Ads on Instagram

To think we have all escaped to one of the only social media tools without advertisements, well unfortunately this is wrong. Ever since Instagram has been bought out and brought into Facebook it's no wonder everyone has been anticipating when ads are going to be included in instagram's photo stream.

Within the next few months Intsagram has let out we will begin to see advertisements from a "limited number of advertising firms" on odd occasions. Personally, I am not impressed. As a daily user of instagram a would prefer not have to sift through a group of advertisements just to look at some of my friends photos. They claim the videos and photos will be high quality and interesting. If I really wanted something that interesting to look at I would go find it myself. Now an app that I do enjoy to use as a platform to connect with friends through photos may not be as enjoyable anymore. Although I do understand why they have chosen to do this I am not happy. Being a user of Facebook and twitter already those two sites alone have enough advertisements that already get in the way of me connecting with friends, family and other aspects of my life.So in reality is this bold move going to increase revenue or send instagram to the dumps? I guess in the next few months only time will tell.

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Is Social Media Making You Lonely?

Crazy thought right? Initially I thought how could social media possibly make you lonely. With constant connection with current friends, old friends, photo sharing and life updates how does this make sense? After watching this very interesting video from Elite Daily I couldn't believe how much my perspective has changed and now the way I look at all forms of social media is completely different.

The video starts by stating not all people but most may only know about 150 on an intimate level. Now really think about that, if you only have 150 close relationships (on average) who are all these other people that you are Facebook "Friends" with. Even though we are only intimate with a few select people our perception of intimacy is still altered. As stated in the video our base of intimacy is occasionally sharing photos and having online chats with these individuals, and yet it still doesn't stop there.  Even though we are partially able to have intimate connections with these people, are we really showing people what we want them to see or what we think they should see? Social media is an easy tool to edit and delete things about yourself that you don't want visible to those around you. We are all sadly guilty and fall under this form of self promotion.

There are three main things that might be the main reason why social media is being used:
1.) In most cases we get to decide what kind of light and attention is on us
2.) No matter what we will always be heard through statuses, updates and blog posts
3.) We will never feel alone

So what if suddenly weren't able to connect with the individuals around us through social media? Will this change what people think of us, how they will interact with us or even at all for that matter? It's kind of a crazy thing to think of where we would be without social media. Without these connections online will we be able to connect at all?