social media – Christa Bercerita

Between Facebook and Path

Yesterday Google revealed their new logo. But no, I am not writing about Google. That is just one cool news I want to share with you, hehehe. Okay, back to topic. This will be a post about Facebook vs Path. As Facebook is self-explainable, Path might be less popular to those of you who are not residing in Indonesia… or simply, to our non-Indonesian friends.

Path is a mobile based social network application (yes, can only be accessed via mobile) which allow a certain limit of friends. 150, to be exact. It allows you to post photos, videos, music you’re listening to, text/thoughts/status, and update your location. So it is like having Facebook, Foursquare, and blog in the same app. As per this article, it has over 5 million users in which 4 million of them are based in Indonesia. Path is very popular between Indonesian youth especially those in bigger cities. It is so popular in my network too, starting around 2 years ago. My friends were downloading Path app and began to post stuffs that only selected people can see. I downloaded it too and started to use it around the same time.

Image from: http://images.techtimes.com/data/images/full/88861/path-talk.jpg?w=600

At first, I became active in Path and started to ditch my Facebook account. With over 1000 friends in Facebook (in which half of them are “friends” who went to the same university, “friends” who I met in a seminar, etc), I found Path was more private and I felt more comfortable using it.

But lately I realized something. I found that Path moments are most likely “gone” after you post it. Well, not gone literally, but its user interface makes it hard to recollect past moments. Unlike Facebook, it has no photo albums, so all the pictures you posted in Path are scattered. You actually can recollect past moments, but it involves a lot of scrolling. If you want to recollect past moments, you have to scroll all the way down to find the moment that you want to see. I found it inconvenient.

Then I decided to go back to Facebook. I now understand why I like to post on social media and why I plan to keep doing so. I want to be able to recollect my past moments (that’s why I think Facebook’s “on this day” feature is a gem!). In Facebook I am able to see my past moments, even way back to 2008 when I was in still in college. This makes Facebook a win for me compared to Path. I mean, it’s even hard for me to recollect moments from my 2013 US Trip in Path (too much scrolling involved)!

What about my privacy, you might ask. Well, that’s where Facebook’s circles come in handy. I have finished re-organizing my Facebook friends and categorised the remaining to several circles (ex. high school friends, close friends, colleagues, family, friends that I have met just once, etc), and have set my privacy settings accordingly. It was indeed a hassle but now that I’ve done it,I am able to post whatever I want on Facebook without having to worry that a stranger will see my, let’s say, my holiday pictures. When I’m bored or simply feeling nostalgic, I can browse through my profile and see my tagged pictures, old albums, or past memories. Plus, I can simply connect with my friends from my grad school days in the UK! Yay!

So that’s why I chose to re-ignite my Facebook account and start to use Path less. What about you, which one do you use more often, and why?

Latest Addiction: Periscope

Have you heard of Periscope? this live video streaming app is very much new to the social media world, its first launch was just 4 months ago. It looks like the next big thing though. The startup has been bought by Twitter and got 1 million users during its first 10 days!

Being a social media enthusiast, I immediately downloaded the app when I first found out about it. At first I thought it is similar to Snapchat, but after using it for more than two weeks now, I have to say that I’m beginning to ignore my Snapchat and got addicted to Periscope!

So, how does it work?
Easy – after you downloaded the app on your iOs/Android phone, log in through your Twitter account or just create a new account if you don’t have any.

Then you can start to watch live broadcast (or what is known as “Scope). While watching, you can also write some comments from the chat box and if you like what you’re seeing, simply tap your screen to give a “heart”!

If you’re an iOs user like myself, there should be four tabs in your screen, including your profile page and broadcast tab. However, there is a particular tab that is really interesting for me – the world map tab.

As you can see in the above image, there are bullets with numbers in each country/city. See that “8” around London? That means there were currently 8 live scopes from London and its surrounding cities.

