ابزارها و نکات مدیریت زمان رسانه های اجتماعی

At the beginning of the 21st century, we are now for a couple of years in the social media era, where we are confronting with a lot of applications and tools, easy to use, friendlier, free to use, easy to (re)build. No matter on which kind of activities we intend to spend time, there are plenty of similar applications with similar functionalities. Accordingly, the decision which of them to use is sometimes very difficult to take and, not less importantly, timeconsuming. More than that, people in the 21st century live in a technology and media-suffused environment, marked by various characteristics, including: access to an abundance of information, rapid changes in technology tools and services. In order to be effective in the 21st century, there are plenty of almost unknown applications for the large mass of Internet users that can be useful for different types of activities and/or purposes. Accordingly, through this paper, we intend to offer some insightful help for social media users in order to be able to organize their information, activities and work, to become more productive and to avoid wasting their time. More than that, in this paper, we intend to present both positive aspects of different technologies which could be used for specific purposes or activities, without ignoring, however, some lesser-known facets and recommended, yet equally important, but they must be aware to take them into account.

Over the last two decades, information and communication technologies have dramatically changed our current society, no matter if we are speaking about the way we communicate and interact each other, work or participate in entertainment activities. In a Web-based environment, at any time and any place, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, we can spend our time online for different purposes and activities. Due to the decreasing cost of buying computers (mobile phones or other type of devices) and associated equipments, as well as due to increasing the capabilities and functionalities of the hardware and associated Internet technologies, we are now almost two billion Internet usersi. Thus, this number represents only 28,7% of the total population worldwide and taking into consideration the regions where the percent is still low, but still looking to grow, in the next years the continuous ascendant trend of global Internet users could be anticipated. Thanks to the Web 2.0 technologies, applications and tools, which are characterized as easy to use, friendlier, most of them free to use and easy to (re)build (due to the open source code) and among them there are the mostknown wikis, blogs, social networks etc, day by day we are becoming more technological literate and more confident about our skills in using such kind of technologies and applications. Consequently, day by day more and more people become more addicted to Web 2.0 technologies and applications and the time spent online is in an ascendant curve, no matter the age. Thus, for example, if in 1999 the average number of hours spent on a weekly basis by American Internet users was seven hours, ten years later their time spend online has increased to thirteen hoursii. Therefore, no matter which kind of applications they are using, the Internet users worldwide are more numerous and moreover, they spend more time online and they are capable to create digital content more easily. All of that leads to an increasing content available worldwide, which means also more time spent and also increased skills in order to find and access more easily the proper content.

As some short conclusions of using social media sites, indeed, they could be wasting our time, addictive and full of misinformation. But following some basic rules for engagement and avoiding spending too much time on them, Twitter and other social media sites could be used productively and in a smart way. As I already said, social media sites are on continuous movements, very unpredictable. Nobody knew Twitter or other social media sites three or four years ago, and nobody could anticipate their evolution and growth. There are indeed some advantages that could not be ignored (speed of spreading news, staying in touch with companies we liked, people we knew- even celebrities we liked- or meeting new people, finding answers to specific questions etc.) On the other hand, of course there are even bad parts related to Twitter and other social media technologies and applications. As we all know, nobody is perfect. But Twitter and other social media sites are here to stay for a long time ahead (Selwyn, 2010) and only by using them wisely and taking into consideration and using the productivity rules, those applications can become meaningful