So as something to think about here as an excerpt from We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs by Nasrin Alavi (2005).
"Blogging in Iran has grown so fast because it meets the needs no longer met by the print media; it provides a safe space in which people may write freely on a wide variety of topics, from the most serious and urgent to the most frivolous. Some prominent writers use their blogs to bypass strict state censorship and to publish their work on-line; established journalists can post uncensored reports on their blogs; expatriate Iranians worldwide use their blogs to communicate with those back home; ordinary citizens record their thoughts and deeds in daily journals; and student groups and NGOs utilize their blogs as a means of coordinating their activities"Food for thought.
This post really strikes me. Wow, reality check! We take so much for granted here! While we use social media for fun, (and marketers do their best to capitalize on that), some people in this world are using it to SPEAK for the first time! I hope realizations like this will help us all to take a more mature approach to social media, rather than using it to make ourselves feel better (thanks for the reference to my blog, KK). I also think that a more mature approach to soical networking will lead to less "CLs" as Andrew has pointed out in his blog.
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