From the TED Blog: “NYU professor Clay Shirky gave a fantastic talk on new media during our TED@State event earlier this month. He revealed how cellphones, the web, Facebook and Twitter had changed the rules of the game, allowing ordinary citizens extraordinary new powers to impact real-world events.” [via @greatdismal]
The always insightful Amy Gahran poses a little thought experiment that I believe I’ve posted on a few times:
“What if social media (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Google Earth, etc.) were the only tool you could use to deliver the benefits of journalism to your community? You could still gather information however you choose (through in-person interviews, phone, Web, archive research, etc. — even social media), but you could only deliver your work via social media. How would you do it?”
I suspect this experiment is already out of the lab and we’ll see more and more examples. And I especially like the notion that “creativity thrives on constraints.” 140 characters. 30 sec of video. Boiling a story down to its essence.
“For a long while—from about the late ’80s to the late-middle ’90s, Wall Street to Jerry Maguire—carrying a mobile phone seemed like a haughty affectation. But as more people got phones, they became more useful for everyone—and then one day enough people had cell phones that everyone began to assume that you did, too. Your friends stopped prearranging where they would meet up on Saturday night because it was assumed that everyone would call from wherever they were to find out what was going on. From that moment on, it became an affectation not to carry a mobile phone; they’d grown so deeply entwined with modern life that the only reason to be without one was to make a statement by abstaining. Facebook is now at that same point—whether or not you intend it, you’re saying something by staying away.”
— Slate
I’ve started paying a bit more attention to Facebook in an effort to stay closer to my nephews (18 and 16). After mentioning this in an earlier post, I’ve been getting a lot of “Friend Requests.” I have “confirmed” most of these. But I confess I’m not all that taken with Facebook and all this “friend” stuff reminds me of trading Valentine cards in fourth grade.
So please don’t get your feelings hurt if I ignore your “Friend Request.” Doesn’t mean we can’t be pals. Just know that I’m not taking Facebook very seriously. If you want to keep up with me, you can do it here. If I want to keep up with you, I’ll bug your house or hire a private dick to keep tabs on you.
If you want to glimpse the future, spend time with those that will live there. Back from a weekend with my brother and his family. The kids are 18, 16 and 12. They’re back in the states for 6 months to help Ryan get settled in college.
Uncle Steve was a big hit with his belated graduation present, but after giving Ryan his new iPod Touch, he was a little distracted the rest of the weekend. I also miss a lot of birthdays so we did a little catch-up with the other two. They opted for PSP’s (Play Station Portables).
The family is international with friends all over the world. But the kids do not use email to keep in touch (“Uncle Steve, please!”). The primary comm tools are SMS (texting) and Facebook. I had read that but it was interesting to hear it straight from the teenage horse’s mouth.
I’ve had a Facebook page for a while but never use it. If I want to keep in touch with my nephews and niece, that has to change.
Oh, and those PSP’s? Wifi ready so when they’re not gaming (or while they are), they can keep in touch with friends.
PS: On Saturday we stopped by the local Apple store. Packed. An iPhone class was underway and there were more gray heads than mohawks.
WSJ’s Jason Fry wonders if we’re getting closer to the day when everyone will need a web page. He starts with the question of how we’re to find each other in a rapidly evolving future.
“…landlines are disappearing, yet there’s no “white pages” for cellphones. And we don’t want one — the rise of email, IM and other forms of messaging have transformed the phone call into an intrusive way to communicate, best reserved for certain situations between people who already have a relationship. Which is fine, but raises the issue of how we’re supposed to get in touch with people we don’t already know. The most likely solution to the problem is a single point of contact, with additional levels of contact information unlocked by us as we deem appropriate. A Web page — whether it’s on an outpost such as Facebook or LinkedIn or a site built out with communications tools — can serve that function pretty well.
A personal Web page is an opportunity to tell your story and balance out other narratives that you can’t control.”
I found this piece very interesting. When I google “steve mays” I want this blog to show up on the first page of results. Ego? Sure, for now. And it will probably never have financial or business implications for me but that might not be true for a twenty-something.
Podcating News points to (and excerpts) CIOZone article that takes a look at the IT strategy behind Obama’s campaign, which includes Chris Hughes, who was one of the three co-founders of Facebook and now runs the campaign’s my.barackobama.com, which itself is a sort of social network.
"The Web site allows the campaign to be “owned by the masses,” Spinner says, but he encourages even big donors to complete the transaction through the Web site, saving himself the time it would take to drive to their home or office to collect a check. Although hillaryclinton.com eventually matched most of the features of barackobama.com, the Obama campaign embraced the Web more enthusiastically and fielded many of those capabilities about six months ahead of the competition, Spinner says. “The DNA of everyone working on the Obama campaign is very much a startup mentality, where what matters is how you build it, how fast you roll it out, and how you tie it together.”
Six months. A long time in the online world. Will be interesting to see how the McCain campaign does in this space.
The guys (no gender implied) at AdRants are big fans of Twitter:
“Writing on Entrecard Graham Langdon makes the argument Twitter will be bigger than Facebook. He’s right. Twitter is many things but it lacks the baggage and some of the “creepy” aspects of Facebook. All within 140 characters, Twitter is IM, email, mobile app, chat room, focus group, news source, a wall on which to bounce ideas, a research resource, presence indicator.
It’s usually the simplest of things that have the most value. Facebook is bloated. Twitter is Internet Lite (I refuse to dub it anything with a 2.0 attached). It’s a simple but ever so powerful interface that brings so many things together and functions as a jumping off point to an endless collection of resources and information.
It’s pretty much guaranteed you’ll interpret this as idiotic puffery but until you use Twitter, really use it for a while, you won’t really understand what you’re missing and you don’t realy have the right to comment. Seriously. Give it a try.”
I confess I’ve given up trying to explain Twitter. And it took me more than a year to come around.
“Quick decisions based on the smallest scraps of data. It’s not fair but it’s true. Your blog, your outfit, the typeface you choose, the tone of your voice, the expression on your face, the location of your office, the way you rank on a Google search, the look of your Facebook page… We all jump to conclusions and we do it every day. Where do you want me to jump?”
So says Doc Searls. I’ve been waiting for someone smarter than I to put into words my “issues” with social networks (Facebook, My Space, etc). The focus of this post is the effort by companies to use social networks for marketing.
“…today’s “social networks” look to me like yesterday’s online services. Remember AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and the rest? Facebook to me is just AOL done right. Or done over, better. But it’s still a walled garden. It’s still somebody’s private space. Me, I’d rather take it outside, where the conversation is free and open to anybody.”
“…the thing companies need to do most is stop being all “strategic” about how their people communicate. Stop running all speech through official orifices. Some businesses have highly regulated speech, to be sure. Pharmaceuticals come to mind. But most companies would benefit from having their employees talk about what they do. Yet there are still too many companies where employees can’t say a damn thing without clearing it somehow. And in too many companies employees give up because the company’s communications policy is modeled on a fort, complete with firewalls that would put the average dictatorship to shame. If a company wants to get social, they should let their employees talk. And trust them.”
What he said. Truth be told, the company I work for has “highly regulated speech.” And no shortage of good reasons for it, but I agree (with Doc) that we would be stronger if our employees could “talk about what they do.” There’s more to the post than the graphs I pulled. Read it if you’re interested in social networks.