‘Is WordPress a blog or a social network site?'
Hello Everyone and welcome to ISLA TALKS this blog is orientated around digital communities and modern conversations of the millennial mind!
As a millennial seeing the rapid technological transformations of the 21st century, we could say I know a little about the internet……
I have seen the death of the video tape and DVDs for that matter (do people really still watch them?) The birth of social media, I have observed changes in psychology, communication and emotion, human behaviour as we once know it has changed completely. I have created a community online through social network platforms, I have found solitude in phone apps, I have gained insight into history and the world through online archives, I could go on and on… But essentially I have become inspired to study media and communications and strive to engage with the evolving landscape of modern technology and wish to specialise in content creation and film production...
Cue Carrie Bradshaw voice over.
It was a winter afternoon when I started thinking about the ways we connect in the modern age and how our professional relationships have changed with new emerging technologies. With businesses operating through social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat it got me thinking have we blurred the lines between our private and professional lives?
It made me think of Wordpress as a platform and how it can function in the professional sphere while still sharing personal interests. Which raised the question ‘Is WordPress a blog or a social network site?'
The short answer...it is both!
WordPress was founded in 2003 by Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg. The website started from humble beginnings designed to share blogs after B2/Cafelog blogs had been discontinued both Little and Mullenweg saw a gap in the market for opportunity . Fast forward to 2021, nowadays WordPress powers over 40% of all active websites on the internet. WordPress is user friendly and doesn’t take a tech expert to get your start up business or blog up and running. With modern technological advancements WordPress has stayed a head of the curb offering numerous social networking tools to create a greater audience engagement and connectivity amongst users.
So what is a blog?
A blog can best be described as an informational website that connects people to concepts, discussions and interests, often written in an informal style of text, Blogs are regular updated with new information sources. Blogs predate our lives on social media with many people carefully curating their blog profiles on tumblr to share photos as they would now on Instagram accumulating a Digital community of shared interests. WordPress is a platform that can function as a website, blog, e-commerce store and a social network.
A social network is characterised by an online website or application used to share social media as a way of connecting with your own customised digital community, this can be through posting comments, images, videos and sending private messages. Social Networks can be used for interpersonal relationships or professional marketing and building a following behind your business. The most common social networks in 2021 are Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
WordPress can function as a social network through various customised systems such as the BuddyPress Plugin or by the comments feature. The BuddyPress Plugin enables users to engage by becoming members of your website or blog and interact through private or group messaging.
Blogs are a way that the digital community are able to engage through networked individualism, a term coined by Barry Wellman in 2000. Wellman describes networked individualism as a form of hierarchy in a group that connects independent users to a network of individual but shared interest, for example; the writer of the food blog holds the hierarchy and the audience as the connected individual to the content. With the strong social network features in WordPress, users are able to become a digital community sharing sociality.
So how does a social network impact our professional life?
& Why is WordPress the best option for professional social networking...
Have you applied for a job recently and not heard back? Social network sites play a huge role in modern employee recruitment processes, if they have your name they will likely have access to your social sites. According to writer and activist Melanie Curtain, upwards of 54% of employers have eliminated potential employees based on their social media feeds and a 2018 social media survey conducted by Career Builder revealed an astonishing 34% of employees were fired from their jobs due to their social media content.
Without opening a whole can of worms on here, many people probably haven’t considered the concept of the ‘Public Sphere’ when it comes to their life on social networks. The Public Sphere is a term coined by Jürgen Habermas in his 1989 publication of The Structural Transformation of The Public Sphere. This book has been an influential text in the ways we understand media and communications, while Habermas focused largely in the political arena - which I will reference in my future blog ‘Politics & Civic Cultures’, an interesting analysis I have gained from reading the public sphere theory is that if we look at social networking as a public sphere we can gain understandings of how important it is as our societal responsibility to look at everything we produce as a form of media.
It is all too often I stop myself from posting something personal on social networks these days to protect the privacy of my information sharing due to workplace surveillance. But I have craved a way of connecting in a professional setting with my personal interests, especially my work as a food stylist and food writer, I am an avid reader of food blogs and anyone at work that sees my lunches is always asking for the recipe or cooking tips to perfect the perfect salad dressing! I love creating unique and beautiful stories behind ingredients and flavours. However I do not wish to have people I work with on my social media sites, mainly because I like to create boundaries between my professional life and private life. This is why WordPress is the perfect social network platform for me to connect professionally with my employers and fellow employees over personal interests and build a digital community, without my boss following me on Instagram eeek!
I’d love to know from my community and following, what do you think, could WordPress be a more appropriate way of our employers or employees to get to know us through our passions and interests with an opportunity to connect?
xoxo ISLA TALKS