Ms. Prachi Wani
Assistant Professor
AISSMS College of Hotel Management and Catering Technology
Let me start with this interesting and to an extent a relatable quote by none other than our common friend Mark Zuckerberg. He says, “Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.” On that note, allow me to share my journey of how I got introduced to all these new techno savvy platforms.
I gotacquainted to social media around 2004 I guess, where only Orkut was prominent. Many of you might not remember what Orkutwas. So just to recall about it, let me state Orkutas the father of Facebook. I was fascinated by the way Orkutactually worked where I found my life’s first “fast friend”. Orkutingthen (like googling now) was the only new thing happening in life apart from the routine & busy hotel life. We did not have WhatsApp by that time. So meeting all those lost and found friends through this social media site was mind blowing. Apparently, it became a habit; whenever I used to get free time, I used to go on Orkut and check what my school and college friends & colleagues were up to.
Then few years later, I came across a new pal which was Facebook. It made me overlook my old buddy Orkut, as it was now getting old (such a typical human behavior you see). It was not as techno savvy as Facebook was. Everything was different on FB, as it had more to offer and had a wider range of applications. FB started growing very fast and with every new friend request (that I was getting) made me feel famous and I actually thought people knew me (everybody laughed at this).Butonce someone told me, Ignorance is Bliss!So I continued to think like that. I started allowing others to enter in my personal space by posting photos and my views on various issues. While doing that I thought that everyone is taking me seriously (again a topic of laughter).But as said, life is all about misunderstandings you see. When I was not getting any responses to some of my serious concerns raised, I felt that this portal was not to discuss any such issues. This is exactly similar to our situation about likes and followers on Instagram today (hope you can relate to it now). After a point it started becoming boring to know about what others were doing, where they were heading and etc. My new found friendship with social media and what they were attending, it made no difference in my life. This became a reason for me to move away from this friend portal of mine thus my friendship with FB started falling apart. I was off the social media till 2 years back, which is almost for 5 years of gap (indeed an achievement).
Now here is the twist entering! The ‘God of Social Media’ was watching me from The United States, thinking about showing his power again.Then I was given the responsibility of handling social media pages for our college. This was the phase when for the first time, I logged into newly introduced friends Instagram, Twitter and Youtube; my phone welcoming them all. My friendship with them started blooming. But let me tell you some realities. I was so new to the quick entry of this technology that it was difficult to handle it initially. I was adjusting with too many changes which were happening on my phone and in my mind as well. Fortunately, our branding team students were mutual friends of all these sites already & gave me a basic training about these portals. Today our friendship has gone to a level where I meet all these portals almost every day. We are bonding very well professionally now. Our students, who are our mutual friends, are very active on these portals. So I am happy to see good number of likes and comments on various posts which were missing on my personal profile. This friendship will last till the time I am handling it for our college and won’t bother once I disconnect as they do not have feelings, so we are good on those terms you see. I also went back to check with what happened to my lost friend Orkut and I was happy to discover that now he looks different with the new name “Orkut Hello” where you bond with people based on your common interests. I wish to meet him later again after my Ph.D.
All Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Gin, Wine, Beer Cheers to this amazing friendship of mine with social media.