Fade to Play

Last June I gave a presentation for the e-strategy town hall at my university on Facebook which I subsequently blogged about. I provided a number of tips and suggestions for university administrators, staff, and professors regarding how Facebook could be used for academic or research purposes.

I provided a number of examples of incoming UBC students that had created Facebook groups (e.g. UBC 2001) as an information space to share and discuss relevant issues (e.g. what classes to take, what their residence would be like, etc.) with other students. These grassroots initiatives build on the wisdom of crowds concept prevalent in web 2.0 technology.

According to an article entitled “News Feed Update: Universities sign on to Facebook“, in the Globe and Mail, a number of Canadian universities (e.g. Mount Allison University) have launched Facebook groups with the goal of recruiting students.

Simon Behrens is a student in Germany, hoping to come to New Brunswick’s Mount Allison University next year. When he arrives, he’ll have plenty of connections. He already has 263 friends.

Mr. Behrens is a member of Mount Allison Class of 2012, a Facebook group for prospective students that is up and running long before any bags are packed by next year’s freshman class. That’s because it was created by an existing Mount Allison student who works closely with the school’s admissions staff. Besides the Facebook group, there are student-made videos on YouTube and student blogs, commissioned and paid for by the university.

It would be interesting to see how effective these campaigns on Facebook are. Although students are on Facebook, is it still viewed as a fun, social space for one’s friends or is it perceived acceptable to have universities creating a presence there as well? In addition, are user-generated spaces and social networks such as YouTube and blogs being widely used by other Canadian universities beside Mount Allison? What other digital avenues are bing explored? Are there examples of a 2012 twitter group or 2012 Flickr group being created to recruit and assist incoming students? What are the downsides to these new forms of digital recruitment when the rules and conventions for using them are still not fully developed?

Mr. Sheridan-Jonah at Mount Allison points out that even without an official effort the university is well represented on popular Internet sites. Getting involved in a Facebook group allows staff from his office to answer students questions directly and correct misinformation. The only downside he sees with the growth of such sites is students’ increasing tendency to rely on each other for information, rather than contacting schools as they did in the past.

Relevance: According to Facebook Stats, there are nearly 2 million new users signing up each week around the world. Of the more than 59 million active users, over 7 million are Canadian. Is Facebook a viable place for universities to recruit students?

Recently Susan Reynolds found out she had breast cancer so today is Frozen Pea Friday. She has created a blog called Boobs on Ice where she is sharing her experiences.

This is a really cool example of the Twitter community coming together as I first heard about this from Robert Scoble’s tweet which he expanded on in his blog.

There are a number of ways you can stay involved and show your support.

Twitter: Follow PEAple
Flickr: Change your avatar to frozen-pea inspired and upload to the Frozen Pea Friday group (must be a Flickr member)
Website: Join the Official Frozen Pea Fund and the proceeds go to Making Strides against Breast Cancer from the American Cancer Society.

Although I do not know her personally, I can identify with her struggles.  Stay strong Susan and all the best. Cancer is touching more and more of us these days either indirectly or directly. I wish you luck with the tough days ahead.

Relevance: Social Media comes together for a cause.

{This is my 500th post. A special thank you to everyone that reads my blog}

Registration for Northern Voice 2008 is now open. I have attended for the last 2 years and I am really looking forward to this conference. It is one of my favourite events of the year and it occurs over 2 days (Feb 22nd-23rd).

Registration for this event is:

* $40 for Friday’s combined Moose Camp and Social Media Boot Camp
* $40 for Saturday’s “traditional” conference with keynote and panels and such
* OR pay only $60 for both days (i.e. both Friday and Saturday). You can’t afford NOT to go to both days!

Hope to see you there.

Relevance: An excellent opportunity to interact and meet some really cool local Social Media. Geek events rock!

I would like to share with you some of the apps that help me with my day-to-day use on my macbookpro. I have found that reading blogs and tweets from members of the apple community has been useful in enhancing my productivity as a grad student. In addition, advice gleaned from these communication sources has provided me with relevant knowledge for getting greater value out of my laptop.

Today I will focus on Web Snapper from TastyApps.com which I first heard about on a tweet last month from Chris Messina. If is only available for Mac OS X 10.4 or better (sorry non-mac users).

It is one of my favourite tools and I use it almost daily as it captures complete webpages as a pdf which is especially useful for anyone researching social media as you would be able to easily capture changes in digital environments over time (e.g. new features on Facebook). I paid $8 for the download on Tastyapps and it is the best $8 I have spent in a while.

Basically you drag and drop the url into the Web Snapper popup box and then click the down arrow so that you can choose where to save the entire page (regardless of length) as a pdf. To view it, once it is done saving, you just click on the magnifying glass and the pdf will open in the location where it has been saved.

It is now also available for download on the Apple download page. I used Web Snapper to capture the Apple Canada page below as an example.

Relevance: Just another reason why I love my macbookpro – cool mac apps.

