“Social" shopping

Shopping through social media has taken the world by storm, it's kind of a combination between social media and e-commerce and ever since retailers started utilizing social media sites to promote for their products and services it has been like a global movement towards buying most things online through sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram … etc.

There are many benefits that come from using social media sites to buy online:

1. Finding the products you need is much easier when you look it up in the Internet rather than walking from a store to another.

2. You can compare prices between different dealers and buy products that match your budget.

3. You can compare between products themselves and check the different features on them from different dealers.

4. Check for product reviews and recommendations from people around the world who have tried the products before.

5. While searching for the things you want to buy you might discover new products that you might like.

The meaning of social shopping has evolved massively from a brand to have a Facebook page or a twitter account to much more than that. Now people can go to their favorite brands Facebook pages and order things online easier than ever.

Pinterest is becoming even more popular than Facebook when it comes to the best social shopping sites. It's mainly known as a social-bookmarking site that allows you to create boards in your account nicely and neatly and then "repin" in the picture that you like on the timeline in whatever board of yours you wish, and it gets saved there . Retailers use these boards to categorize their items in boards and add their product info and ways to contact them.

Another popular way of social shopping is done by Instagram, as recently a new way of shopping through it has been introduced which is a website called Hashbag, and what it does is that it collects all of the photographs of stuff for sale into one place making it easy to find whatever you’re looking for by hashtags that are very well organized. In our society Instagram in particular is becoming a big part of the market a lot of business are only based on their IG accounts which are successful and people are finding it easy to search for whatever they need especially that the sellers offer the widest range of products that can ever be offered in one place.

Social shopping is a win win business for both consumers and sellers, everyone benefits as they are easy to communicate through and save time, energy, and even money sometimes..who knows it might soon replace traditional shopping and take over!

 

Can YouTube be addictive?

YouTube is the biggest, most famous video-sharing website in the world. It was founded back in 2005  by 3 former PayPal employees and later owned by Google in 2006. YouTube has created a platform for a lot of people to share their talents, thoughts, opinions about different topics, market for their businesses and any sort of informative video tutorials… etc. it  offers  a ton of a different types of videos that match everybody’s taste because it’s made by the public to the public therefore each person can easily find videos to can relate to, or answer their questions.

And here are some statistics from YouTube’s official site on the viewership:

·         More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month

·         Over 6 billion hours of video are watched each month on YouTube—that's almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year

·         100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute

·         70% of YouTube traffic comes from outside the US

·         YouTube is localized in 56 countries and across 61 languages

·         According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network

·         Millions of subscriptions happen each day, and the number of people subscribing has more than doubled since last year

Logging in as a viewer you will have so many choices of what to watch on YouTube. People go on to learn about almost anything they need to know such as cooking a certain recipe, how to use a phone and a lot more, not to mention most news can be found in videos on YouTube whether they are  on sports or politics or even TV. Shows!

Usually if a person goes on YouTube to find a video about how to install a computer program say, he/she will be attracted to watch more videos that appear on the side of the page and seem very interesting, and that’s simply how everyone gets so caught in and can’t stop watching videos!  No wonder that some people can freeze for long hours in front of their screens watching YouTube videos one after the other addictively, it’s one of the most time consuming things ever.

I myself, think that am kind of addicted to YouTube to a certain level. I love watching a lot of  tutorials and short videos of different entertainment TV Shows, and of course if I see anything that interests me it’s just a click away so I’d  just watch it . I admit YouTube can distract me a lot from doing my homework it’s just available and easy to reach all of the time (especially that it's now available as an app) and has many and many topics that am eager to learn about so it's easier to watch them in a video than read!

So who needs television when you have YouTube?

It’s like a television on your demand, plus more useful!

Social media: connecting people or spreading rumors..

Despite of all the advantages we have from the social media evolution and how it made our lives a whole lot easier than it was 10 years ago, we can't deny that there are a number of disadvantages that have affected our lives negatively in the Omani society, one of which is: spreading rumors.

It seems as if almost people have lost interest in what these social media sites or apps were made for- which is communicating- and are more interested in using it in different ways like spreading rumors through Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, WeChat and much more other. Not a day goes by that you don't receive at least 2 or 3 broadcasts about various news that are completely bizarre and make you question some people’s mentalities . Notice how rumors increase around days that we have something going on across the country, like weather changes, holidays, car accidents, people’s deaths… etc.  

