, and so mainly focuses on socializing with her friends. In my opinion, this is not a bad thing. For her to be active on social media already is a good start. I think that the longer she uses it and the older she gets, she will discover that she can do a lot more with social media and will be able to use it to her advantage.

Saad Kanaan

Being a Marketing student, I think Saad should be a lot more involved in social media, specifically platforms like Twitter where it is easy to promote himself and just put what he can do out there. The fact that he separated Facebook and Twitter for two different usages shows that he knows how to make every platform work for him. He socializes on Facebook and is updated with news on Twitter. He is also aware that he will eventually have to be more active on social media due to his career, which is a good sign. Although I think he should start being more active right now, the fact that he is aware that there will come a time where he will have to use social media more means that he is on the right track.

Dr. Yasmine Dabbous

Dr. Dabbous mentioned that the reason she isn’t active on Twitter is because she prefers long and detailed articles to quick and summarized updates. I think that she is judging the platform based on the generalities she hears from other people. She doesn’t seem to completely reject the idea of social media since she does have a Facebook account. I feel that if she were to explore Twitter and what can be done through it on her own, she may see that there is a lot of meaningful content on there. There might be a 140 character limit but she will find that most people will provide links to the “long and detailed articles” that she is talking about. She spoke a lot about not having time to be active online, which is, in my opinion, probably the main reason she’s not interested in Twitter. I think that if she had the time to just sit and look around on Twitter, she might reconsider and end up using it for a variety of things.

Video