Darren Barefoot, who just co-wrote a book about Social Media has began a blog to become a primary source for information about the Google “Knol” Project. It is called Write Great Knols.

I’ve started this blog to gather information about Google Knols, a new product from Google that seems, at first glance, to compete with the Mahalos and Wikipedias of the web. I’ll cover Knol-related news, provide tips and tricks on writing effective knols and point to some great examples.

According to the Google Blog:

The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content.

You can view an example of a Google “Knol” below. I wish Darren success with this endeavor.

Relevance: How will academic institutions treat Google “Knol” citations? Are you encouraged to create a “Knol” yourself?

Darren Barefoot and Julia Szabo have edited written an e-book entitled “Getting to First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook.

I have first met Darren at Northern Voice last February and we spent time chatting at Barcamp Vancouver when he flew in from Malta this summer.

This week they published an e-book and it would be a good purchase for anyone interested in social media from the perspective of research, business, or general marketing knowledge.

I was fortunate to be consulted for the section on Facebook, part of which is below:

Phillip Jeffrey, a University of British Columbia grad student researching social media and user-generated content, says the most popular applications are “visibly social”. That is, they display interactions with your friends and other users on your profile. But another way, visibly social apps provide con- stant, unmistakable evidence of your popularity. They’re the virtual equivalent of flowers from your boyfriend on your desk.

Please view the website and Facebook fan page for the book and share this information with others that may be interested in Social Media.

Relevance: An informed opportunity to learn about Social Media through case studies and expert opinion from a various of perspectives.

w00t. As predicted we can now download tv shows from iTunes in Canada.

I’m excited. I wonder what I will download first. Thanks SJ, now where is our iPhone?

I’ve been on Facebook since 2005 and it has been fun to watch my fellow students join and quickly become attached to this social utility. The reason I enjoy Facebook so much is that it has enhanced some of my real world friendships as I am more aware of what is happening in their lives, without having to call each one nightly. As students, it is easy to get bogged down in school stuff without taking time to meet up and spend time with our friends.

I don’t use it to replace my real world interaction but find I am attending social events that I discover through the News Feed of my friends, which I ordinarily might have forgotten about. I am also realising that I don’t use Facebook nearly as much as I did in 2005/2006. I don’t surf profiles anymore really and find I am spending time elsewhere online. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe I just don’t find it as fun as I used to since it went public.

What was really cool is that I ran into my first Facebook friend yesterday when I was working out in our fitness centre and it brought back memories to my first day on Facebook. At the time Facebook was accessible only to students and you could only see the students in your own college/university unless they were 1) your friend 2) their school had also been accepted into the Facebook community. When I searched the list of students from my school only one friend was on Facebook. I was very happy when she accepted my request, although I didn’t really understand anything about social networking at that time.

Yesterday, the Toronto Star has an article entitled “1 in 4 Canadians on Facebook” that provided information on an unpublished study by the Toronto-based Solutions Research Group regarding Facebook use in Canada.

Despite the recent flurry of bad press over the popular social networking site’s privacy practices, nearly 8 million Canadians – more than one in four – have a Facebook profile page, according to an upcoming study by Toronto-based Solutions Research Group, highlights of which were obtained by the Star.

That makes Canada among the most plugged-in Facebook places in the world, boasting the most users of any country outside the United States and a nearly 15 per cent share of Facebook’s total subscriber base of 57 million.

The survey of 1,000 Internet users, completed in November, also found that about 85 per cent of Canadian Facebook accounts were added in the past year as the popularity of social networking has exploded on the Web.

Considering our population is about 33 million it is pretty incredible that so many Canadians have embraced Facebook over the last year. If you view the one page summary provided by the Solutions Research Group there are some interesting findings about Canadians:

• average user has 81 Facebook friends
• 57% of users 12-29 have 100+ friends
• 15% of users 30+ have 100+ friends
• 900 000 (Sept 2006) –> 7.8 million (November 2007)

I think one of the reasons why we have the most users outside of the United States is that there isn’t a made in Canada social network such as Bebo which was created in Britain or studiverzeichnis which was designed in Germany. Facebook then filled the vacuum here over the last year as it became the ‘it-thing’ for students and non-students alike.

I am curious to see what 2008 holds for Facebook users in Canada. I have met a number of students that get weirded out by friend requests from non-student strangers. I know myself I have had problems with strangers from other countries sending me repeated friend requests when it is clear that they just found my name randomly.

I would also like to read more about how Canadians are using Facebook such as memorial pages for slain teens or the reuniting of a mother with her son given up for adoption through Facebook. Does our use mirror Americans and other Western countries or do we use Facebook differently? How common is Facebook use among our French-speaking population?

Relevance: Facebook is popular in Canada. Who are the Canadians conducting research in this social networking area? Is there a Canadian equivalent to the Pew Research Centre?

I will attending SXSW interactive for the first time next year. I am very excited to be going and I hope to meet many new people. There will be a group of us heading down from Vancouver. It will be a great opportunity to network and socialise with my friends as well as meet IRL those I know with whom I only know online.

