I am a person who has signed up for social media in the form of having my own Twitter and Facebook accounts. I thought the initial concept of Facebook, keeping up-to-date with friends and family through pictures and wall updates, was a great idea. But now this group of people has extended to work colleagues, former classmates and some “acquaintances” if you are into the “numbers” game. Yes, I have seen personal contacts who have 2,000 friends, and this is amazing, considering that there are 365 days in a year. So when would you get to keep in touch with all these people?

photo by Kerde Severin

There are some benefits to having an online presence. For example, it can be helpful when plugging a concept and advertising a business. So it is not all bad since social media is a form of communicating to an audience, making your business seem “human”, not just a brand.

I happened to log onto my Facebook account recently and read a wall update, where one of my former schoolmates announced, through the relationship status, that she had gone from being “engaged” to “single”. This was later changed back to being “engaged”; by this time, people were already commenting and questioning what had happened. So here comes the question: how much is too much information? Is it right to be documenting very personal information about your life?

I am also a fan of Twitter and like how you can write a short tweet on a topic that interests you, even one relating to how you are feeling at the time: “I am so annoyed with my accountant”.

Twitter is a place where you can find out information, and I have tested this theory. For example, I once tweeted about needing a new web designer, and within a few hours, I had companies approaching me directly. So it can be a good resource for finding new business prospects. It can also act as a motivator and some account holders like posting positive thoughts of the day. One is @TheNoteboook, they specialise in relationships, and some of their tweets have brought a smile to my face, and they currently have over 774,000 followers.

Twitter has also made celebrities accessible to the general public, and they, too, can get carried away and reveal their innermost thoughts. For example, Duncan Bannatyne, the successful entrepreneur of Dragon Den’s fame, was reported to have told 352,000 followers about how he felt “suicidal”. This demonstrated to the public how “human” he is. The question is, have people lost sense of the distinction between reality and the cyber-world?