Social life

I found this article on cnn.com on “The 12 most annoying types of Facebookers.” You can read it here and take the quiz to determine your catagory. I took the quiz and got this response: “Chances are you are a popular resident of Facebook whose updates are interesting to read. Keep posting!” I’d say the quiz is accurate!  Let me know what you think of this article, and please feel free to post your quiz results in this post’s comments.

Of course I found this article on my friend Sarah’s Facebook page. Thanks, SPP!

I found this blog post today that innumerates the top 100 social media sites available to businesses. I hope this is helpful to you! There are pages on here that I’ve never heard of–thanks Nextmark!

Here is the link: http://nextmark.typepad.com/blog/2009/07/top-100-b2b-social-media-cheat-sheet.html

I read this article on npr.org and wanted to share it, to show a great example of social media at work and making a difference in our sustainability footprint. Supporting local agriculture is a topic that our IB students sometimes explore in the classroom. This article is about Tim and Liz Young, who run Nature’s Harmony Farm in Elberton, Georgia, US. 

Tim Young says, “”While farm life is thought of as rural, remote and antiquated, technology makes it easy to reach out and connect with like-minded people. Doing so allows customers, other farmers and interested parties to comment, criticize, question and share their own experiences in ways that stimulate conversation, learning and passion.” Right on! 

You can read their blog here.

Last week, I attended the New York Social Media Roundtable event, “Social Media for Nonprofits.” The topics circulated around how to leverage social media to build communities around your nonprofit, and also to generate donations. I felt validated in our social media efforts here at the IB! Facebook is widely accepted as the best for nonprofits to crowd-source. There was not too much discussion on building private online communities; which is what we’re gearing up for here at the IB. But it was great to learn more about how other nonprofits have successfully engaged social media to deliver their messaging. There were also some fascinating figures on nonprofits raising money through microgiving from social media.

I came across this blog post by Zeb Dropkin: he breaks down the current social media tools and explains them clearly.  You can read this post here.

Also of interest, panelist Matthew Knell used the phrase, “transparent authentic relationships.” It is these relationships that enable a direct connection to the stakeholder, and give social networking tools their stickiness.

For more information on the roundtable, you can go their website to download notes from the event.

Last week, I attended Social Communications: The Case Studies - Conference and Roundtables at the CUNY Grad Center. Speakers included: Philip Mooney, Director of Heritage Communications at Coca-Cola, Allison O’Keefe Wright, VP Consumer Insight at MTV, and David Alston, VP of Marketing and Community at Radian6. 

Philip Mooney’s blog is an narrative of Coca-Cola built upon its history, called “Coca-Cola Conversations.” He posts various old photos of people drinking Coca-Cola, images of bottles, recipes, and the evolution of the logo. I think this is an excellent example of how companies can build stories and therefore strengthen their communities around their products. I don’t even drink Coca-Cola, and I really like this blog. This blog helps Coca-Cola to position itself as a fixture in American history: its well done in layout, scope, and content. Here at the IB, I’ve been trying to gather our stories from around the world, through the 40 years that IB has been around. It’s been quite a challenge, but this is the way that the IB will be able to best connect its message to its community and beyond. It’s very exciting to me that we have so much to share; I just need help finding it. PS: “Coca-Cola Conversations” receives about 4000 hits per week, and they haven’t promoted this blog at all; it’s been pure word of mouth.

Some of the other highlights of the day include Allison O’Keefe Wright, talking about MTV’s private online community, MTVips (named by its members). MTVips has about 300 members, in the 18-22 age demographic. Allison says their interaction and feedback has been invaluable to them in terms of marketing, research and production. Not only that, but the members feel a personal investment in their opinions and their impact upon viewer experience. It’s been working extremely well for them. She said the success of MTV hinges on their consumer; they are constantly changing their approach to be completely current with their consumer. We are building a private online community here at the IB, and it’s extremely helpful for me to see what works for other companies. 

In terms of social media as a tool for business, David Alston of Radian6 provided a clear and concise demonstration of the risks and rewards in social media.  I recommend viewing his presentation here. He listed some of the reasons for a company to put off social media as: worried about ROI, fear of failing, unmeasurable, and not enough customers using social media yet. He asked, “What is the return on ignoring?” He made the analogy of a person standing outside of a company’s office, shouting complaints through a blowhorn.  He asks, would you go down there and try to diffuse the problem? Or would you ignore it? Most likely, one would go talk to this person. That is what social media allows to do. Building communities creates a network of people that will not only promote your company, but also defend it. 

For the IB, we only became part of the conversation eight months ago when we launched our fan page on Facebook. In the past two months, we are now on Twitter. And Social life, along with a few others, mark our foray into external blogging. For the IB, it’s just the beginning. The more we strengthen our online networks, the stronger our community will become and this will only enhance the experience of our stakeholders. 

