Advantages+and+Disadvantages+of+Mobile+Social+Media

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Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Social Media

Mobile Social media has quickly evolved into a worldwide networking system. Some people use it to share thoughts while others use it to meet new people. Whatever we might individually use it for; in the end it links everyone together.

Mobile social media could be viewed as positive or negative advantage. On one hand, it instantly connects you with the rest of the world, from your friends to your family members. You could share photos, videos, thoughts, or links. On the other hand it could also pose as a big distraction. It might take you attention from school, work, or maybe driving. In the end, mobile social media is a tool that we learn to use in a timely manor.

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There are many advantages of mobile social media. It gives people a way to connect when they can’t be together by letting people share experiences on the go. With everyone’s busy schedules it is hard for people to find time to meet and catch up on what’s been going on in their lives. Mobile social media allows people to see what all their friends are doing from whatever device they are carrying. With apps like Foursquare and Yelp friends can share their experiences and opinions about businesses they have visited. Apps like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ allow people to talk to each other, share pictures, and join groups based on common interests as well as other things. Without mobile social media, this type of remote connection between people would not be possible.

There are also disadvantages to using mobile social media. As previously mentioned, it poses a very large distraction. A lot of people pay too much attention to using a mobile social app, such as Facebook, when they are in the middle of an important task (e.g. driving, working). Since they are distracted, they cannot fully focus on the important task, which potentially causes accidents to occur. In an example of workplace or classroom distraction, it causes people to not obtain the important information given during a meeting or lecture, which causes their work to suffer. Also, many people prefer to stay connected to their social media apps, rather than signing in/out all the time. When using multiple apps in this way, it causes the battery of your mobile device to rapidly drain, which is a huge inconvenience when you need to make an important call and your phone is dead because you did not want to sign out of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

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The amount of people using mobile social media makes it imperative for a social network to have a mobile presence. A person designing apps for the IT industry has to optimize their app to make it available for computers and mobile devices because the website for a computer may not work on a mobile browser. On top of that they have to make the app available on different types of mobile devices. For example, they have to adapt to different screen resolutions. Touch screens are also a popular form of input; therefore, IT companies have to adapt their websites from using a mouse to using touch screen.

Due to the fact that there are so many different types of social media out there for people to manage, a lot of social media management applications are becoming available. A lot of mobile devices offer a sort of dashboard that allows all the updates from chosen apps to be shown in a single list. Downloadable apps also include HootSuite, Tweetdeck, and much more. A lot of people find themselves very confused about which media to use and get overwhelmed. The important part is to understand why you are using a certain social media and if it’s the best to use for what you want to communicate.

__**Related Links**__

1. [|__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media#Mobile_social_media__]

2. [|__http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_overload__]

3. [|__http://www.pcworld.com/article/167177/mobile_social_networks.html__]

4. [|__http://socialmediatoday.com/syed-noman-ali/1613271/benefits-and-disadvantages-developing-cross-platform-mobile-apps__]

5. [|__http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~kena/classes/7818/f08/lectures/zhu_moible_social_networks.pdf__]

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