April 2009 Archives

We lead two lives: our real (aka, "offline life") and our online life. They may even merge as we upload photos of ourselves from our real life onto our online profiles, get tagged, meet on dating sites, and carry on professional relationships with names we found on the internet.

We join Facebook groups about sriracha sauce or microloans, read intimate details from celebrities in 140 characters or less, and network while seated at our computers. That means we can forget social niceties, right?

If you've ever cringed reading Facebook wall posts or caught your breath seeing an unflattering picture a friend generously posted of you, you'll relate to the comical instructional video created by YourTango.com . Its 350,000 views on youtube hits home for many of us keeping tabs on our friends via the social network. Since social networking has long passed its tipping point into mainstream society, the video instructs on the Do and Do Nots of Facebook.

Online etiquette has long joined the list of topics addressed by Emily Post, Miss Manners, and other etiquette advisors. Career counselors emphasize the difference between landing a job and falling into the Deleted box is a politely-worded email. Social mores and online etiquette share a reciprocal relationship, with repercussions spilling into the other domain. Technology is giving us ever shorter cuts through communication, but that doesn't excuse us from minding our p's and q's lest we bungle on our "computing machines."

Today the Student Union at Bournemouth University in the UK discusses whether to ban Facebook and Twitter use from its computer labs. Initiated by complaints by students who are prevented from schoolwork due to other students' hogging the computers for social networking, the frustrated are asking to ban them from the labs. Apparently social mores have changed and the polite notices on computers are not enough to deter students and give up their seat to another.

I recall the sheepish looks on some students, glancing over their shoulders as we waited in line to use the computers, knowing that we could see their chat boxes pop up and color with each message. I myself was enthralled to chat with friends in universities sprawling the country. However as university academia post course-related information via social networks, rather than through group email lists, banning its use altogether is like prohibiting alcohol after everyone's already been drinking it. Can a social network actually be banned from a university campus, the richest social and learning environment of all?

Here comes another strike in the onslaught against Facebook: Facebook users share lower GPAs . According to a pilot study at Ohio State University, college students frequenting Facebook had nearly a full grade point lower than non-users.

This conclusion surprises neither the study authors nor anyone who has spent hours online chatting, web-surfing, playing video games, or on Facebook and its predecessors (Friendster, MySpace, ICQ and AOL chatrooms). I recall the seething building up in juniors and seniors queued at university computer labs as they noticed the computer screens of underclassmen on instant messenger, while the upperclassmen waited to check stock prices and project group emails. Just as Facebook is awash laptops and smart phones on university campuses today, AOL Instant Messenger, AOL chatrooms, and ICQ were all the time-sucking rage a few years ago.

While the effects of social isolation and Internet addiction have been chronicled across the world for years, a broader study using more than 219 students is in order to cement the inverse relationship between Facebook use and grades. There is more than just one technology variable when students have lower grades: television, video games, youtubing, and chatting.

4Chan, one of the largest message boards in the world, is known for its sophmoric hijinks (and of course, the infamous /b/-tards). So when Time.com opened up a poll to nominate the most influential people in the world, 4Chan quickly nominated 'moot', the founder of 4Chan, and voted him to the top.

But, not content to simply have their man as #1, they then manipulated the following 20 results, so that the first letter of each nomination read, "Marblecake, also the game." What does that mean? I'll let you and Google sort that out :-)

Though in their defense, they technically did nothing wrong. After all, anyone could organize a grassroots campaign to nominate a candidate, and anyone could vote for whomever they want. Whether that agenda be to nominate a national hero, president, or college age website founder, who cares.

And I'm sure Time.com doesn't mind the flood of traffic. In all likelihood, tens of millions of pageviews were probably generated. For the dying print industry desperate to find ways to profitably move online, I'm sure they're taking note.

I can envision a world where traffic-hungry sites cater to the likes of 4Chan, the SA goons, and Stephen Colbert's famous pied-piper antics. Soon our monuments and pop-culture icons will all be named after random internet memes and/or Stephen Colbert...as long as they help pay the bills.

As the web gains ground on the mass media as the primary driver of pop culture, who knows. It could happen ;-)

Time.com - The World's Most Influential Person Is...

Check out a video from our time at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo at the Moscone center, San Francisco, shot and edited by RA team members Sarrah and Brian.

Took a little video yesterday while at the Web 2.0 Expo at the Moscone Center, San Francisco. So far so good, and apparently Mr. Maeda from the Rhode Island School of Design was one of the standouts from the keynotes. More to come as we get it...