Micro Persuasion: Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

Rubel calls attention to an Accenture study which shows the social technology adoption rate is plateauing for GenY. Is this a sign they’re losing interest or that they’re already connected enough?

“The use of social networking tools such as Facebook, blogs and even the online game World of Warcraft could improve business, a report based on the opinions of senior executives shows”…(read more on The West)

A recent article on Times Online points out that tech firm Cisco actively encourages their employees to get involved with social networking. The company is reported to have built their own social networking and collaboration platforms that they claim improves innovation and speeds product development. Cisco management, the article suggests, is unfazed by the possible loss of productivty that has lead to many companies implementing a blanket ban on social networking sites.

Such a ban, the article reports, may be a knee-jerk reaction by people who fail to understand the business benefits. The author points out that banning social networking may be inconsistent in that many companies presume to invade on the private lives of employees through the Internet bringing work to a person’s home – but the same companies have issues when people bring their private lives to work.

“Others make the point that bans on bringing one’s personal life into work time are a bit rich when companies now harness the internet to such effect that employees can never entirely escape from work.”

The article also points out that the conflict between social networking and employment predates the techhnology that brought with it social networking sites. It shows that social networking – company golf days for example – has been an important part of business life for a very long time.

I’m in the throws of reading Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail, a story of an Australian bush kangaroo – kidding, OK? – and got to thinking that a power law may exist in the world of social networking. Such a power law (1/x) may show up in the amount of time spent on SNS activity and the threat to a business as a result of SN activity may follow a similar power law. For example the threat to a business of the most dangerous post is twice as much as that of the next most threatening and three times that of the following etc.

Not sure if this will go anywhere but thought I’d jot it down anyway.

A report on Internetnews.com claims that IBM is merging business and social networking. Don’t do one or the other says Big Blue, do both.

IBM’s strategy places even more pressure on leaders and managers to wrap their heads around social networks and social software and formulate a meaningful strategy rather than waiting for their competitors to dictate the terms of engagement. Think back to 1995 when Microsoft switched their focus into making all their office productivity applications web-friendly. There’s nothing more certain than a similar effort occurring but this time it will be around enabling human interaction.

Managers who miss the boat may end up participating very heavily in the next round of corporate redundancies.

There appears to be little conflict between real estate and social networking in the real estate industry – or so it seems on the surface. According to a recent article real estate agents are jumping on the social networking band wagon in droves.

I wonder if there’s going to be some big train wrecks down the track as agents shift between firms and possibly make negative comments about current and past employers. And what of the potential for agents to over step the legislative mark without the knowledge of their principals.

One wonders if the genie, once out of the bottle, can ever be recaptured.

There appears to be a fair amount of confusion around what is meant when people refer to the term “social network/ing site”. For many the first response is to equate the term with sites such as Facebook and Myspace. Dana boyd makes this observation and points out that such a narrow-cast definition precludes other platforms of interaction such as blogs, wikis, and social bookmarking sites. Can flickr and Youtube, for example, be classified as social networking sites?

I would contend there’s a distinction between social networking per se, which can and does happen in real life, and social networking sites, social software, and collaborative software.

To give examples, social networking often takes place at a pub. You arrange to meet a friend, they bring along one of their friends, who you meet and with whom you form a life-long friendship. For me, a network can best be likened as a spiders web where threads connect and form paths to all other parts of the web. Meeting friends friend in this way creates a new connection and a new thread leading to other similar opportunities.

Boyd suggests that social networking emphasises the initiation of relationships and proposed an early definition of a social networking site that included mention of the ability of participants to interact with strangers. Certainly the meeting of strangers happens in a networking environment, but I would argue that social networking is very much driven by, or augmented by established relationships that encourage and enable the development of further relationship connections. Social networking, both on and off-line, is lubricated by a conducive environment.

Narrowing the definition down to “social network sites” Boyd points out that the term networking is problematic in that it indicates a much more active role of the initiation of new relationships between strangers than actually occurs on social network sites. Whilst new connections occur, she believes, the primary reason for people to be on a social network site is to maintain a relationship with people they already know. On most SNS’s, Boyd observes, a participants profile is usually supplemented by a display of a person’s contact or friends network; and it is amongst this group that most of the network activity occurs.

