Will Blackboard be the new Twitter?

Forget E-Mail: New Messaging Service Has Students and Professors Atwitter - Chronicle.com:

"Blackboard plans to add a Twitter-like messaging tool to its course-management system, which is used at hundreds of colleges around the country. The company recently announced plans to acquire NTI Group, a company that sells text-message notification systems to colleges for use in emergencies. NTI's systems don't have all the features of Twitter, but they could be used in similar ways."

Facebook, Grades, and Media Hype Hype - Chronicle.com

Facebook, Grades, and Media Hype Hype - Chronicle.com:

"A researcher at Ohio State University has found that students who use Facebook reported earning lower grade-point averages than nonusers of the social-networking service. But the researcher, Aryn C. Karpinski, said in an interview with The Chronicle that she did not have enough data to determine whether Facebook use causes students to do poorly in their studies, despite a string of media reports that she says overstate her findings."

It is understandable that the researcher, Ms. Karpinski, is frustrated. It seems that the media, and others, want to be able to jump to conclusions about Fb and other SNSs. There is the sense that as an application or as a tool, it must be for time wasting and non-academic-work related activities.
Eszter Hargittai writes in a posting on Crooked Timber that

based on data about 1,060 first-year students at the University of Illinois, Chicago collected on a paper-pencil survey in Winter, 2007 (data set described in detail here), I find no relationship between whether someone uses Facebook and self-reported GPA (collected in categories, not in specific grade-point average terms). Additionally, I also have data on number of times the respondent used a social networking site the day before taking the survey and there is no correlation between that measure and grades either.
It is also worth noting that an important finding of my study was how Facebook use is not randomly distributed among participants (e.g., parental education, race, ethnicity predicted adoption) so it’s helpful to look at the relationship of various factors such as grades (or whatever else) to Facebook usage while controlling for other variables.
There are lots of reasons why one may or may not find a relationship between Facebook use and grades. I won’t get into that here, it could make for a very long essay. The point of this post is mainly to suggest a careful approach to what we see in the press and at conferences.

Searching for Bruce Sterling : Bad at Sports

Mike Rohde, Sketchnotes captured on-site and live in a Moleskine pocket sketchbook while attending SXSW Interactive, March 13-17, 2009 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.

Searching for Bruce Sterling : Bad at Sports:

"Note too that Rohde’s notes have Sterling saying, “connectivity will be an indicator of poverty rather than an indicator of wealth,” and not connectivity = poverty."

Note on the previous post.

Let Them Eat Tweets

The Medium - Let Them Eat Tweets - Why Twitter Is a Trap - NYTimes.com:

"Where once it was “hypnotic” and “mesmerizing” (words often used to describe Twitter) to read about a friend’s fever or a cousin’s job complaints, today the same kind of posts, and from broader and broader audiences, seem . . . threatening. Encroaching. Suffocating. Twitter may now be like a jampacked, polluted city where the ambient awareness we all have of one another’s bodies might seem picturesque to sociologists (who coined “ambient awareness” to describe this sense of physical proximity) but has become stifling to those in the middle of it."

Again the the images of the urban street, of poverty, homelessness, wandering lost in the crowd surface in the description.

As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief, as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den), but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid—as that ebony to which has been likened the style of Tertullian.
The wild effects of the light enchained me to an examination of individual faces; and although the rapidity with which the world of light flitted before the window prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each visage, still it seemed that, in my then peculiar mental state, I could frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of long years. (Poe, "The Man of the Crowd")

And in the last paragraph of the story, the narrator describes the man he has been following who seeks to be surrounded always by the crowd:

It was something even more intense than despair that I then observed upon the countenance of the singular being whom I had watched so pertinaciously. Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D—— Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid the momently increasing confusion, did I persist in my pursuit of the stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and fro, and during the day did not pass from out the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. ‘The old man,’ I said at length, ‘is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. (Poe, "The Man of the Crowd")

Facebook and MySpace users 'fed up with spam marketing messages

Media | guardian.co.uk:

"Research by the IAB also suggested that despite the rush by brands to tap into the potential of websites such as Facebook and MySpace, the reality is that users are turned off by marketing tactics.
Only 5% of those surveyed said they had signed up to a social networking profile set up or sponsored by a brand.
The report also found that 12% of those surveyed do not like the fact that other people can monitor online activity on websites such as MySpace and Facebook. The survey concluded that this suggested that users were not particularly aware of the privacy functions that can be set to limit what can be seen."

