I came across this great SlideShare presentation today by Graeme Wood on the future of social media. It covers a wide range of topics at a high level and references the thoughts and ideas of people like Gorden Moore, Kevin Kelly, Chris Anderson, Tomi Ahonen, and Seth Godin. Be sure to view the slides and read the accompanying text.
Clay Shirky is one of my favorite commentators on the social and economic implications of the Internet. His book “Here Comes Everybody” is a must read. He recently gave the keynote speech at the Web 2.0 Expo in New York called “Information Overload is Filter Failure”.
Shirky’s take is that information overload has been around since Gutenberg invented the printing press. What has changed with the Internet is when you filter for quality. In traditional media, this filtering for quality is done by the publisher. Whether it’s a printing press or a television tower, it costs a lot of money to get started and stay in operation. To stay profitable, a publisher needs to be responsible for filtering for quality.
With the Internet, we have entered what Shirky calls post-Gutenberg economics. The cost of producing anything has fallen through the floor and you don’t have to filter for quality before you publish. The filter for quality has moved way downstream – to the user. This has helped fuel the exponential growth of information on the web. Information overload is here to stay and not only are our tools to filter information inadequate, our social systems to handle both inbound and outbound information is broken as well.
As college web professionals, we need to focus on creating credible content that is easy easy to find. As Peter Morville stated in “Ambient Findability” , findability is more important than usability. You can’t use what you can’t find.
Here is the video of Clay Shirky’s keynote at the 2008 Web 2.0 Expo:
Matthew Levy and Rachel Beanland did an excellent job of covering the Web 2.0 Expo on both Twitter and at their web site He Types She Talks. Mike wrote this great summary of Shirky’s speech and the implications for higher ed. I’m planning on attending the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fransisco in November. It should be quite a show.
Over the past month I have returned to Twitter. Previously I had been using Jaiku, mainly because of their channel feature. But with so many of my colleagues using Twitter, it was time to make the switch.
I have been amazed at the value Twitter has provided for me professionally. The one thing I didn’t expect was how it creates social capital and strengthens the relationships I have with my professional peers. I’ve learned more about people in a month of following them on Twitter than I have in years of following their blogs. Twitter really lets me see the human side of people that I don’t necessarily see from blogs and other social media.
I am now thinking about how Twitter might be used to augment our student blogging efforts. Our main goal with our student blogs is to give prospective students an authentic view of life at our university. These blogs work best when students identify with the bloggers at a personal level. Twitter can do this better than traditional blogs. So I’m thinking of asking our bloggers to use Twitter as well. Their tweets would have to be relevant for prospective students, but I see great potential.
One challenge is that not many high school students are using Twitter, but I expect that will change. In the meantime I can pull the RSS feed from Twitter directly on to the individual student blogs.
So what do you think? Is using Twitter to augment student blogs a good idea?
Here’s another excellent video on how the Internet is changing society.
I particularly like the following quote:
In the past, you were what you owned.
Now, you are what you share.
Put another way, we are seeing a move from hoarding information to sharing information. Traditionally, those in power held onto information because knowledge was power. The connected age reverses this. Now sharing knowledge is power.
As always, let me know what you think.
The Cluetrain Manifesto remains one of my favorite books. Written in 1999, I still consider the message very timely. Doc Searls recently spoke at a conference that discussed the relevance of Cluretrain as it approaches 10 years.
Here are his presentation slides,
I recommend anyone interested in Cluetrain watch the video. The 38 minutes is time well spent. Searls talk provides great insight into the history of the book. He believes that advertising as we know it will die. The Cluetrain was a rant against BS, and he is concerned that this basic advertising paradigm continues today. His takes on Facebook (starting at the 22 minute mark) is that now BS gets personal. On Facebook, you’re not just a face, you’re a target. It’s still about selling eyeballs to advertisers, and ultimately this model will fail.
The 2008 Horizon report was recently released and as always contains valuable information on the latest technology trends impacting college campuses. The Horizon Report is a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the Educause Learning Initiative and identifies emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching and learning. As in previous years, the report identifies six emerging technologies that will likely enter the mainstream within three adoption horizons:
One Year or Less
Two to Three Years
Four to Five Years
Among the critical challenges outlined in the report, one really struck a chord with me:
“It is critical that the academic community as a whole embrace the potential of technologies and practices like those described in this report. Experimentation must be encouraged and supported by policy.” (emphasis mine).
And finally, the report lists seven metatrends that extend out beyond the five year horizon:
I was happy to see that this report maps well to my ideas about the top web trends. And be sure to check out the report’s extensive use of del.icio.us tags for additional information.