Analyzing digital resources that you will get help from is important, especially when you work with digital media. Everything from the publication date, voting systems, and authors matter (varying on the topic, of course!) Here are three articles I found, analyzed by recentness, author credibility, post gatekeeping mechanisms, clarity and overall quality, and if in the end, I’d return to use them.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/rotate-selections-gimp-51543.html
I looked up how to rotate images in Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and this article appeared first. I can’t tell how old it is as a date was not posted and there is no indicator of when it might have been posted. The author is Kevin Lee, and he has been writing technology articles since 1989, so he seems credible to write tech articles, but one can never know if he has mastered the specific program. It’s quite simple, though, so I’d trust him. I am unfamiliar with CHRON, but it seems to be a newsletter/blog written by various different authors centering around business. There is no comment or upvote system on the post. The article is clear and to the point, but very specific. The title is ‘How to Rotate Selections in Gimp’ but it’s more like ‘How to Make and Rotate a Rectangular Selection.’ There are many different selection tools in GIMP, so if one is explained as a step, it makes sense to mention the others so as to not accidentally mislead someone into not seeing the other options. It’s still a good article, short and straightforward. I’d use it, GIMP is a little tricky to get used to at first.

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-pick-a-font#what-are-serif-fonts
This is a free Masterclass article from February 25, 2022. It’s recent, but recentness doesn’t matter as the information here doesn’t get outdated as if it were specific to a program. It was made by David Carson who teaches graphic design, so it seems that he is a professional and very experienced. I don’t think Masterclass has a comments or voting system, at least for the free articles, but it’s not like just anyone can post either. the gimmick of Masterclass is that they are all masters at what they teach. This article is thorough but not wordy, it gives you little insights into the history of fonts and their terminology without being distracting or bushy. It’s organized super neatly and it’s easy to follow along with and is very interesting! I loved reading this article, I learned a lot and I’m actually going to come back again for a second read!

https://prophotosupply.com/blogs/resources/how-large-can-i-print-my-digital-image
I don’t know when this article was posted, or who wrote it, but it was posted by a site centers around printing and photos, so it seems quite credible to me. There is no comment or upvote system, but it doesn’t seem like just anyone can post either. The article is clear and thorough, it doesn’t give one-sided solutions and it has a handy chart with printing size recommendations. I’ll certainly return to use it.

A content management system, or CMS for short, is a software service that helps users, well, create and manage content. It’s associated mainly with website management (WMS,) but that’s not its only use. Enterprise content management is another form of CMS service that aids in the managing of documents and records. Website content management systems, on the other hand, help users build and manage websites and the content within. Working with a CMS is very different from directly building your site by hand with HTML/CSS. They both have their own benefits and drawbacks, what is the ‘best’ depends on the person’s goals, knowledge, preferences, and budget.

Creating a website from scratch is slow. It requires a lot of study and knowledge beforehand, not only with HOW exactly to create a website but WHAT it should be like to have a good user interface and a decent-looking design. But if you don’t know the language or feel unconfident with your skill level, you can hire people to create a website for you. Creating a website with a CMS is faster than programming it yourself or even hiring a group of people. You can make a good-looking website with no experience beforehand through the usage of templates and pre-made assets. Many CMS can give you a basic website for free too, and by paying or subscribing you can access different templates and more features to implement.

For full creative control and customizability of your website, it’s better not to use a CMS. A lot of CMS tend to be pretty limited in how much you can do with them, especially when they are free or cheap, and you have to pay extra/add to your subscription to access certain features sometimes. Building it without a CMS gives you more liberty and options with what to do. However, it takes a long time to build a site yourself, not even mentioning managing it over its lifetime. With a CMS, you can build a fully-fledged functional site (depending on complexity) within an hour or two with little to no background knowledge. Coding one yourself can take days, weeks, or months, and you have to know what you’re doing. But in the end, you may create something fresh and original, and have it look exactly like you want, and with more features.

There is no doubt that a service that allows anyone to easily create their own site for free or for cheap depending on their desires would put website creators out of business, right? Now that everyone can create their own website without any prior experience at all, web designers are needed less and less. But not everyone wants to use a CMS, especially due to it’s limitations, and not everyone is willing to study an entire programming language to make a site on their own. Web designers are still in demand! According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor, the job market for Web Developers is expected to grow 15 percent by 2026.

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It’s quite clear that social media has become an important part of many people’s lives, but we often don’t realize the full expanse of social media’s kingdom. What are the specifics? Here are 7 useful points about the top three social media networks.

•  So, what were the top three social media sites, in terms of traffic, in 2019-20 years to this date?

