Social Networking in plain english

As I continue down my road of social media enlightenment, I am amazed, almost daily, at how truly "old school" this method of communication is. Where technology in the age of computers and digital everything has been said to isolate us on our own little "islands"; (the very opposite of being social as it were), the blossoming of web 2.o with Facebook, Linkedin, Blogs, and Twitter etc. has in fact, ameliorated our ability to connect with others on both a one to one and a one to many basis.

This capability of social media to create a virtual "village" where we get to choose our neighbours based on what we have in common, has taken us back to those "party line" days where everyone knew what everyone else was up to and trusted their friend's and neighbour's opinions.

Where we couldn't control what others said or learned about us before without keeping our shades drawn or our phone off the hook; today we have control over what we want others to know about us. Used with discretion and maturity, social media provides us with a tool that disseminates only the messages that we what communicated to friends and followers. It also provides us with the capability to research any topic imaginable. AND it's a great way to make friends!

As I continue my journey, I have and will continue to meet, no doubt, many, many people who generously share their insights, expertise and wisdom. This is one of the rewards of being on the "network".

Enjoy these videos and many more very helpful ones at Commoncraft.





And for those who just don't get TWITTER...

Best Buy Goes All Twitter Crazy With @Twelpforce

(from Tech Crunch)

I like the way Best Buy has embraced and really understood the potential of social media as a way of communicating with customers.

This is an interesting one: consumer electronics retailer Best Buy is encouraging hundreds of employees to handle online customer service and company promotions via Twitter, even airing commercials not mentioning their own website but merely the URL of the profile they created on the micro-sharing service (two spots embedded below). The new service, dubbed Twelpforce, was debuted over the weekend but so far hasn’t garnered a lot of online buzz, let alone followers on Twitter (currently at around 1350). I’m sure that will change soon enough.

Fantastic or spamtastic?

If the response is friendly, personal and not clearly coming from someone interested only in trying to make a sale rather than being proactive about giving knowledgeable advice, I wouldn’t mind to be contacted by Best Buy employees on Twitter at all. Judging by the public stream of tweets, I’d say that this is exactly what they are doing, so kudos to them and Best Buy for thinking differently about online customer service.

Greg Grunberg talks social media and "Yowza"

How Heroes Star Greg Grunberg Dominates Social Media [Video]
(from Mashable)

Greg Grunberg is one of social media’s most active celebrities. While you’ve probably seen him on shows like Heroes, Alias, and Felicity, you may not know about his social media and entrepreneurial exploits, with projects including Band From TV and most recently Yowza, an iPhone app for coupons and in-store deals.

"How could we not pick the mind of one of Twitter (Twitter)’s most popular users? That’s what we thought too, so we pulled out our webcams, our iPhones, and for about 30 minutes discussed how the Heroes star utilizes Twitter (@greggrunberg), mobile phones, and social media for himself and his projects."



In his interview with Ben Parr, he discussed his use of Twitter, his social media projects, and of course, he talked about Heroes. Some of the highlights:

- How he came up with Yowzaa and where it’s headed in the next few months
- His very “eye-popping” website (the eyes follow your mouse, it’s creepy I tell you!)
- Why he uses Twitter, but doesn’t use Facebook (Facebook) at all (i.e. how social media, Perez Hilton, and Twitter might have helped get another season of Heroes)
- What is going to happen to his Heroes character Matt Parkman next season (hint: Sylar)
- His family, and dealing with Epilepsy
- What he believes is in social media’s future
- His biggest piece of advice for using social media: “Open Yourself Up” and “Don’t be afraid of social media, because it works.”

I especially like the way he uses his celebrity to publicize to his thousands of Twitter followers Band from TV

The band features various famous artists and athletes who donate all of their revenue form performances etc to their favourite charities. Here is their mission statement form their website. Check it out.