As the space of SNSs becomes increasingly populated by advertisers and spam dealers, the self-defensiveness of users will rise, as well as their resentment about intrusions into what they see as their private space, or the space of their social network.
On the other hand joining groups set up by brands is quite a lot like joining a group of people who support a cause--it is more a badge of alignment tacked on to one's profile than something that requires one to actually do something. Or am I wrong?
And, this clamour of voices from the margins of the page will make it more difficult for other useful developments to emerge. So, for example, teachers who wish to find a way to sue SNSs to reach students where they are will be just another voice in the crowd, indistinguishable from marketers. This is a worry even if teachers are offering something of value:

However, the survey, carried out by research firm Opinion Matters for the IAB, found that 28% of social networkers were happy to join a new group if it offered exclusive content.
"Despite its popularity this study shows that respect for the user is just as important in social media, users will not respond to spam or irrelevant advertising," said the IAB senior marketing manager, Amy Kean.

Does there come a point where there is just too much noise in the channel for valuable messages to get through?

Twitter Demographics

Twitter Traffic Explodes...And Not Being Driven by the Usual Suspects!:

"Reuters reporter Alexei Oreskovic recently authored an interesting blog post about the demographics of Twitter users. What he discovered was that 18-24 year olds, the traditional social media early adopters, are actually 12 percent less likely than average to visit Twitter (Index of 88). It is the 25-54 year old crowd that is actually driving this trend. More specifically, 45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30 percent more likely."

What Twitter does for people my age is clearly different from what Facebook does for the 18-24 age bracket. It is interesting that Fb is seeking to become more like Twitter in some respects doubtless to please the people in the older age brackets--not to please those who are still undergrads. Can Fb be all things to all people? Does it want to be?

Facebook usage stats

Facebook now accounts for one third of all online social networking time | Media | guardian.co.uk:

"The latest comScore data is good news for Facebook, ranking the site as the sixth most popular website in the world with 275 million unique users each month. That exceeds the 200 million user mark that Facebook recently made public, but regardless of different metrics the trends are interesting here.

Facebook now accounts for 4.1 minutes of every 100 minutes we spend online, which is a sign that we are using the site more deeply - or just getting lost because of that new design. The site accounts for more than 30% of all time spend on social networking sites, up from just over 12% a year earlier."

Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook's Future - BusinessWeek

Sheryl Sandberg on Facebook's Future - BusinessWeek:

On the questions about Facebook's business strategy

It's a really simple answer, which is that our business is advertising. We're not waiting to find our business. We found it, and it's actually working very well.

Keep this in mind. Fb is not about serving the social needs of its users, it is about finding ways to use the social to sell things to its users. But, who are academics who want to use Fb to connect with students? Are they "Friends"--part of the social network? Or, are they just other advertisers, in search of capturing eyeballs, of selling something to the real clients--whose attention is or wants to be elsewhere?

Me Media

Me Media: The New Yorker:

"Ultimately, though, the success of sites like MySpace and Facebook may have less to do with the opportunities they provide for self-expression than with peer pressure. Once Facebook is available, many students feel compelled to join simply because everybody else is using it. “I tried to hold out and go against the flow,” Cal Nannes, a junior at Davidson College, in North Carolina, said. “But so many of my friends were members that I finally gave in.” Many Facebook users also admit that they tailor their profiles to win the approval of their peers. “I want to seem self-aware, but not a pretentious asshole,” Matt Morello, a Yale graduate who logs on to Facebook about a dozen times a day, wrote in an e-mail. He described how simply listing his favorite music became an agonizing task: “I never used to update this, thinking it was just too fraught a category (like Favorite Books still is, unless there’s some joke to make). I’m a musician: what I play and listen to has always been an important part of my identity, and it’s only fairly recently that I’ve developed the confidence to say, you know, I like this, and I don’t really care if you don’t. So what’s there now?"

A passage from John Cassidy's "Me Media", an account of the origins and development of Facebook, combined with some reflections--like this--on what it all means. Peer pressure to join, and to join one needs to create a representation of oneself.
Nicholas Carr, also writes about this anxiety of creating this online existence "avatar anxiety"

Your online self ... is entirely self-created, and because it determines your identity and social standing in an internet community, each decision you make about how you portray yourself - about which facts (or falsehoods) to reveal, which photos to upload, which people "to friend," which bands or movies or books to list as favorites, which words to put in a blog - is fraught, subtly or not, with a kind of existential danger. And you are entirely responsible for the consequences as you navigate that danger. You are, after all, your avatar's parents; there's no one else to blame. So leaving the real world to participate in an online community - or a virtual world like Second Life - doesn't relieve the anxiety of self-consciousness; it magnifies it. You become more, not less, exposed.

(Nicholas Carr -- The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock's avatar)

Clara Shih - The Facebook Era - About the Book

Clara Shih - The Facebook Era - About the Book:

"The book asserts that Facebook messages, pokes, and wall posts represent a new form of more casual communication (just like email is more casual than a phone call) and have made it socially acceptable to have more casual, lower-commitment relationships with a greater number of people."

This I think is a very interesting assertion, and it may be true.