Mcluhan's Tetrad and The Immortal Social Media Sites

Mcluhan’s Tetrad

• What does the medium enhance?
• What does the medium make obsolete?
• What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
• What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?

Facebook: February 4, 2004

• What does the medium enhance? Connectivity between friends, family members, social community. Allows for easy communication, easy ‘catching up on people’s lives’, instant updates
•  What does the medium make obsolete? Facebook makes ‘old school’ communication—phone calls, texts, letters, emails—much more obsolete. If I didn’t have facebook I would feel a much higher need to use the other forms of social media to stay connected with my friends and family. (Phone calls, texts, letters, and emails still exist! They just become less of a necessity in my life with the presence of Facebook.)
• What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? Community interactions. Phone calls/texting/emails/letters/and even early forms the internet lacked community interactions. Facebook retrieved this and allowed for these communities to be built and interacted in with out geographic boundaries.
•  What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes? Ultra obsessive connectivity. Facebook addictions—where people literally can’t function without checking Facebook. Facebook stalking—people spending hours on facebook checking out others profiles and comparing themselves.

Facebook was a social platform that had (or has) it all! Picutres, videos, status updates, profile pages, business pages, friend requests, pokes, chats, etc. etc. But the plethora of options Facebook offered may have turned out to be bigger opportunities for new social media platforms.

Twitter: March 2006

• What does the medium enhance? Clever, witty, short text updates. Facebook with pretty much one of the functions—to communicate with people in under 140 characters. With originally only one real function, it was straightforward and people knew exactly how to use it. Took away a lot of the clutter that people found with Facebook.
• What does the medium make obsolete? The complexity of Facebook. With only one primary function--text, pictures, videos, chat, profiles, likes/comments (usually) become obsolete.
• What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? Twitter retrieves the simplicity of only text. We became so accustomed to pictures/videos/sounds from TV and from Facebook  that twitter retrieved the importance and necessity of text.
• What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes? A competition for the wittiest tweet. Also allows and is used heavily to follow celebrities/stars. Because of the ease of making twitter accounts they had to start using the blue check next to the name so that a fake person wasn’t impersonating a star.

Instagram: October 2010

• What does the medium enhance? Instagram enhances the ease of sharing pictures. This medium is focused on pictures snapshots of your life. People can follow you and know what is going on in your life based on the pictures you post.
•  What does the medium make obsolete? The medium makes several of the functions FB offers obsolete—chat, videos, profile pages, pokes etc. Instagram takes the focus off of the text, like Twitter allowed, and refocuses back on the image.
• What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? Instagram retrieves the image. People communicate through images on instagram—that is its primary source.
• What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes? Instagram at its extremes let the common user to share AS MANY PICTURES a day as they want. It also gives them a chance to see into celebrities days/lives. People can see each other less in real life but still feel like they know what is going on in their friends life because they follow them on Instagram.

Pinterest: March 2010

• ·      What does the medium enhance? Storage of images, recipes, blogs, life hacks, photo ideas, video ideas, work outs, craft ideas etc. As the internet began to grow and grow in content, people began to lose track of all of their favorite things. Pinterest allows pinners to keep all of their favorites neatly categorized and saved on boards.
• ·      What does the medium make obsolete? For me personally, google searches for images/recipes/crafts have become obsolete. I know that if I search on Pinterest I can find THE BEST RECIPE EVER and I can read comments about it and it will take me right to the original blog. Once it’s been pinned, you can trust that another person like yourself has used it and likes it—thus it was pinned. 
• ·      What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier? Links, blogs storage, DIY craft ideas, planning your own wedding. It allows me to store my ideas that I usually would have lost with out pinterest. Before, if I was surfing websites I would copy down the link in a word doc and then email it to myself and then eventually lose it. With Pinterest storage and organization make finding your favorite things easy!
• ·      What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes? Has become a place for the DIYer. Everyone can get/share/create inspirational ideas. Anyone and everyone can share with anyone and everyone else.  

After reflecting on my own social media habits, I agree with Rosenbaum that no media will die. Certain aspects might, like apps that have a short-lived run, but the internet and social media sphere will continue to grow. All 4 of these social media sites I just discussed have had to adapt in order to remain up-to-date. A lot of the functions I mentioned about Facebook weren’t around when it first began, it listened to its audience and figured out how THEY used Facebook and incorporated those changes. One of those changes allows for a more personalized FB experience by joining groups, pages and events to be able to keep up with certain people and certain groups. 

Instagram started allowing videos a few short months ago in order to remain a threat against Vine. They also recently started allowing pictures to be sent to only one friend or follower, to try and take over the Snapchat sphere. 

Twitter has allowed videos, pictures, and other links to be shared on Twitter so it is not ONLY words and text. Before this class, the only time I would ever tweet is when I had finished a wedding video and I wanted to tweet it out so more people would see it. 

Pinterest started allowing secret boards, because not everyone wants to share their Pinterest finds. 

Adaptation is how these social media sites will make it. When new developments come out they will configure their sites to included the newest buzz in order to keep their audience engaged or they will change to become what their audience is trying to RETRIEVE.