I love this feature the most because I can simply “travel the world” by watching different scopes from different locations! How cool is that! With Periscope I could watch a live broadcast from the streets of Paris or Honolulu. The broadcast does not have to be sophisticated, most times it’s people doing an ordinary walk in a neighborhood. Some times it’s just a random teenage girl talking nonsense, but some times I could get lucky and found scopes like these…

Yep, that is a screenshot of a parade live from Disneyland Paris! a live Disney parade! The user, @EuroMaestro was actually sitting front row in the parade and he recorded the whole parade.

Then there’s also scopes like this, where I got to see the beauty of New York City. If you decided to use the app, I’d really recommend this user – @RonWaxman. He broadcasts New York City views on a daily basis.

Not only city and event views, I mentioned about some random chats. This particular user that I follow also likes to do random chats, but I think he is very knowledgeable and he likes to discuss interesting topics. His name is Moe and he is an Uber driver in New York. Through following his account @Moeinteractive, I got to know what is it like to live in New York. Interesting, right?

What do I need to scope?
Sadly, being active in Periscope requires a strong internet connection and A LOT of data. So far I’m using Bolt 4G to broadcast (yes sometimes I broadcast too hehehe.. trying to show the world what is it like to live in Jakarta :p) and watch live scopes.

Should I download it?
I think you should! Especially if you are highly curios about life in other parts of the world like myself. Well, I know there are some celebrities that like to scope as well, but I haven’t followed them because I am more interested in seeing the world through random people’s eyes 🙂

So, what do you think? will you try it?

My thoughts on 2014 Indonesian Presidential Election

Disclaimer : This post is surely based on my thoughts only and does not reflect my support towards a particular candidate. 🙂

This coming presidential election will be my 3rd election. I remember my first election, I was so excited to finally be able to vote, though I was not sure why I had to vote and who to vote.. voting at that time seemed cool, sort like some coming-of-age moment. I voted, but now I can’t remember who did I give my vote to. My second election was more or less the same. But this time I remember clearly that I did not vote. I was not satisfied with the current president at that time and since he’s running for his second period.. I did not want to vote for him. Nor did I want to vote for his opponent. So I came to the booth on election day, and deliberately gave my vote to all candidates – so my vote would be considered not valid. Not really proud, but that has happened.

This year, we will vote for our president in less than a week. As I’m not so much (if not at all) into politics, I had to admit that I haven’t been really paying attention to either candidates.. but I’ve been exposed to a lot of news about them. The thing is, in every social media I have, I see people posting about either candidate. BUT.. instead of posting the good things about their president of choice, most of them seem to frequently post negatively about the opponent. This makes me confused because I don’t know what to believe anymore. Should I believe that candidate number 1 is behind the 1998 tragedy? or should I believe that candidate number 2 is a “puppet”, steered by old political figure? I really can’t tell which to believe.

So I posted a status in my facebook and ask if any of my friends have made their choice and would willing to share the reason to me, with hope that none of them would expose me to some kind of negative campaign. They did not! I was so happy to see a lot of comments coming in, and some even sent me direct messages with their solid reason to vote for their president of choice. NONE told me any negative news about the opponent. It looks like I’m friends with the right people 🙂

Oh, one other thing that makes me so impressed – despite the mushrooming negative campaign, I also see bits and pieces of passionate posts from my generation! Good to see that so many young people are willing to give their time and effort to show their support towards a candidate.

Just look at this music video from Jokowi’s supporters :

or this video from Prabowo’s supporters :

And then there’s also these people on Twitter who often tweets about their support for their president of choice. Though I see more (in my following list) declared their support towards Jokowi like @mrshananto, @jokoanwar, or @jflowrightthere (and also the creative hashtags which follows their tweets such as #akhirnyapilihjokowi or #salam2jari), I also came across these two young people (both younger than me) who passionately expressed their support towards Prabowo – @RizkiAljupri and @Dirgayuza…. and I salute all of them. It’s good to see diversity and freedom of expression, yes? 🙂

As for me? I still have not decided. I am what they call a swing voter, and I’ll take that. I’ll give myself a time to think carefully this weekend and will surely vote on July 9th. I just wish that whatever’s the result, things will be better for Indonesia. Happy voting, Indonesians! 🙂