week 13

Social media has shaped our lives--but we have also shaped social media. This mutualistic bond is how everything continues to work towards new changes and new relations. Ignore the product-consumer relationship with ads & customization for a moment, because I'm talking about how we work with the social media giants...not for or against them. People complain day in and day out about different features on their go to sites; ie the filers on Snapchat. The developers of these products are surely overwhelmed by the amount of feedback they receive, but "improvements" are being made constantly. So what do they do about the filters? Maybe they add more, bring back a majority favorite, or even rotate them through. Not everyone can be happy with changes, but if enough are and keep returning, then Snapchat has done their job. We as users not only shape our sites with our concerns about the actual media, but the way we use it in our lives as well. For example, many people like myself follow different news sites on Twitter. It's a great way to not be drug down with all negative news articles in their own app, by intermingling other tweets!