Like if the Housing Bubble Tweeted Itself.

I feel like I'm being sold snake oil. Social media aficinados are very much nearing the time where we need to stop praising every social media "advancement" and begin to treat it as a widespread and accepted practice. Imagine if even to this day every conversation about television included praise for the technological innovation of that "series of tubes", and how it helps companies and movements get their message out. We got that, decades ago. And we already get it with social media.

Any more hype, and I fear we will be creating a social media bubble, much like the housing bubble, and while not so scarily threatening to our economy, deathly threatening in the short term to this generation's impression of social media. I know, my message forgets that many people are still discovering, or remain blissfully unaware, of social media. I acknowledge that, but my message is directed to the early adopters and leaders of social media.

As early adopters, our responsibility is to push the boundaries on social media. Every time an early adopter stops to marvel and how "changey hopey" social media is, that is a missed opportunity to move the conversation forward.

The Case of the Upper West Side Yuppie

They're the people who can afford to wait in line to be the first to get an Ipad. They make about 6 trips to Starbucks A DAY and often have a company card to deduct the expenses. They complain in my mom's salon about which country they want their parents to send them to for the summer, or whether or not it is ok that their allowance was just reduced to "only" $2000 a month.

I would like you introduce you my friends to the Upper West Side yuppie. I thought the Upper West Side had the highest concentration of yuppies in the world, but then I came to American University. According Urban Dictionary, a reliable source if there ever was one, defines yuppie as follows:

"Informal for (y)oung (U)rban (P)rofessional, or Yup. turned into yuppie in the 1980's. A term used to describe someone who is young, possibly just out of college, and who has a high-paying job and an affluent lifestyle. Can now be used to describe any rich person who is not modest about their financial status. Yuppiedom (yuppie-dum)is a term used to describe an involvement in being a yuppie."

These yuppies sound like somebody I should hate, but they are the best thing to ever happen in my life. You see, they are the people who pay for my college. That's right, they visit my mom's salon twice a week for $45 blowouts and every 3 weeks for $300 colors and cuts.

They are exactly the demographic I stressed when I made the case to my mom that she needs a revamped website for her salon. My mom was just figuring out email, search optimization was just not on her horizon. While I didn't know the ins and outs of search optimization, I knew my reliance on Google, Yelp and Foursquare for all recommendations, and knew there were doubtless thousands of New Yorkers a day googling the term "Recommended Salon'.

I started out by using search optimization to... well learn how to search optimize. I Googled "How to Give Your Company online presence". It's surprisingly easy to follow their recommendations. I won't go into too much detail, but I did things like add us onto Google Maps, make sure we erm... creatively added some of our own reviews of our salon on citysearch and that we listed our site on leading search engines.

It is really amazing how simple search optimization is. When your potential returns are as high as attracting even more yuppies to your business, there really isn't much to lose.

It's Not Working: The Pitfall of Immediate Expectations

Social networking is an art. I'll say it again, social networking is an art, on par with the art of dinner conversation. Social media is not some magical Houdini, ready to find you a job at your earliest command. It's more like a marriage, where years of commitment and trust build the foundation for your relationship, but one night of unfaithfulness can bring it all tumbling down.

Developing your presence online is in effect marketing yourself to future employers (this is not news in our class). It takes years to build up a readership that respects and follows your comments and posts, but beware one mess up or poorly worded facebook status could leave a rather unfavorable but nevertheless indelible impression on a future colleague of your chosen industry.

I've learnt this from personal experience, after a few poorly chosen "facebook arguments". Arguments in general rarely produce anything substantive, since arguments usually involve 2 or more people already stubbornly set in their beliefs. Arguments online are downright useless, and yet it is so easy (almost like an online siren call) to get sucked into a political debate on your facebook status.

I've had some pretty ugly arguments online with other progressive activists online that I regret, largely because I either currently or will soon be working with them as a colleague. I've also had some amazing discussions and colleagues who have approached me in real life letting me know how much they love my updates and article links.

Botton line is, social networking is a tool, and you can use it to either cut the fruits off a tree or to cut your own hand.

Help This Kitty

There's a disease on campus, and it's spreading. It's spreading right now off campus and indeed throughout the world. Symptoms include wild outbursts of derision, thinly veiled hostility and refusal to acknowledge alternative viewpoints. What's the name of this diabolical disease you say? For lack of a better snarky name, I'm going to go with wiki-phobia.

Wiki-phobia (n)- The irrational hatred of wikipedia, as conveyed to your helpless students, while preaching the advantages of trekking to a library to discover facts out of a physically worn-out book written by a bunch of old white guys with a limited viewpoint of the world.