When such rumors are spreading it leaves people confused and mystified they don’t know who to trust and what to believe or not. A lot of people live at a high level of  suspiciousness and become more and more skeptical about these types of news which shouldn't happen because such news should be taken seriously and trusted and no one should allow themselves to twist them and scare others! And what makes it worse is when mostly everyone keeps on copying whatever they read and sending it to their contacts without even taking a minute to check if it was false news!

Not to mention that some rumors can validate people’s privacy when false information is sent about them including real names, pictures, and voice messages. And it keeps on getting passed on to others and lame jokes are made about them and are also spread to recap the rumors!  People would do such things out of boredom, or to get revenge, or even to get attention but what they don’t realize is how much harm they are causing, for the fact that these days rumors spread faster than anyone can imagine and it’s almost impossible to take it back!

I really hope this “habit” would eventually come to an end, any types of rumors whether they are personally directed or not will cause harm and nothing good will come out of it. People should be more aware of the beneficial or at least harmless ways of using these social media sites, if not? Then I think it’s better that all this energy is poured elsewhere and to benefit themselves or the future of the country.

Facebook is out of fashion for teens!

Facebook has noticed a significant drop among teenage users recently, and that’s bad news for Facebook as the success of social media sites depends a lot on this younger demographic of users, especially that they are a strong force in the marketplace, they can either make you or break you -as a business-.Getting their attention and time to focus on what you have to offer them is hard –a part which Facebook nailed- but what is harder is trying to keep them interested in it for the longest time possible, a lifetime if you’re lucky. Such sites have to keep itself updated to the trends going on in the world constantly, which Facebook seems to be losing a little focus on that might’ve led to the latest decrease among teen users.

Facebook stated:

“We believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook. For example, we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram. In the event that our users increasingly engage with other products and services, we may experience a decline in user engagement and our business could be harmed.”

So why do teens delete their Facebook accounts?

Reading a lot of articles and researches I've found out that teens would leave Facebook for all sorts of reasons, some did not even make sense to me! Which meant that they are setting the bar very high for Facebook to try and please everyone of them back to that virtual world. And here are several reasons that I've found interesting:

-A lot of kids claim that bullies find Facebook a very convenient way of bulling them online because they would post mean things to them and they would embarrass each other and as you know all of their Facebook friends get to see the posts which basically meant the whole school . Facebook feels as if it’s an after school gathering and everyone is there to chill or show off how cool they are but can sometimes be on others expenses.

-Facebook has been defiantly a place where you would want a good company in to join in the first place, and if your friends start dropping out one by one, then there will be just you......and all of those strangers!

 It will feel empty and become boring by time. Also teens might feel a little social pressure to add friends who they don’t like for a reason or another which makes them feel uncomfortable to be themselves on their Facebook pages.

  

-Compared to other apps Facebook’s app takes the longest time to post an update in, which isn't very appealing to a lot of users, now that their competitors are offering faster and more convenient substitutes for teens to share whatever they want to share with their friends. Not to mention that navigating through Facebook updates takes a long time too and it could get boring and make them lose interest.

-Family members joining Facebook  defiantly drove teenagers away because they want to avoid their parents, grandparents, and the rest of the family!!

Teens feel like they can’t act freely and post whatever they want, they also don’t like how “to them” their parents can be embarrassing sometimes in front of their friends like posting baby pictures of them or commenting on their status and being able to find out their plans . so they quit Facebook for another social media site that gives them a little more privacy from their family but not from the rest of the world!

-Facebook is said to have a strong effect on users' lives and emotions, as to some it makes them feel sad and bad about themselves. If it’s for one reason then not getting  a "Like" and/or comment on a picture they've  just posted can make them feel less valuable than their other peers who get showered with likes! Teens also tend to measure their own lives to their friends’ or the other teens around their age, and logically speaking not a lot of people have the same lives! But trying to get teenagers to understand that can be a bit hard as Facebook users unconsciously create an image of what a perfect life should be like and young people get deceived easily and they feel bad about not living like the other kids so as a result it drives them away from using Facebook.

Where do they go instead?

Teens nowadays certainly spend most of their the time browsing in apps using their cell phones. Apps like  WeChat, Vine, snapchat, twitter and (Facebook’s own) Instagram, are getting the highest ratings of the most downloaded and used apps. And each one of them has an advantage over Facebook somehow that teens are getting fascinated with.