A study by SimilarWeb in November of 2020 stated that the top three social media sites, in terms of traffic, were YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, listed in order of popularity.
YouTube – 34.6 Billion monthly visitors
Facebook – 25.5 Billion monthly visitors
Twitter – 6.6 Billion monthly visitors

• How does each social media site work, and why exactly do people use it?

Youtube is a video-sharing platform. Those with accounts have their own channels. Baseline, they have the ability to post videos, comment on and like other posts, and participate in polls. Reaching certain numbers of subscribers unlocks new features for the content creator, such as live streaming and the community feature. Community posts are located on a tab on a creator’s channel where the creator can post text, images, and run polls. Based on your search and watch history along with your feedback and engagement on videos and your subscriptions, Youtube’s algorithm recommends videos that you would enjoy.
People use YouTube for many reasons. To create content, of course, is one. It could be for personally storing videos, or making educational and fun videos. Watching other people’s videos is what most come to youtube for. It could be for entertainment or to learn new things and skills and stay up to date on global events.
Facebook is primarily used to keep people connected with one another. You can add friends, and Facebook automatically searches for people you may know or may want to know. You can also create pages for your businesses and advertise yourself, message other people, voice and video chat, and play games. You can add hashtags to your post to categorize it, and view posts by certain hashtags.
Typically, people use the messenger feature a lot and make simple text, images, or video posts to keep others up to date on their lives or share interesting news and information.
Twitter is used for sharing ideas, opinions, jokes… anything you can do with the ability to post text. You can also post videos and images. Twitter has a heavy emphasis on trending topics. You can access a few of the top trending topics and hashtags on Twitter easily from the sidebar on the website. Hashtags are important if you want to reach a wider audience. One can follow an account to get more of their tweets shown to them, comment on tweets, direct message people, and ‘retweet’ posts, or repost them.
People use Twitter primarily to share their thoughts and feelings, opinions on certain relevant events, and discuss topics with other people. It’s also a place for humor and memes, showing your art and other projects, and other aspects of your life such as pets. Mainly, people come to Twitter to join discourse, however.

•  What are “demographics” and why is it important in social media?

Demographics are data in referral to particular groups within a population. A demographic is a particular sector of a population. For example, you could say that a specific type of tea is popular with an older demographic.
Demographics are very important in social media if you want to effectively communicate with people. It’s impossible to have your post appeal to everyone equally, and even if it did, it wouldn’t be as effective. People don’t want to sift through for what they’re interested in. If you care about reaching people, you need to try to reach a target demographic to keep people interested and willing to return.

• What demographic stands out the most?

Out of the three social media I’ve listed above, Facebook’s demographic stands out to me. Facebook is certainly used by an older demographic. While the youngsters are busy bouncing around on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, Facebook has more of a focus on sharing world news and family and friend relations that adults may enjoy more. Other social media grab the attention of us teens and kids with more engaging, fast-paced content. However, the majority of Facebook users used to be teenagers a while back. According to data from monthly surveys issued by Facebook, the usage among teens has dropped from about 60% using it at least once a month in the spring of 2016 to a meager 27% in the fall of 2021. 27% is a shockingly low number for me, but it makes sense.

• On average, how much time do users spend on each social media site during a day, week, or month? 

On average, people spend 58 minutes a day on Facebook. Just a couple of minutes short of an entire hour!
On average, people spend 35 minutes a day on Twitter. Not as much as Facebook, but according to Oberlo, it’s the social media people spend the second most time on in the US.
On average, people spend 44 minutes a day on Youtube. It’s a little surprising to me, as Youtube focuses on more long-form content, compared to the microblogging aspects of Facebook. I expected longer, but I suppose the scroll is compelling.

• Which of the three social media networks is growing the fastest? Why do you think that is?

Initially, I assumed that Twitter would be growing the fastest. Either Twitter or YouTube. Twitter seemed to keep getting more and more talked about, and FaceBook was talked about only on the topic of sketchy policies, questionable polls, and business. However, my gut reaction was wrong. Out of the three, Facebook, the one I ruled out of the question, was the fastest growing social media! Twitter came in second, with Youtube last. Facebook’s growth is beginning to plateau, however, according to the providers of information I used (study by Oberlo.) I think it is due to the abundance of other social media that serve similar, but different purposes, and due to the bad reputation Facebook has been garnering over the years.

•  How are the majority of visitors accessing these three sites (computer, mobile device, tablet)?

The majority of Facebook users access the site using mobile devices at a whopping 98.5 percent!
Mobile is number one for Youtube as well at 63%.
In 2015, Twitter revealed that 80 percent of its users at the time also access the site from their mobile devices. It’s very clear that mobile reigns supreme for these social media.

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