However, this argument also has it’s problems. Certainly on “social network sites” by which I refer here to as the likes of MySpace and Facebook, there is a level of passiveness to the activity of networking. There appears, from my experience to be little in the way of any active efforts to become acquainted with perfect strangers. However, to use these sites as the standard bearers, whilst understandable, would preclude others where activity has a very different nature.

As examples, sites such as RSVP, Adultfriendfinder, Xtube, and a host of other adult networking sites – where the active pursuit of new connections is the expectation rather than the exception – would be precluded from boyd’s narrow-cast definition of a “social network site”. Such a preclusion makes sense if what we are attempting to research are those sites where the networking is much more passive and benign. I would question the value of research, though, that failed to take into account these more assertive networking fora.

Going further with this problematic term of “network” or “networking” is the difficulties faced when we begin to consider the nature of a blog. Some blogs, such as Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist, and Darren Rowse’s Problogger, are heavily trafficked by a loyal readership who regularly contribute and debate via comments. The activity in which these people are engaged appear to be both in the nature of “networking”, as in people attempting to create new connections with other readers through interesting comments, and “network”, as in a network of bloggers.

Further still, there exist other platforms of collaboration and interaction, which create connections where none previously existed (with a nod and smile to dana boyd). Is it relevant for the sake of research purposes to exclude wikis and photo and video sharing sites from the field of focus? My instinct tells me no.

I’m still a long way from developing a definition, however I feel a sense that any definition that points to socially oriented human interaction on the Internet should necessarily be broad and inclusive. Only at the pointy end of the research might it be relevant to narrow the field down so as to achieve needed clarity and direction.

Watch out oldies, the schools of the future are on their way – to a social networking site in your lounge room.

A new service, Elgg, has developed an open source social networking platform that is targeted directly at the education market. As reported at Wired, the service allows users to create their own personal learning environment, complete with feeds from blogs and social bookmarking sites.

An exciting development is that, more than just knocking off the likes of Blackboard, Elgg is being looked at by a variety of businesses as a way of introducing SN as part of their operations.

So there’s some concern about the manner in which data is near-permanent. This not-so-apparent feature of our online activities on SN sites can leave reputations in tatters. The fear being pedaled around the popular media circles is that future employers will use SNS’s as a way to can a person’s budding career.

My earlier post today suggests that this fear is not one shared by many in the SN scene, with few being concerned about long-term problems caused by less than well thought out posts to profiles.

That however hasn’t stopped ReputationDefender who, for a fee, will apparently clean up the trail of destruction caused by pissy blogging and office party posts. Me thinks there’s a chance they’ll make some money tapping into the paranoia of a few.

Best of luck to them.

Here’s a few comments on an article from Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
London, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Singapore Vol 14(1): 13–20

Facebook’s Privacy Trainwreck
Exposure, Invasion, and Social Convergence
danah boyd
Harvard University and University of California-Berkeley, USA

Boyd argues that changes made to the public feed feature on Facebook have significanly altered the dynamic of what is viewed as private. She uses the example of a party conversation where one needs to shout to be heard only to find that everything suddenly goes quiet as you’re about to finish your sentence. What was a conversation protected in some way by the din of the surroundings, the need to be physically proximate, and the assessment that only those nearby could hear what was being said suddenly becomes a very public communication.

Boyd notes that a similar event happened when Facebook created the public feed and caused what seemingly were private moments and events – despite them being available if someone searched hard enough – into easily accessible public information. It is this disruption she suggests that is new in the digital world.

In the physical world we have become accustomed to ways to protect our privacy, notably walls, physical distance, volume of speech. However, Boyd points out that in a digital world these disappear and are replaced by search capabilities that make previously “private” information very public.

Privacy is all about control one has about information about the self, Boyd suggests. Information is private therefore, not because it is not known, but because it is carefully controlled. It is far more difficult to keep a secret then to not allow the information out at all. Some information, she opines, is only relevant in certain social settings, but Facebook’s public feed obliterated the context of this “grey”area information and disrupted the way in which people approached their privacy online.

This collapsing of social domains has resulted in what Boyd calls “social convergence” where previously discrete social contexts are brought together through technologies and digitisation. This convergence raises a number of questions, says Boyd, and significant concerns about the future of privacy as people deal with these converged domains without any form of social scripts.