I also attended a great roundtable, “Turning Participation & Passion Into Profit,” hosted by Sandra Fathi and Leslie Campisi of Affect Strategies. Some of the other attendees voiced concerns of social media as unmeasurable. As Sandra said, what could be less measurable than traditional advertising? With the IB’s fan page on Facebook, we can track all of our interactions, what our fans like, our number of visitors, and demographics on the fans themselves (age, gender, and geographical location!). And that is just our Facebook page. 

Let’s emphasize one more point from the conference: It’s not the tools. Social media has changed business and it’s here to stay. There will always be a new tool, and what matters is how we use it.

My friend Alex left New York last fall for the Peace Corps. He’s stationed in rural Kenya and his project is to help start a library. There is an actual space demarcated, “Library,” in the local high school, but there are no books. Alex spearheaded this project, found a partner to organize the logistics and shipping of the books, and his goal is to raise $5,500. He is about half-way there, and it’s only been about two months.

Micro-giving’s allure is instant gratification. Alex’s site on Change.org has a goal chart with the amounts raised and to go. Once one donates, his or her name, location, and personal message posts to the bottom of the page. As soon as one gives, the goal meter increases. It’s accretion in real time, and the books for the library are not far off.

At times, the vagueness of non-profit donations can occlude potential donations. One might be less inclined to give a smaller donation to a larger, nonspecific cause. A sum like Alex’s $5,500 seems achievable, and the goal of bestowing books upon a library that has none feels tangible, even from thousands of miles away. This is the power of micro-giving.

Alex told a story: a rural community in Kenya needs books for their library. And if some of us donate just a little, we will collectively give this to them. This is the changing non-profit business model in action!

Many academics and aficionados of William Shakespeare find it frustrating that the recorded biographical facts of his life are so scant. In Jonathan Bate’s new book, Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Bates waxes prolix with conjecture, over the course of 496 pages. (The page length is of interest when juxtaposed to Bill Bryson’s Shakespeare: The World as a Stage, a mere 208). Due to the dearth of biographical fact, Bate takes the biography-of-the-mind approach. He traverses through close reads of Shakespeare’s texts to make suppositions on the mind of the man himself. The reader seeks to know William Shakespeare, to locate his personal voice, in order to understand him better. Bates performs ventriloquism, bequeathing Shakespeare a voice that readers will want to hear. In this way, the “voice” of Shakespeare, in spite of being lent by a biographer, can become a source of validation to the reader who wants access to this “voice.” In this way, one may better understand Shakespeare’s life and works.

Allowing one to speak: I observed this most recently this past weekend. I attended a poetry contest award ceremony in my hometown, in honor of my good friend who passed away three years ago. This poetry contest calls for poem submissions from students ages 5-18. What was important, in this community center on a humid Sunday afternoon, was not the awards bestowed upon each age category. It was bequeathing each young poet a platform to read his or her poem. This validation—reading their poems to an audience of parents, friends, local journalists, and community members—was all that these children needed to feel a sense of pride and purpose through writing. The awards were completely irrelevant.

To me, this is the strength of the IB’s foray into social media. As soon as we enabled and encouraged comments on our fan page, we have received an explosion of interactivity. We give the IB community a place to speak, and herein lies the strength of what we can offer: to show the community that we listen, and we care what you think.

Back in September of last year, we launched our official fan page on Facebook. Our board requested that the IB have an official presence on social networking pages. The demand from our stakeholders was evident; there were already 30+ unofficial IB groups on Facebook, as well as other blogs and networks to create a platform for IB dialogue. After some research into our best options, we decided to go with a fan page on Facebook, rather than developing pages on multiple social networking sites. We wanted to be able to contact the IB global community in the broadest sense—reaching all of our stakeholder groups—and convene members despite international locations and age demographics.

The concept behind the IB fan page is to service all members of the IB community. Though I manage this page, we own it collectively. I began to garner content from all of our regions, and I realized that there was a greater challenge in this process: with so many stories to tell about the IB and its people, how do we begin?

Taking a multimedia approach, I used all of the photos and videos that were available to us. Our videographer had just finished editing the film from our videos of the 2008 North America Regional Conference. All of the testimonials from speakers and attendees helped to tell some of the great stories about the IB. But this only represents a tiny fragment of the North American community. We received another great response from our Volunteers. We sent out an email to our Volunteer listserv, asking them to send their photo with their school and location. In less than two weeks, we received 212 volunteer photos! I was thrilled with the positive response. Some volunteers sent in a photos of themselves with their families, such as Kirsten Justice, from Raleigh, North Carolina, US. Others sent in photos from vacation, like Carleda Williams.  Or with their pets, like Grant Miller from Vancouver. Tim Rawley sent us a photo of himself hiking in the Rockies! We began to build a narrative. Here are the albums: uno, dos, tres, y quatro.