"Band From TV consists of actors, musicians, and athletes who have come together for a common goal; to raise money through music to help those in need. Finding a cure, helping children around the world, protecting our environment, providing educational materials or musical instruments, aiding in natural disasters, or standing up against domestic violence, we will do everything in our power to not only get the message out, but raise much needed funds. Our goal is to make it possible for the charities to have the resources they need do the work they set out to do. The list of organizations we support may change, but one thing remains constant, Band From TV is here to help."

Olbermann, Iran and "TWEET" power

I love Keith Olbermann. His coverage is smart, opinionated and revealing. Do we have a Canadian version? George Stroumboulopoulos? Jian Ghomeshi?

In this segment of his show Countdown, he discusses what is happening in Iran and the way Twitter is affecting the movement for greater democracy there. I have to admit, I have not followed this story very closely as I just couldn't get my hopes up to have them crash when the inevitable hammer of the Supreme Leader (and I'm not talking Diana Ross here) Ali Khamenei comes down.

Although the government had done its best to suppress communications by blocking the internet and silencing supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who insists that he had won the recent election, people have turned to Twitter to get the message of what's happening in the country out to the rest of the world.

There was a very interesting article in the New York Times on Monday titled: Social Networks Spread Defiance Online.

"A couple of Twitter feeds have become virtual media offices for the supporters of the leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi. One feed, mousavi1388 (1388 is the year in the Persian calendar), is filled with news of protests and exhortations to keep up the fight, in Persian and in English. It has more than 7,000 followers."

And a very amusing and insightful take on this phenomenon can be read on BoomTown: - Inane and Half-Baked Twitter Is the Forrest Gump of International Relations:

"Stupid is as stupid does, of course, but what it does illustrate quite smartly is that word of mouth–a concept as old as humanity–remains the most powerful way of distributing information."

“It is easy for Twitter feeds to be echoed everywhere else in the world. The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what make it so powerful.”

I have been a recent convert to Twitter. Like many, I just couldn't see the point of letting people know within a limit of140 characters what I was doing. To be honest, it's one of the applications of Facebook that I had the greatest problem with also. Unless your saving a life, writing the great Canadian novel or winning a lottery ticket, I'm just not that interested in hearing what you had for breakfast or that your shopping for shoes.

However, I have come to the epiphany that like so many other tools that we humans have at our disposal, social media applications like Facebook and Twitter can actually improve the way we communicate and do business. Through a continual flow of "small talk", friends and those that we follow (as in Twitter) can actually attain a sense of who we are by seeing and sharing our interests.

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Is the medium the message?

For those interested in the confluence of communications and technology, the following video lecture is very interesting.

I've been immersing myself in social networking lately, having earlier rejected it as an obsessive narcissistic compulsion better suited to geeks and high school girls. As in "Q the musical" internet is for porn. And I might add; texting for teenagers, and twitting, for birds.

I remember when it was said that technology would isolate us. That we would become a society that walked around like zombies staring blankly into space as MP3 helmets of music block out everything around us.

And yes, that does happen; I do it myself, especially when I walk between Berri and Amherst Streets to avoid panhandlers and meth rants.

But the more that I am submersed in this social media pool, the more I realize that communicating is a very basic human need; up there with breathing, eating, and fucking. That we may hyper evolve the tools, but we will always use them to do the very basic task of reaching out to others; be it one to one, one to many or as in the case of twitter, many to many.

The social network has actually been the most democratic communication evolution yet. Everyone has a voice and the power to control the message. I wonder what Marshall McLuhan would have thought of this?

Rather than a waste of time, applications such as Twitter when used beyond the "What are you doing?" question, has given people the medium to personally engage with people from all walks of life, of tweeting Presidents, CEO's of companies as well as their BFF.

This video gives dramatic examples of how the new technology has changed global communications and democratized the process of disseminating the message.

(Thanks to Peter Cashmore of Mashable for the link.)

Post this!

(found on Twitter:@egheitasean)

Love this. It reminds me of classic National Film Board animation.