My First Experience Blogging

Blogging is very popular in the world today. I had never before considered creating a blog myself and I honestly probably would not have ever made a blog if it were not for a class assignment. The assignment was to create an online blog and generate traffic to another web page for my English Composition class.
Originally, I thought that the assignment would be very fun because I would have the chance to express my ideas to the professor and to the whole social world, but my excitement vanished very quickly. The way that the assignment was planned and organized was very confusing to me and I found it difficult to identify the purpose of the project, but that didn’t keep me from at least completing the bare minimum for the project.
Once I completed the requirements, I began to try to make my blog unique and make it reflect my ideas and artistry, but that was pretty difficult and nearly impossible. I attempted to make my blog aesthetically pleasing to the eye but the level of my work was limited by the fact that certain themes and features are only available to members that purchase them. This made it apparent that I could not truly make my blog unique to me. Not only could I not make my blog look the way I wanted it to look, but I was also under the impression that only social media, a topic that is everything but interesting to me, would be discussed on our blogs from conversations in our class meetings. So, eventually, as the course went on, I began to lose my interest in the project.
Before leaving my blog under a stone that wouldn’t be turned until the end of the semester, I did manage to get my blog to look somewhat interesting. I made the background of it a solid dark/ forest green and I also added a small golden image that would barely be seen at the top of the page that would help attract attention to the title of my blog. My header was simple and direct, as it read “English Project,” and it was also written in red text, as was the links that I had placed on the blog. The reason why I made my links and my header red was so that readers would be able to identify them quickly in comparison to the regular text. I made the all other text white on a black background because I find it to be less strenuous on the eyes if one is reading it online, and also because I wanted it to be different from the usual “white on black” text. The last touch that I put on my blog were two sub menus that I placed conveniently under the header that either explained what my blog was about or generated traffic to the class webpage, depending on which one was selected.
Of course my blog was not very popular through out the year since I didn’t work on it or advertise it, but once my professor reminded me that the blog would count for a considerable amount of my grade I began to advertise the page on Facebook like never before. I’m not sure if my blog showed up on the actual analytics page that tracked how much traffic my blog directed to the class website, but I do know that my blog has been viewed seventy times, forty times on the day that I was posting about it on Facebook. I failed to advertise my blog throughout the semester because I ignored it and I do believe that is one reason why it wasn’t as popular as it could have been. Also, I wasn’t surprised my blog wasn’t that popular because my posts weren’t exactly eye catching or interesting. They were only about social media, a very broad topic, and it wasn’t even about a certain type of social media.
If I could change anything about this assignment the major thing that I would change would be the topic that we had to blog about. Blogs are supposed to be written by people about things that they find interesting, and blogging about social media was a major hindrance for me because I could never think about anything to post about social media. If I weren’t restricted to talk about just social media I am sure that I would have been very active on my blog and I am also sure that I would have generated a lot more traffic because I’d be talking about things that interested me and I would have promoted and advertised my blog more.
I’m not sure how to describe my experience with my first blog but if I had to pick one word to describe it with one word all that I could say is different. I’m convinced that the only reason that I dreaded having a blog was because it was a class assignment that I would be receiving a grade from, so instead of it being something I could express myself freely on I felt it was more of a burdensome task that I had to participate in. I am glad that I was introduced to creating a job, but I did not enjoy having one and I will probably never make one again.

