I knew I loved you before I met you

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the song titled "I knew I love you before I met you" by Savage Garden, the possibility of this song might seem very far-fetched but let's change the context a little and look at it in the perspective of today's ever shrinking world which is rapidly being connected through Social Networking.

Social Networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or even LinkedIn, had made falling in love or starting a relationship with someone you have not actually met a possibility, thus giving new meaning to the sentence "I knew I love you before I met you", well physically at least.
Meet Serena (not her real name), a good friend of mine who has in recent years gone through the ups and downs of transcontinental dating via Social Networking.

After a of couple of disastrous experiences with local men, she decided to set her sights and venture further to the west and what better ways to do it than through Social Networking.
Her first escapade took her all the way to the United States, she never did travel there, but she met a guy hailing from Pennsylvania through Facebook; eventually they started a "Facebook Relationship" after a series of liberating and profound conversations on MSN, it seemed at that time they were destined to be together.

Serena said "for once I don't feel myself being judged, and the fact that he is so far away and his culture is so different from mine makes this relationship all the more intriguing, he even sent me flowers, omg!!!"

However sweet the relationship was, factors like personal commitments and time zone
differences became a big barrier to their relationship and eventually putting this romantic experience to an end, and all these happened when they had not actually met physically.

Not to be dismayed, Serena had decided to give long distance relationship another chance, one day through Facebook Serena received a message from a Swedish guy called Thomas (not his real name) and she realized they actually had a friend in common, and through further conversations she found out that the Swedish guy was actually an ex-housemate of that friend in common.

With this, it became the basis of their conversations, they eventually connected via Skype and went into more engaging conversations; when I asked Serena about Thomas; she went: "Thomas is so much like a Singaporean, and he uses terms like 'baobei', 'uncle' and ends his sentences with 'lor' "

Having a Singaporean housemate had probably given Thomas the understanding of Singapore's culture, thus enabling him to communicate with Serena on a much deeper level, needless to say they eventually got involved in a relationship and this time they even met in person, when Thomas actually came down and visited Serena.

Cases like Serena's is well becoming more and more common as locals seek to find their fairytale romance in places far beyond Singapore, and with Social Networking sites like Facebook and many others, this has made such dreams a convenient reality.

The Social Media Rock Star

I was down the other day to catch my favorite YouTube singer David Choi perform at the esplanade, and to my dismay, the esplanade concourse was so jam packed that I couldn't even catch a glimpse of David Choi , in the end I had to content to just listening to his performance from behind the crowd.

I had expected a decent crowd to come down and catch David Choi, but not a crowd of such proportion, and it's pretty amazing that so many people turned up, considering that he spent closed to nothing in terms of the marketing and publicity of his music, the bulk of his publicity was actually done through posting videos of his performances on YouTube from the comfort of his own room.

There is without a doubt that David Choi by himself is a very talented musician, and yes he is also a fantastic songwriter, but there is no denying that without a platform such as YouTube, his music would had never been able spread so far and wide, to date he has hit the 6.2 million mark on YouTube in terms of channel views, his songs have also been used on popular networks such as MTV and NBC.

The concept of using Social Media to become famous is pretty simple actually. First you record a performance of yourself on video then subsequently you post it on a platform such as YouTube; thereafter it all depends on the likability of your content.

The availability of social sharing had also made sharing videos much easier; with a click you could share the video with your hundred of friends on the various social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter; in any case the video is really enticing, your friends would probably share it with their friends and if the cycle keeps continuing, the video you posted would very soon be seen by millions of viewers all over the world, instantly making you a star.

Back before there was platforms such as YouTube, aspiring musicians had to record their songs on tape or CD and hand it the various record labels, and in most cases record companies would not really give much of a consideration to the recordings, some of these musician would just end up wasting their efforts and eventually giving up their hopes and dreams. It's quite a bummer as some of these musicians are really talented and the fact that there are so many other less substantial musicians that actually made it to the big time because they have better connections or are better off in terms of wealth and even aesthetically more appealing.

Now with the advent of social media, this would allow the really talented musicians to shine as they would now be able to showcase their talents on the various social media platforms with the potential of a global reach.

Nowadays record companies spend the bulk of their time scouting for the next big thing through social media, some notable success are the likes of Colbie Caillat and Justin Bieber. Established musicians had also joined in the bandwagon by using social media platforms to promote themselves and reach out to more fans.

If Video had killed the Radio star, Social Media had swallowed them all.