I'm no utopian, I am quite aware of the dangers of relying on just one source, including wikipedia. Why is it however, that we are willing to over-emphasize the flaws of new media approaches like that of wikipedia and not the flaws of old media.

Professors are losing a crucial opportunity to make their students aware of the flaws inherent in any form of human recording of the world around them and collective history. Instead, most professors' commentary on the subject of sourcing consists of: "Scholarly Sources Good! Wikipedia evil, bad, dogpoop!"

It's quite amusing really, seeing how full of themselves most of my professors seem to be. Forgive my use of language, but I've spent four years in an educational facility telling me that you cannot contribute to history if you don't have a degree. I'm a first generation American, 1st generation to graduate high school and 1st generation to attend college.

I didn't magically appear on campus one day. The skills I learned from my mother and grandmother got me to this point, and their knowledge and input about the world and history made it possible to be where I am today. If we're going to educate about being aware of your sources, then let's do it, but targeting one medium of knowledge is counter-productive to the goals of an educational institution.

What Motivates Productivity Online?

Response to "The Strange Beauty of Virtual Teams"

Online teams is a reality in my life, even outside of college. I intern at NARAL Pro-Choice America, and I'm working with 2 people in different time zones whom I've never met to put together a conference call for dozens of our affiliate organizations.

This is probably the highest form of online team work I've ever done. Our communication is solely through email and the occasional conference call. Frankly, I feel more responsible to people I haven't met than my best friend.

In fact, I work in a small department at my internship, and one of my colleagues who I work on projects for is based in Chicago. I've only met her once, and only for 5 minutes at that. Our relationship is kept up through email correspondence and GChat. Outside of the workplace, she frequently comments on my facebook page, which has developed kind of a a closer relationship with us, built on 5 minutes of real time and hours of online time together.

Of course I am much more productive with online teams at my internship than my school. Theoretically they are both the same, I am participating in both to further my career, but the different is in the short term I'm paying AU, but I'm being paid by NARAL. Being paid is a key reason for my quick correspondence online.

Perhaps It all comes back to the biggest motivators: Money and/or fame. Without those, would productivity (anywhere, let alone online with a team) exist?

Second Life Tea Parties

So I barely understand Second Life. I'm struggling enough as it is to get my character to have the right hair type. I mean seriously, how much harder could they make it? I was hoping for a user interface a little more similar to SIMS.

Naturally, this is as frustrated as I was when I first discovered blogging, or tweeting, or facebook. Now I'm obsessed with all three of those things. I feel over social networked. I love Second Life as a concept, but I feel overcommitted online. We all have to recognize our limits, but a program like SecondLife makes me wonder if I'm actually interacting with people or playing a game. Is there a distinction? The human race after all is a playful creature.

Anyway, I decided to look up some ideas about Second Life as a political tool. I don't feel like commenting about them, but I wanted to share them with you all because I found them enlightening. Thank you Institute for Politics, Democracy, & The Internet! :

Fewer logistical nightmares and more timely political events . – In Second Life, a laptop, a free hour or two, and an in-world venue quickly moves the event from conception to execution.

Shadow political parties and shadow conventions. – The official meetings and conventions of state or national political parties are often unwieldy beasts. We might see the official party organizations holding open meetings every so often in Second Life. Or, if they choose not to, we might witness activists organizing parallel meetings in the metaverse, where time is spent plotting the takeover of the official party apparatus.

Metaverse fundraising . – Not all too long ago, the cutting edge in raising money online was having a bat graphic that was colored in as the contribution dollars piled up. By doing away with many of the bonds of reality – time, space, physics, and (to some degree) social constraints – Second Life has blown the doors off of the old models of fundraising.

Reaching out to early adapters . – Second Life opens up a wide range of possibilities for the execution of political advertising. At the least, we might soon see political ad firms setting up shop in Second Life, running virtual galleries to display their wares.

Umm, Your Ego is Showing

You don't get a special prize for getting to 1,000 friends.

Job searching is not about friending people who sound interesting, but about nurturing meaningful relationships with relevant individuals in your preferred profession. I use linked in to connect to people who I authentically want to work with in the future. I also use social networking to find out volunteer opportunities or fun events that potential employers of mine are holding. There is nothing more important to finding a job then volunteering for, interning for, or being a regular face at a company/institution.

LinkedIn has not been particularly appealing to me, mainly because I've long since decided to utilize my facebook page much like a LinkedIn page, where I market myself.

Apologies for the short post this week. I think I'm coming down with something and I find it difficult to focus on academic work right now.