How Social Media has changed the way we travel

So I talked a lot about travel this week so thought I would just end the week with a travel round up.

Social media has changed the way we travel, in more ways than one. You can plan your trip using social media, meeting new people in the process, use it to enhance your tourist/explorer/adventurer experience and on the back-end, when things go awry, you can turn to your new media tools to rescue you from various levels of hell.

But it's also changed the way we travel on a basic level. We now have a larger audience at our fingertips with which some of us may want to share our experiences with, be it through photos or a blog, and be it with closest friends and families or the voyeurs of the cyberverse. Though we cannot pack our best friends in our bags and take them with us, through our images and our words, they are right there with us, no longer after the fact, but in the heat of the moment. The simple touch of a button on a phone, or on a Netbook has made MY experience, OUR experience, and that is something we did not have 5-10 years ago. Tweets and real time status updates (and BBMs) are the new check-in phone calls, without the static and long distance charges. Videos and digital images are the new living albums. And out of the newness are born photographers, videographers and authors of life - those who may not be published or recognised in the mainstream, but whose words and visuals mean a lot to someone out there, for one reason or another, creating an audience unique to them. No need to worry about spelling (unless I am reading it of course cause yes, I am anal about it!) or bad lighting (unless you are anal about it).

Social media affords us a window to our lives and the lives of others. The only thing you really have to do is decide if you want that window and how wide you're willing to open it.



Photo credits: Me

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Guest Post: Social Media, "the ultimate stormer"

As promised, there is a guest post today, in response to my post on social media and how it impedes, or rather, is allowed to impede upon life experiences and moments that a couple years ago, we revelled in, and enjoyed in its essence. This is a topic that resonates with a lot of people and I am glad to have another perspective. Thanks to GWTO for his take on how the social media phenomenon is taking over our lives. (You can also follow him out on Twitter: @gwto)



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I read the "Social Media - The other ball and  chain" post on this blog, and I found myself nodding along with it, simply because it put into words exactly what I've been thinking for a long time. Facebook has indeed become "the ultimate stormer, wedding crasher and boldfaced guest."

But it got me thinking about my ultimate pet peeve: people who take photos at sporting events and concerts. For full disclosure, I will point out that I've been guilty of this up until a year ago. And I'm not against the concept of people taking photos at these things per se. It's the people who do it incessantly. The people who spend long periods of time snapping, looking down at the viewfinder, and snapping again, thus beginning a long cycle of snapping, then looking down, snapping, then looking down, snapping then looking down before you feel the urge to rip the camera from their fingers and scream at them, "Look at the stage/field/court!" And don't even get me started on the people who take video of the event and upload ridiculously poor quality ten second clips to Youtube.

But I digress.

The truth is that it really doesn't bother me during the event itself. But it's the professional photos afterwards that suffer. Let's take a look at Steven Gerrard's goal celebration during Liverpool's 4-1 mauling of Manchester United last season at Old Trafford. Gerrard scored and celebrated in front of Manchester United's support, so you would expect to see angry faces in the crowd behind him as he kissed the camera.



But look at the woman on the left and the man in between Gerrard and the camera. Did that goal stab them through the heart? No. They don't care. They just wanted the best shot possible so they could go home, upload it, and sit patiently waiting for people to "like" it.

So I've vented and I've plugged Liverpool Football Club. You might wonder what my point is, and what this has to do with Social Media. And the answer? Not much. But if you take anything away from this post, let it be this: Social Media is great, wonderful, and fantastic. But don't let it interfere with the special experiences in real life. If you're at a wonderful event, you really don't need to record every moment of it. I promise you that they'll stay in your memories. Honestly. They will. Leave the photography to the professionals.

And, (shameless plug alert) while you're at it you should take part in my Project 2010. :-)

(Photo from the Telegraph; www.telegraph.co.uk)

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Friday Peeve: The Black Elephant in the Room

Thanks to Guy #1 and Guy #2, you get this post. It's not a discourse, just an observation but stay tuned when we will have an awesome guest post from one of these gentlemen (you will just have to wait to see which one) about this phenomenon.

So last night I had the privilege at being at a very swanky function (which I almost never made it to but that story is from my lips to God's ears). Decor was gorgeous. Food, fantastic. The general ambience was amazing. Beautiful people, beautiful setting. Great performances. Great friends. Great moments. Except...

For the guy in front of me with the Blackberry who insisted on snapping everything that moved and those things that did  not move as well. I mean....REALLY???

And Lord help me, I was really close to taking out my own Blackberry and taking a photo of how stupid he looked but it seemed too stupid to even be ironic.

As with most of these types of events, the onus was on mingling and networking, in addition to being sold the creativity of talented people. So I would have expected this dude, like others, to be meeting people, commenting on how amazing the place looked, perhaps exchanging business cards, making some contacts. Nope. His aim in life was to take photos with this phone of his. It was as though noone else in the room existed unless you were the subject of the photo. What was most annoying was when the performance started and by this time, people had started to get loose and were having fun and shaking a little rump. Not my buddy, BlackBerry Avenger. He was snapping away. When his hand and his 6th finger aka the BB blocked my view of the great performance in front of me, that's when it became extremely personal.

I mean...why? I know I touched on this earlier this week - this phenomenon with technology, to the point that we lose sight of the things happening around us - but this guy was the poster child. He even took photos of the REAL photographers doing REAL photography. I am sure today his friends have in their Facebook feeds "Jack's night out - 100 new photos".

Pyscho!

I would hate to be a boss who sends my people to an event to network and instead of doing that they get lost in their BBs and miss the big picture. And there it is - missing the bigger picture. Relationships are under threat if these people attached to their smartphones are set to take over the world. Be it personal relationships - because the Avenger came with a significant other, who was forced to dance alone - or professional relationships. So while the technology strengthen social networks, it seems to, in some cases, adversely impact and denigrate relationships.

I also have a problem with the intrusiveness of camera phones. I  once caught a weird, pervy man trying to take a photo of me with his phone. He insisted he was not, that he was sending a text but one does not normally hold a phone like this...

to send a text message, do you?  He needed to read this.

It seems many people do not realise that their actions, besides being acutely annoying, also often can leave them on the periphery of human interaction. And while photography is an art I admire and wish I were more passionate about, it is now being cannibalised by people like BB Avenger. Mobile phone photography is not always, but can become a menace depending on the person yielding the weapon of choice - be it Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia etc. And while you may share a deep initmacy and a strong, unbreakable bond with your device, it should not affect my enjoyment or impact on my comfort level. This is an awesome statement that describes the beast:

"Public places are commonly “colonized” by the private lives of mobile individuals"

I will further revise and say "public places are being terrorised by mobile individuals". And while mobile technology has brought communications to a state of "anywhere, anytime", please, let's not take it that literally. It should NOT be anywhere everytime. I think we all have a personal responsibility when it comes to mobile phones and the accompanying tools. Let's use discretion and let's take a load off and get a grip when it comes to brandishing these devices in the public domain where other people are trying to have fun. Silly us for wanting that.

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