Social media again

It's funny how the same conversations happen every time we talk about social media on Black Belt. Some people not familiar with terminology, some using social media inside/outside work, questions about 'are these now core skills for internal communicators and will we fall behind if we don't have them?'

Part of me agrees with David Ferrebee when he questions whether social media is all a bit over-hyped. Give me a couple of sessions at a conference and I find it quite interesting. By the time I get to the fourth, I'm thinking 'give it a rest'.  If I see blogs getting dominated by non-stop social media debates, I stop visiting for a while. Do I think it's worth thinking about? Absolutely. But there are plenty of other things that tax my brain on a daily basis.

Having said that, I don't think I've made the effort to find out enough about it myself. Being the 'ooh look! Someone I like has sent me an email and asked me to join something!' type, I instantly signed up to Fiona's invitation yesterday to join Facebook. When I actually went onto Facebook. (for the first time ever) it reminded me how bad I am with networking sites. My Linked-in profile is only there because someone asked me to join ... and the only people on there are the ones that look me up and send invitations - I've never done anything with it myself. So a) I could probably be using it for things and i'm not and b) I just end up looking like Billy no mates!

I've just challenged the Black Belt gang to take a couple of actions to start them playing around in the social media sphere. First off is to post a comment on this blog. Second is to add themselves to my new facebook profile (or whatever it's called. Which means I'd better get somebody to show me later how the heck to set up my OWN profile and how I invite them to join it! I felt at least slightly better when I referred to Facebook and everyone in the room said "what???"!)

I also promise to start adding Technorati tags to my posts. I reckon that's enough of a social media education for me for one day. But if anyone wants to set me a not TOO complicated techie task to try, I promise to try them out and report back on progress. If a techno-phobe like me can do it, anyone can...

Sue

Comments

[Alex Garforth]

So Ms Dewhurst, you've finally come around to Facebook thinking. Right, well here's a challenge for you... I think it is important for you to develop your Facebook profile. Add all your information, Add some pictures of a recent event/outing, include your favourite quote and then poke someone! You will also need to find out what it means to poke someone... easy peasy lemon squeezy!

[Liam]

...but when Sue asked you how to give someone a 'poke' you wouldn't tell her!

[Alex Manchester]

My task Sue, is that I'd like to see Technorati Tags and categories on all your posts!

[Sue]

Alex M - just learnt how to do categories & technorati tags and sorted for this post. The good news is, it was really easy! I'll work my way through my other posts.

Alex G - Ahem, yours is going to take me a bit longer. I needed that lesson on Facebook that we didn't have time for yesterday. Expect a phone call!

Also have to humbly admit I have never downloaded photos from my camera to my laptop so even adding photos will be interesting. But thanks to a quick lesson from Mark Darby on that one a while ago, I know how to do it, so no excuse. (Except I hate having my photograph taken so there are v.few photos of me about ... but that's a good old-fashioned non-social media challenge!)

[Liam FitzPatrick]

Just read an interesting article by Sir Bob Worcester, founder of MORI in which he says:
- only 6 in 10 people have internet access at home
- that penetration has slowed dramatically (there are only 2% more people on the net at home or work than there were 18 months ago)
- that it remains a middle and upper class phenomenon (penetration in social classes D&E is as little as 37%)

My reaction - it sounds as if we should be careful of the hype. Maybe New Social Media has already lived up to its promise - perhaps this is as good as it gets...

Liam

[David Ferrabee]

I should be careful about how I talk about this, seeing as I am talking about it a lot at conferences and running a Melcrum course on it in June.
There's a lot of hype and Liam's stats are real. Let's not pretend it will find a cure for all known diseases or bring about world peace.
But the idea of 'community' online where people get referrals, share opinions and learn about stuff is not too far fetched.
And I find it is possible to do that and still go outside, raise a family and lead a relatively normal life.
I don't think you'll have to learn this stuff for much longer. Imagine how many web pages there would be if we had to know how to programme HTML. It'll get easier to do by the day.
P.S. I'm on FaceBook, MySpace, Second Life and LinkedIn... but I don't have any friends in any of them! (Not enough time spent online clearly.)

[Liam]

Thanks David for a note of sanity!

My take is that blogs etc will talk most about new social media because the people who use blogs are interested in that sort of stuff. We shouldn't automatically assume that they are the vanguard of a wider social movement...I think time will tell on this one.

And I'm old enough to remember the predictions of the 1980's that we'd all work at home by the year 2000. Although many people don't go to an office every day, the desire to maintain human contact is too overpowering. Managers want to see their people, employees want to sit next to their friends...

Remember what happened with CB radios? Once everyone got over the technology they realised they didn't actualy want to talk to some sweaty fat bloke with a 'handle' or some giggly teenager with a David Cassidy fixation....

Oh no... I've turned into a grumpy old man....