Whether it’s because of those several reasons mentioned above teenagers delete their Facebook accounts or not It’s no question that Facebook is like an ending fashion trend that shined for a while and lost its sparkle. As far as am concerned I think it’s not too late for Facebook to have a strong comeback and once again be on the top of the game.(even though am not a big fan of it)

Can't put up, with WhatsApp..

WhatsApp is one of the most popular IM client of current generation. According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp "has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines." As of August 6, 2013, WhatsApp has over 300 million active users, and 325 million photos shared each day.

People have shown a great deal of interest in this app and some -if I may say- are very addicted to it, that is certainly due to all of the advantages of the app:

- users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages other than just text messaging.

-WhatsApp is available for most operating systems.

-it’s a multilingual app which makes it a whole lot easier to use for everyone.

-No need to manually add any contact.

-Saves money on SMS because it is accessible via 3G or Wi-Fi, thus sends messages over the Internet which lowers the cost of sending texts.

-Easy to create groups and chat.

-One - button Voice Messaging also added recently.

-No Ads ever

Even though this app is mostly created to make our lives easier if not lazier! There are those type of people who misuse it in different ways and may annoy others with it!

 I personally don’t like this app I find some people can be highly irritating while using it with me, because everyone has a different opinion on how it should be used correctly and we all don’t seem to be on the same page for whatever reason that is. In any way people can annoy you through this app is a disadvantage for it..so I suppose there are quite a number of disadvantages to be stated:

 1. The biggest issues about being able to WhatsApp someone is the need to share your phone number, and a lot of people don’t like giving away their phone numbers to anyone so it drives them away from using WhatsApp to communicate with others in this case.

2.people can find out when were you last seen using the app, and they can see whether you are online or not at the moment. And am pretty sure we all get the "I CAN SEE YOU ARE ONLINE!!" texts and the " WHY ARENT YOU ANSWERING ME??" from time to time and that can be completely  irritating as it allows such people to know a piece of information many consider it personal, so you feel like you have lost your sense of privacy and you can't use the app as freely as you wish. I think WhatsApp should disable the last seen timestamp and only use online and offline timestamps or put a sign-out option.

 3. you can't choose who to add and who not to add on your list when you download this app, because it just automatically adds all of your existing contacts in the address book without authorization! You may want to have someone's phone number saved in your phone for example work colleagues,  but not have them listed as contacts on your WhatsApp chats.

 "This lack of choice contravenes privacy law," said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority, in a statement. "Both users and non-users should have control over their personal data and users must be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with WhatsApp."

4. There are always those groups of people at any gatherings or picnics or whatever place that requires social interaction with others, that are long sitting away from everyone with their cell phones, extremely busy replying to all the messages they've received, chatting, and sharing all the time. They get very addicted to WhatsApp that it isolates them from the real world and they become less interested in the it and more in their WhatsApp contacts! Another major concern about this particular issue is that some might get so emotionally attached to this app! As their mood changes depending on the replies they get from their contacts because it creates a great impact on their minds. They get happy or sad or angry or annoyed. and based on that feeling they would act with people in real life.

5.  Whatsapp group's main problem is that no one can ask for your permission to add you into one of their groups and that can be annoying. One minute you are sitting there using your phone peacefully, and the next you got joined in a group discussing football matches or nail polishes! and the texts won't stop flowing into your phone of people you don’t have their numbers or some you not even know! Or want to know!!

Not to mention all the misunderstandings that happen which cause a lot of conflicts, that are very unnecessary. WhatsApp group fights or arguments are probably the most ridiculous kind of arguments I've ever seen, and it’s the main reason why many people decide not to join groups including myself. Another reason is because they simply get annoyed of how much personal information about themselves, some people are okay to give away -specially in groups- to other people who they barley know personally, so you feel like you are put in wrong place discussing things you don't want to know.

6. Last but not least, the worst thing this app is being used for is spreading rumors about all sorts of things, and wrong or unapproved religious information that can be very sensitive to us, and sometimes personal leaked voice messages or images of people that are private get spread insanely! Also, pictures of accidents and dead people that should remain private in respect for them.

If it's for one thing then WhatsApp has definitely created a -no privacy- lifestyle which some are in some way enjoying and others are getting fed up of. Count me on the fed up-s crowd!

I really hope people would use it in a better way which benefits them or just stop using it completely . As for me, the block button will always and forever get me through a bad day..or contact. And that's how I put up, with Whatsapp.