Trusting Social Media News

The way that we receive our news today has nearly changed completely from the way that we used to receive it. The news is being delivered more electronically today more than it ever was just twenty years ago, but, even though the way that we receive the news has changed, the overall main goal for the news businesses has not changed. News companies still want to have the most customers out of every other news company looking at their news, and since every company wants to be the best and have the most customers the competition in the news industry has greatly increased. In fact, it has increased so much that now some companies go to extreme extents to catch the eyes of potential customers by either lying or making outrageous stories. Since there are more and more companies over exaggerating about the news that they provide, this brings ups the question of how valuable is the information received from Internet sources. Plainly put, the value of any Internet source has to be based on its reliability.
One website that I use quite often would be Kicks On Fire. Kicks On Fire is a website dedicated to sneaker news and it gives information on the latest technology in shoes and also gives information on soon to be released shoes. The reason why I am evaluating this website is because, obviously, I’m a sneaker fan and also because I never thought about how reliable the site was to me. The only reason why I used the site was because I always found it easy to use, the information given was pretty direct, and the design of the page was pretty cool to me too. Other reasons why I use Kicks On Fire, and not any other shoe site, is because it also gives some information about other things besides shoes, like video games and basketball. Originally I thought that Kicks On Fire was a very reliable site, and after doing an evaluation of the site my original thoughts were changed just a little.
The major thing that affected my slight change of opinion was when I looked at how often the site was updated and the exaggerations of some shoes. For instance, the most recent time that I had checked the website to see it was last updated, it had been about a week and a half since it had been updated. If it were a website that dealt with world news or politics I would have labeled the site as unreliable right there because there is always news in those two categories, but since this site deals mostly with shoes I decided to be lenient with my decision because it is a shoe site and obviously you cant have new news on shoes everyday if new shoes aren’t being made everyday. The way that some shoes were over exaggerate, or “hyped up,” also made me consider this sites reliability, but then I realized that this site is not only a site to give you news, but it is also a site that has an interest in getting you to buy sneakers because they are being paid by some shoe companies, so of course the authors that make shoe reviews will not only give you information on the shoe, they will also try to get you to go out to buy the shoe, meaning that more than likely they’re only giving you the positive features of the shoe and not the negative features.
The major features of the site that still make me believe that this site is fairly reliable are that the authors are always posted on the articles. Also the authors of the site would want to make sure that the information provided is reliable because they have organizations, such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, etc., advertising on their site and no organization would want to advertise on a site that didn’t provide reliable information on their products; this also makes it so that the authors can gain more organization advertisements if they continue to provide reliable information. Finally, the main reason why I find this site to be very reliable and why I first started to use the site is because the reviews of the shoes are always based off of real personal experience. Whenever I read a review about how a shoe performs or looks Kicks On Fire is always honest about how they feel about it. They always tell you the cons and pros, whether a shoe is really tight or really lose, etc. and they also compare and contrast it to other sneakers. Being that the information that being provided can always be compared to something else, I find this website to be really reliable and it always helps me make my decisions on whether I want to buy a shoe or not because I always have something I can refer the shoe to.
Really, determining if an Internet source is reliable or not is completely opinion based and is simply based off of personal preference. Some people want every bit of information to be fact and not opinion and others want all of the information to be up to date every minute, but when it comes down to it, whether a source is reliable to you or isn’t is up to you and I firmly believe that Kicks On Fire is a reliable source because the information that it gives is based off of personal experience, which can never be false.

Social Media

According to the website Search Engine Watch, 65% of the people in the US that use the internet uses a social media site, which is an amazing number because that would mean that nearly 195 million people use social media networks in the US alone. The trend of these social media users suggests that as time passes, more people will use social media. My question is “Is social media networks really a positive influence on our lives? Or is it turning into a major substance to abuse?” There’s really no set way that I could go about researching this question because it’s really a question based on opinion because some would feel that social media is great, whereas others would feel that it’s not a necessity. The only way that I could research this is to survey people that use social media and people that don’t and see how they feel about social media. I could also have personal interviews with some people and ask them why or why not social media is positive for their lives. The reason why I am posing this question is because I would like to know why people spend so much time on social media sites. The main questions that I will be asking during my research are, obviously, “Do you feel that you need social media in your life?” and “How much time do you spend on social media sites?” The reason why I’d ask those questions is to see if they’d even be able to answer my following questions. My following questions would support me with the information that I really want to know. Some of the questions will be “What do you do on these social media sites?” and “Have you ever noticed someone that you know in real life acting differently online?” This will help my research in knowing why so many people spend so much time on social media sites because it will let me know the behavior of people online. I already assume that people use the social media networks in order to portray a life that they want to lead to impress other people, but with the feedback from other people that either portray these lives or have witnessed people portraying different lifestyles online I will know for sure one of the many motives of people spending so much time online. Along with surveying people, another way that I will research will be by using my own personal experiences with social media. I myself am I big social media user, especially the social network twitter, and I tend to over exaggerate online too but the purpose of me doing so is to be comical. I can use my personal experience using twitter to observe people that basically commit identity fraud by lying about their lives, or I could even observe people that steal other people’s identities. I understand that some people make fake accounts to help promote various things or even try to sell stuff, so I may have to exclude those accounts from my research. All of this research will help me find out why people feel the need abuse the Internet and behave differently than they do in real in real life. This would help me and other people in the world, if I publish what I find, better understand the generation of people today and possibly lead to ideas or programs that will lead the people to be more original or more confident in their self.