The Snapchat update that everyone is buzzing about

Hello all!

     So today I am going to be talking snapchat's new update. For those of you that do not have snapchat, it is an application that allows you to send photos and videos to friends that "expire" after watching. I put expire in quotes because as we all know, nothing really goes away. In addition to sending things directly to friends, you can put things on your story that are viewable to the audience you select, and expire after 24 hours. At first this app was targeted for teens and young adults that wanted another way to keep in touch with friends. However, now major entertainment and news networks are sharing things on their own snapchat stories that are viewable to everyone. This mass story viewing lead to stories that everyone around the world could add to. So, during New Years there will be a  New Years snapchat story share with everyone in the world. It is really quite interesting to watch.
     Well, snapchat has added another feature called the snapmap. This feature taps into your phones location (as long as you tuned it on) and will show all of your friends where you are down to the exact address. The only way to not be seen is to turn off your location, or go into the snapmap and turn on "ghost mode". You can zoom out and see friends all over the world. Now, a lot of you might be thinking, how is this any different than just viewing their story?  Well, an aspect of snapmap that did not already exist in some form is that you can see things people have uploaded to public stories all over the world! You just double click on any area and you will see snaps.
     This feature of snapchat is really a two-sided coin. On one side, you get to explore all of these areas of the world in real-time from your living room couch. On the other side, if you are not careful, you are sharing your location with everyone which can be dangerous for children using the application. Currently, there are a lot of articles going around about this concern like this one posted by BBC. Others are a bit more comical like people finding their significant others cheating like the one talked about in this Daily Dot article. 
    I was skeptical about this update at first, but when I started playing with it,  I became amazed. This is a piece of technology introduced to Web 2.0 that is seriously fascinating. For any of you that have snapchat, I definitely suggest checking it out.

Twitter...woah

Hello all! 

     I have been sick the past few days so, today was the first day I really got to dive in to what the course was about. One of the first things I did was create a twitter. I am one of the hold-outs that was waiting until I had to get one. The sign-up process was pretty simple, but when I started to actually dive-in and play around with it, my face was similar to the picture on the right. I was not aware of how complex twitter is, and how much you can do with it. While still hesitant in how useful it will be for me, I am excited to explore it in-depth over the next 6 weeks.
     The next thing I started looking into was what topics on social media I am going to investigate for my community paper. I am a color guard instructor at Florida High so I am pretty obsessed with marching band and it's culture. Currently, DCI is occurring which is kind of like a travel team for soccer or baseball. It is comprised of students no older than 21, and the minimum age can go as low as 14, depending on which corp you want to join. You can audition for any corp across the country, and regular practices begin around the end of April. Competitions start around now (the first one was just a few days ago) and the final World Championships is in the beginning of August. Participants in DCI spend the entire season with their corp, practicing every day and sleeping in random schools and churches across the country.  Everyone has their favorite corp that they root for every year as well as the one that they dislike. So, I wanted to observe two different social media platforms that follow and give updates on DCI as a whole. I am considering watching one corp in particular, and then the DCI group as a whole, but I am still going back and forth on that one. I will update here when I have made a final decision on the group I will "lurk on" and the group I will interact with. Meanwhile, check out this cool video on "What is Drum Corps International?"