New Uses for Facebook?

Some say that Facebook is slowly heading towards its end and that Twitter is taking over. While I personally prefer Twitter over Facebook, I still use Facebook a lot because of the variety of things it allows you to do. Between creating events, uploading albums of photos and commenting on just about anything, Facebook allows users to do things that Twitter can’t.

As I was flipping through the TV channels today (Sept. 21) I noticed something on the news. If you like to follow the news and see what’s going on in the world (or have ever had a class with Dr. Kathie Fleck), you heard about the hostage situation in Pittsburgh. But what caught my eye was the fact that you don’t see “hostage” and “Facebook” in the same sentence very often, if ever. So I went to Google to get some more information and found that the suspect has been posting on his Facebook throughout the situation. People responded to these posts with uplifting messages saying they were praying for him and encouraging him to cooperate with the police.

The suspect’s page was taken down because of the potential to harm negotiations, but the police said it was good that the suspect could see that people care for him.The suspect has also recently surrendered himself to authorities.

This made me think about how we use Facebook now and all the potential uses for it in the future. I feel that we are just tapping into the uses of Facebook and that this service will be around for a very long time. If I were a more creative person I would provide examples of potential uses but I’m not, so I will let you mull those ideas around yourself. I’m sure someone can think of something crazy and new.

Since social media is a forever-changing medium I feel there will always be new ways to use many of the different platforms. Whether it is communicating with a suspect in a hostage situation or whatever else you can think of; social media will always be around. And as long as Zuckerberg and his team keep Facebook fresh and relevant the service will stick around; it’s not going anywhere.

Writing this in real-time,

Jake