What I would like to do is outline which panels and speakers I am planning to attend and then I will devote a blog entry each week to provide a more in-depth analysis.

Please contact me if you will also be attending.

Panels I’m attending to date:

• DataPlay: Living Games (Justin Hall)
• Africa 2.0: Affecting Change Using Technology (G. Kofi Annan)
• The Elephant Online: Digitally Expanding Information Memory (Joshua Schachter)
• Where Are The Black Tech Bloggers? (Lynne d Johnson)
• Respect! (Jeffrey Zeldman)
• Totally Wired Teens: How Teens are Using Your Applications (Anastasia Goodstein)
• Futurists’ Sandbox: Social Technologies in 2025 (Michele Bowman & Sandra Burchsted)

Relevance: It’s never too early to plan for SXSW. I’m also tracking SXSW and SXSWi on twitter.

Host: Shira Lazar

On Wednesday night I attended Launch Party with a Twiist co-organised by Launch Party Vancouver and Twiistup. It was the best event I have attended this year, I had been anticipating it since the first launch party and I knew it wouldn’t disappoint.

Drinks, music, tech friends (that can dance), cool local demos all in an awesome club. What more would you want mid-week? The fact Thursday was a write-off for most of the core people that stayed past one tells you it was an event not to miss. When was the last time you went to a club and had take out delivered there.

I have my calendar cleared for Launch Party 3 because it is getting better and better each time. Vancouver is a great city for tech geeks. So join the FB group and pack your dancing shoes so you don’t miss out next time.

So that’s the summary of the night, let me break it down further.

The Event

Maura Rodgers of Strutta. Heather Vescent of Twiistup

The event began at 5pm and it took place upstairs at Republic, a bar/club downtown. As per the request I bought along Chicken a la King soup (non-perishable good) for the Vancouver Food Bank which Strutta provided boxes for. It was my first time being in this club and I wish I had shown up before 5pm so that I could have taken some pictures when it was empty, as I really like the aesthetics of the place. When I arrived at about 5:30pm, I was greeted by a Launch Party sign. I dropped off my coat, kept my knapsack containing my photo gear, and headed upstairs. On the far wall were displayed the different sponsors as well as on tvs around the upper level.

At the beginning people mingled around while drinking and chatting. We were provided with a drink ticket and appetizers. I spent alot of time talking with new people I’d met (see People section), so I barely had anything to eat.

Erica, Lori, Monica, Caroline, Rebecca: Sporting their Sxip touques

There was an area where demos were displayed. As I tend to congregate among friends, I wasn’t aware of their location initially. The demos available were from Something Simpler, Sitemasher, Jiibe, The new Sxipper (thanks for the cool touques Lori!), and Handy Mobility responsible for LiveVote.

The organisers gave a short speech thanking everyone for attending including the sponsors and we socialised late into the night. Special thanks to Lyal Avery from Strutta who found us take-out sushi, wings, and pizza later in the evening when we were hungry. No need to leave the club — the food came to us . The evening was a success and I am anticipating the next Launch Party Vancouver.

The People

I would like to provide some background and additional information about the event focusing on the people in attendance. Hats off go to Maura Rodgers, co-founder of Strutta who spearheaded a fabulous event. I met her prior to the first Launch Party and enjoyed hearing about life in California (the Valley and the City) during the dot.com days. Boris Mann wrote an excellent summary about what she is doing here as she is originally from the States. She is definitely a great addition to the Vancouver community, as indicated by his interview of her.

Moving here from the Valley, where there is no shortage of fun events for people to attend, I thought an event like LP for entrepreneurs, techies, marketers was missing here. There are lots of great events like democamp, barcamp, VEF, and they fill a need too. After work, I am just looking for good mingling and want to bring the people together in and around this city, who are sitting on great ideas but not everyone knows about them. Every month, we hope to showcase about 4-5 cool, early stage companies in the city. It will be very informal and fun and give the people, who are not competing in the decibel competition , a chance to warm up and be involved.

I met Shira Lazar of Shira Lazar Productions, who is a Canadian from Montreal now living in LA. She covers entertainment and tech issues in California. It was great to have her fly in as a host and interview featured companies and socialise with us throughout the evening. It is always cool to see Canadians being successful in the States. She will be hosting Twiistup 3 in January as well, so if you are in Venice, California I recommend you attend. Good times for all I’m sure.

At the last minute, Heather Vescent of Twiistup made the trip up and I’m glad she did. It was really by chance I met her as we just happened to be sitting down in the same spot and she introduced herself. We chatted so much that I didn’t really eat anything. We had a fascinating conversation about Facebook, social networking, and tech events in LA as she organises the monthly Los Angeles Geek Dinners. We also discovered that we have a number of common friends and she had just attended the Winnies organised by Irina Slutsky of Geek Entertainment TV.

Kim Cathers of Discollection

Everyone had a great time networking and socialising that night, I’m looking forward to the next one.

Relevance: A great opportunity to socialise and network with tech people and entrepreneurs in the city.