Advice: MyTwitBook – a parent’s guide to social media – Part One

Part One

Baby-boomers, Gen Y, Gen X, Gen *whatever* – one thing I know for sure is that the generations are slowly becoming separated by the tyranny of new technology – more so by the pace at which new technology evolves.

• 30 years ago, I was the ‘digital clock king’ in my family – the only person able to navigate the weird button-presses required to move the time forward and back at daylight savings.
• 20 years ago, I was the ‘computer-wizard’ – the young adult who everyone in the neighbourhood turned to to figure out their new-fangled Macs and PCs.
• 10 years ago, I was the mobile phone wizard, the internet guru, and the ‘web address memoriser’.
• And in the last 5 years, I’ve been keeping up to date with more than a dozen technologies/programming languages; been using about 4 or 5 different communications tools for business and for personal use; and I’ve been meeting people online in well over 50 or more online communities and social media networks.

If you’re keen, and if you’re able, the pace of technology has allowed people to keep up to date with others from around the globe, instantly, 24×7.

The benefits of almost limitless knowledge, efficient communication and speed of response are enourmous, but the downsides of the pace of technology are equally enourmous:

• Have we lost the ability to talk to people face to face?
• Does all communication from here on in have to be online?
• How do we control what’s said about us online – and who polices it?

These are some of the issues facing the internet in general, and social media in particular.

For parents, the issue is two-fold: 1) where are my children going on the internet? and 2) what harm/good my children be able to do?

So, what is Socal Media?

A great definition of social media is: “A category of sites that are based on user participation and user-generated content”.

That is, sites on the internet that rely on people to *be* the reason for the site. As opposed to an ecommerce type site, which exists to sell goods or services, or an information/news type site, which exists to inform/entertain, a social media site exists to connect people, and to allow the users to interact with each other via text, images or video, for the purpose of creating a ‘community’ or ‘network’.

There’s many and different variations in the social media theme, and sure enough, this advice will be out of date within months/weeks/days, but the essential component is the *social* aspect. Anyone who would have enjoyed chatting, gossiping or just ‘hanging out’ in real life would most likely find a social media network that they’d enjoy.

A truism of the internet is that you’ll always find a group of people who share your exact same (and slightly eccentric) passions. Social media then allows for that group of people to share their passions (yes – even paper-clip collectors!)

Who are the big players?

SMS

Yep – the perennial favourite. In short 160-character bursts, you can have the most stilted and abbreviated ‘conversation’ possible with someone, 25c at a time.

Reach for the phone? Nope. Send 5 SMSs, and make sure that your last text asks one more question, forcing the other person to reply.

This is one area of social media that even *I* don’t get – why people constantly reach for the most expensive way of communicating ever invented. I do not know. To send this 10,000 character article via SMS, for example, would take 63 SMSs, and would cost around $16, if at 25c per text. Ouch.

MySpace

myspace.com is/was the first big mover in social media. The site lets people create their own page, and share their interests. You can link to other myspace people as ‘friends’, thereby establishing relationships and networks. The initial growth in myspace.com caused lots of problems, showing up as technical glitches and hacks that made it a little less than refined, however, it’s still strong in the under 25’s age range, as it’s very easy to get used to, and the page can be changed graphically to suit the user’s personality.

The blogosphere

The ‘blogosphere’ refers to the world of blogs and blogging. Blogs are/were online diaries (weB LOGs), that grew into more fully-grown information sites and written word content. Most of the time, it’s a one-way communication – just like a newspaper mostly publishes information, but doesn’t insist upon much communication back in the other direction. Real-world letters to the editor take the shape of ‘comments’ on a blog, whereby visitors to the site can respond back to the author/s of the blog, and take part in a delayed-response, post-it note style conversation.

Blogs are a great way of promoting a community around a person, business or topic. They’re generally long-form in the written word, with articles/stories/information of decent length, and they generally invite some form of community to take shape, but a fairly passive one. The inmates can’t run the asylum, so to speak!

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Next month in Part Two, I’ll outline the other big players: Facebook, Twitter, massively-multiplayer-online-games, and the biggest one of all: the mobile phone…

Until then, have a lovely Christmas!

AB out