Cynthia McCune's Library tagged "social media" →  View Popular

Here are a few tips from Bradshaw for how teachers can encourage social media experimentation:

- Use the tools themselves to teach the class. Use them in any setting possible.

- Do it publicly and socially. For example, Bradshaw paired students up with “Twentors” to help students that were new to Twitter.

- Less talk, more action. Put the students out there and get them using the tools one by one.

On the first day of this year a friend threw down a challenge that we should join every social network we encountered as an experiment.

I jumped in and for the first couple of months nothing really exciting happened. Then some friends from one network found me on another and my power base started growing.

Fast forward to December and I've been getting invited to more real life events than I can attend. Social networks have introduced me to lots of people who share the same interests.

I'm meeting people and forging friendships in real life.

I noticed on Twitter (where I notice a LOT of interesting, timely news) that Dwight had written this post, so I came over to see what his readers would say about the social media topic.

See, that's what we young babbling "narcissists" do - we support our friendz and their blogs - except, I've known Dwight, in person, since 1978. I know how to support and interact with real people, too.

I'm a real person, and I use social media.

I used Twitter for a while and abandoned it.

My reason: it's a giant interruption machine. I find value is thinking without interruption.

I understand that people don't want to look narcissistic and don't assume that everyone is interested in the mundane details of their lives. But that's not what Twitter is about. (MySpace and Facebook, maybe, but not Twitter. :) )

You only follow people you're interested in, and people only follow you if they're interested. You can read without posting. Or post without reading.

You know how, when something exciting happens to you, you normally have to call everyone you know and tell them the news, one by one? On Twitter, you say it once, and everyone on Twitter who genuinely cares can read it.

You know how when you carpool in the slug lines, you sometimes have interesting conversations with strangers? Twitter lets you do that without worrying about whether those people are safe drivers.

You know how it's fun to catch up with friends or former coworkers who live in other states, whenever they visit Houston and you make time to have lunch with them? With Twitter, you can catch up with those people every day, without buying plane tickets.

And you do it all on your own time. There's no pressure or obligation to pick up the phone or return an email.

If you don't like to do those things, that's fine. But why would you go so far as to say that people who use Twitter are narcissists or creeps? Are you *trying* to sound bitter, miserable, and insecure? Or is there some underlying fear you have that I'm not getting?

The best thing about Twitter, for me, is that most of the people I follow are happy and they're doing positive things. Reading their stuff puts me in a good mood.

You should try it. It's fun. Don't hate. Participate.

Facebook Connect is representative of some surprising new thinking in Silicon Valley. Instead of trying to hoard information about their users, the Internet giants have all announced plans to share at least some of that data so people do not have to enter the same identifying information again and again on different sites.

Supporters of this idea say such programs will help with the emergence of a new “social Web,” because chatter among friends will infiltrate even sites that have been entirely unsociable thus far.

“There are so many important issues to get right,” said Jason Oberfest, a vice president at MySpace. “Consumers need to understand where their data is going and how it’s being used.”

“Then, if we can get the privacy issues right, if it’s totally clear to the user what is happening, there is potential for advertising,” Mr. Oberfest added. “But certainly not without a lot of testing and consideration.”

Radio abandoned the world of local personalities and events in favor of more profitable, remotely-served and carefully researched "formats." The only thing local is the ads.

Magazines lost their essence in the quest for revenue by cramming content in between all the ads.

Newspapers lost classifieds by charging exorbitant rates, because they could. Newspapers also suffer from relevance decay in the pursuit of the Woodward and Burnstein model of journalism, but that's another story.

Television reduced the length of programs in the name of adding more spots. Ad pods of four and even five minutes in length — once thought absurd — are now finding their way into the mix.

Cable will be next (you find a lot of those lengthy pods there), and then will come the Web. It is our nature in media, it seems, to take advantage of our fans rather than putting them first. In fact, the web properties of most traditional media companies are already famous for dissing users in the name of revenue, and that, too, will have its consequences. "Driving traffic" within a site raises the price of interaction with that site, and nobody feels welcome in such a scenario.

Utterz

• Utterz is to podcasting what Twitter is to blogging.  Phone in thoughts while driving in to the office, or conduct a quick interview on the showroom floor–it’s that simple!

Flip Camera

• Flip video has become a mainstay in PR and marketing because it’s simple to use.  Shoot shorter interviews and upload to YouTube in one step!

I think the new building block of journalism needs to be the topic. I don’t mean that in the context of news site topic pages, which are just catalogues of links built to kiss up to Google SEO. Those are merely collections of articles, and articles are inadequate.

Instead, I want a page, a site, a thing that is created, curated, edited, and discussed. It’s a blog that treats a topic as an ongoing and cumulative process of learning, digging, correcting, asking, answering. It’s also a wiki that keeps a snapshot of the latest knowledge and background. It’s an aggregator that provides annotated links to experts, coverage, opinion, perspective, source material. It’s a discussion that doesn’t just blather but that tries to accomplish something (an extension of an article like this one that asks what options there are to bailout a bailout). It’s collaborative and distributed and open but organized.

Tips on How to become facilitators of conversation and not just ghostwriters for execs:



• Monitor key blogs/forums. Send execs 3-5 relevant posts a week (think briefing sheets!). When you send these posts over, send 2-3 posts on which they can comment
• Coach them on comments, particularly focusing on the how–formatting, tone, disclosure.  If you need to, draft a rough outline or template but let them add the meat and personalize it
• Shove a camera in their face and ask them one question.  Great way to do a fast video blog post or a video comment on blogs that have that capability
• Brainstorm a list of ideas for blog posts.  Do this monthly and create an Editorial Calendar so they don’t forget!
• Monitor Twitter and FriendFeed for Tweets or FF Posts that need responses. Again, coach them on best responses