The challenge all along has been: how do I reach out there and help others to tell their stories, especially to our global members with whom I may have limited contact? At the IB, we initially took a little bit of caution in allowing fans to comment on our Wall and discuss topics on the page. We were not quite sure which direction this could take. Would fans be excited to talk about the IB? Would they want to share their personal challenges, experiences, and successes? After about two months, I knew we were delivering a fair ammount of content to our fans. But the page was missing something. It wasn’t “sticky” enough. It didn’t have that grab to make fans want to return to the page on a regular basis. Finally, back in December, I enabled the Wall and Discussion Board.

The interactivity on the page so far has been great! This has opened up so many possibilites for the IB connecting our global community. More thoughts on the IB on Facebook and the new fan page layout, soon.

This week’s front page article of New York Magazine was a feature on the issues of ownership, privacy, and sustainability of Facebook. In “Do You Own Facebook? Or does Facebook own you?” Vanessa Grigoriadis discusses the recent response on Facebook to the new terms of service (that is, Facebook owns the rights to any information, photos, and videos submitted to them, even after one deletes her account).

And?

To answer Grigoriadis’ title question,  it’s neither. It’s a collective, and I think looking at Facebook and other social networking sites through the lens of ownership is trite, predictable, and irrelevant. One could go into a discussion of what we own and what we do not. Last month, I was sitting on the subway and a couple who was standing nearby took their cell phone and snapped a camera phone picture of me. I responded with a puzzled, mildly miffed facial expression. Was I going to stand up and grab their phone, and demand the photo be deleted? No. There was nothing I could do. The issue of photos and privacy on Facebook is not all that dissimilar. On several occasions, I have been around friends and one may say, “I don’t have Facebook!” And another replies, “Doesn’t matter! There are already tons of photos of you on it!” Facebook is a service and it’s one choice to have a profile and submit photos. Facebook’s claims to ownership are for their legal protection. As this is still a free service to all users, we elect to use it and must accept these terms.

However, Grigoriadis makes a one or two observations of note in her article. With mention of status updates, she writes, ”This micro-knowledge of others has been termed ‘ambient awareness’ by sociologists, a new kind of social proprioception or ethereal limb.” She does not expand on this term or what it means for Facebook and its users.  What is the significance of ambient awareness? Who do we connect with on social networking sites, and why?

Why is it enough to feel connected to a person if you know he or she had a soy latte that morning? Or that he or she is on her way to Patagonia? How and why is this enough? Sometimes we only want to know these minor details. (I would argue that these small details reveal one’s character in a much more significant way, though that’s for another post.) In the recent BBC article, “What’s the ideal number of friends?”, leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar, states that one can have about 150 “friends.” However, there is an “inner circle of five ‘core’ people and an additional layer of 10.”  In person relationships, serious, face to face conversations—we can only have these connections with so many people. And for the rest, it’s enough to know that they are heading home for the day to make farfalle and watch The Office.  Ambient awareness allows us to sustain a connection with the rest of our acquaintances.

For the International Baccalaureate on Facebook, it is enough for us to connect our community with our status updates and photo albums. It is not a question of single ownership, but a collectivity of shared knowledge and experiences. I provide page status updates with the goal of having our fans reply with a comment. If the International Baccalaureate can engage our stakeholders with an ambient awareness as they spend time on Facebook, we can only enhance and strengthen our relationship with our community.

In The New Yorker this week is an article on the affects of solitary confinement on the human psyche. Atul Gawande writes in “Hellhole”: “Without sustained social interaction, the human brain my become as impaired as one that has incurred traumatic injury.” While Gawande cites examples of hostage accounts, he moves into a discussion of solitary confinement as a just form of imprisonment.

Gawande gleans examples of social interaction as a necessity to brain function and one’s emotional and physical health. In the US, specifically, we have a near ubiquitous problem of suburban isolation. We have a problem of the destruction of local communities, exacerbated (and also perhaps the root cause) by the automobile. The affect on the individual began to be interrogated by psychologists, sociologists, fiction writers and visual artists starting in the 1950s. At present, the problem of isolation is still accute.

Most of us do not experience isolation in the extreme form of solitary confinement. I think these issues emerge as we harness social media, as people of all ages are now on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter allow one to feel connected to others, and a simple exchange of comments can be enough to ameliorate one’s own temporary tinges of loneliness throughout the day. The success of social media is that it hinges itself on personal validation.

It is from this viewpoint that I see the advances in social media as positive, and I look to ways to make this a productive endeavor for the community members of the International Baccalaureate. One of the most fascinating things about the IB is that a DP student in Rochester, New York can be learning the same lesson as a DP student in Calcutta, India. Our challenge as an organization is to embrace this global relationship and connect or stakeholders, worldwide.