Of Facebook, Twitter and YM

The different technological advancements have really changed how we do things.

Although I have long accepted this fact, I learned to appreciate its benefits more when I read the status message of PR man Jonji Gonzales on Facebook last Friday. Jonji compared how people reacted to the deaths of Princess Diana and King of Pop Michael Jackson. He said that when Diana died, people went to her home, bringing flowers to mourn for her. With Jackson’s death, meanwhile, people expressed their sympathies through shout outs in Facebook or tweets in Twitter.

True enough, most if not all of the shout outs in Facebook last Friday and even until yesterday, Saturday, were expressions of sympathy and tributes to MJ. My US-based cousin Jay Sanchez and another PR man, Cerwin Eviota, enumerated their favorite MJ songs in their shout outs. A high school classmate expressed her condolences to MJ’s family as if she was directly talking to them. Former The Freeman colleague Rose Borromeo posted the lyrics of MJ’s song Childhood. I also gave the King of Pop my own little tribute by using a line from his song Gone Too Soon as my shout out.

And the use of social networking sites to express condolences and pay tribute to Jackson was not just limited to ordinary people like us. Stars like Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Missy Elliot, and even British Foreign Secretary David Miliband expressed their sympathies to MJ’s family through Twitter.

By using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, and instant messaging clients like Yahoo Messenger, people from all over the world, and from all walks of life, can bond together to express themselves, just like what the fans and friends of Michael Jackson did. And this is made possible by technology.

Technology has given us the world right in our fingertips. Just one click and you are connected to the world. Not just to play games. Online games are just a small part of this new world that technology has given us. In this new world we can reunite with old friends and meet new ones, communicate with family members who are in other countries, learn new things, share thoughts and even express ourselves.

It is just sad though that there are people who cannot or refuse to see the benefits of what technology has given us only because they pay more attention to the excesses rather than the good that it brings.

Well, it’s their loss. These people do not know what they are missing.