Isn’t it Ironic
If you’ve read this blog from the beginning, you know that I came kicking and screaming into the world of social media. But even if you’re new to this site, you can tell by my ‘Antibloggergirldc’ nom de plume that I’m not the first choice to appear on the poster advocating blogging, Facebook, Twitter and the like.
So it is with a tip of the hat to my Georgetown instructors, Garrett Graff and Kathy Baird for a job well done. At least according to my friends, who now describe me as a “fanatic” when it comes to all things social media. On a recent visit to my Southern California hometown, I spent a relaxing evening with six long-time friends. Each of these women is successful in her career: an emergency room nurse, a technology entrepreneur, a neurologist, an elementary school teacher, an advertising executive and a banker. Only one of them had an active Facebook page. Three of them had briefly flirted with Facebook, but none of them had a blog or posted on Twitter. A few had profiles on Linkedin.
Sounding like I was born-again or had drunk the social media Kool-Aid, I regaled them with the wonders and benefits of keeping your friends informed through tweets and status updates. I must have been convincing. Three of the six are now twittering, all but one is actively on Facebook, a couple more have filled out Linkedin profiles and one even started a MySpace page.
Who says social media is just for the 20-somethings?
Taylor Hicks for President
Even in a Web 2.0 world, it all comes down to who votes.
There is hardly a person around who doesn’t know the historic significance of the 2008 presidential race. And I’m not referring to either of the mainstream party candidates. Technology, particularly the Internet and Social Media, is playing a key role like never before. From fundraising, to candidate’s Facebook pages, to blogs, voters with an internet connection are having a conversation with the candidates.
Use of Web 2.0 has also helped revitalize the youth vote — college students energized like the country hasn’t seen since the late 1960s — which will be another important factor.
It is probably safe to say that the youth vote was a key factor in Barack Obama’s securing the Democratic nomination. Obama, one of the youngest candidates to run for president, understands (and uses) the Internet and Social Networking tools. To paraphrase Joe Trippi, “he gets it.” His opponent, Republican John McCain is slow to embrace the way people communicate in 2008.
And that could be the deciding factor in this election. In the introduction to his book, The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House, Garrett Graff notes that the winner of the fifth season of American Idol, Taylor Hicks received more votes than any presidential candidate in any U.S. election.
Wow! And in Idol’s subsequent two seasons, even more people have voted. Maybe David Cook should be on the short list for vice president. The Idol season seven winner received about 85.5 million votes of the 97.5 million votes cast!
The First Campaign also emphasizes the new power that ordinary voters have through their cell phones, online video postings, blogs and social networks. “Add in the power of grassroots small-donor fund-raising…and the 2008 election will be conducted on a playing field where the party establishment will have the least control of any election in American history,” Graff predicts. It may also turn out to be an election with the greatest turnout in voter history, if participation in the primaries is any indication. 
But even with all the people who donate online and offline, turn out for speeches and rallies, wear campaign buttons and debate the candidates and issues with their friends and families, what truly will determine who our next president is, is the people who actually go to the polls on election day (or vote by absentee ballot). Maybe, if we could vote for president with our cell phones — just text YES to O-B-A-M-A or YES to M-C-C-A-I-N, we’d see the kind of participation that electing the leader of the free world deserves.
Finding My Voice (or Making It Up As I Go Along)
Students of Garrett Graff know that the first sentence of Chapter 10 in Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book, naked conversations reads: “No one wrote the official blogging rule book.”
That means that I am in unchartered water without a life preserver as I experiment to find my blogging voice for this blog which is part of my Social Media coursework . Each week I wonder where the conversation will take me as I ruminate on the weekly readings. I am grateful that there are no “blogging police” and that I have free reign to make it up as I go along…as long as I am having fun (class requirement!).
And, with the semester just about half over, I realize that I am having fun. I was skeptical early on about “this whole blogging thing,” and I still think there are a lot of random posts and a lot of random comments out there–in the blogosphere–that make me shudder and say, “who cares?” But then I think that there are a lot of talk radio stations (and people who call in to those shows) and tabloids (The Weekly World News was once a favorite in my office). We all have choices about what we read and what we listen to. We are fortunate enough to live in a country where freedom of speech is our right, and I am fortunate that there are no blogging rules that I have to follow as I seek my own style; my own voice.
Of course, naked conversations tries to guide us so that we won’t to it ‘wrong.’ Or so we won’t do it wrong for our company. Since my first blogging efforts are for my self, I can only hope that I will avoid the “forced and selfish” — or worse — Elvis on black velvet catagories! Moving forward, I will try to “be linky (Tip #9)” and engage in more conversations (so classmates: PLEASE COMMENT!).
Searching for Tim Russert
Typing the words “Tim Russert” into the Google search box Sunday night delivered 2,960,000 “personalized results” for the NBC newsman who died Friday afternoon. Surprisingly, what floated to the top was not news reports about his untimely death but links to his two books. There were, however, two related search choices at the very top of the page: Tim Russert dies and Tim Russert dead.
What exactly was I searching for? What was my intent? Was I looking for a new nugget of information or trying to make sense of a sorrowful event that has shaken the Washington journalism community where I spent so many years?
Perhaps both. I was also trying to tackle this week’s reading of John Battelle’s The Search How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. I thought about the questions posed by my Social Media course instructor, Garrett Graff: “Should we be afraid of Google?” Is it too big/powerful?
I also visited the sites of other search engines. Again, I typed in the words “Tim Russert.” GoodSearch revealed 823,610 results and Big Daddy spewed out 9,620,000 hits. Wow, I thought, even more than Google. Yahoo news also delivered more than 9.5 million results.
What to do with this information? Again, what was my intent? I did discover some new details and read two wonderful essays that brought some sense of understanding to the recent events. (And I also learned how many other search engines — specialized and general — are out there.)
But what I began to more fully realize is that a search engine – be it Google or any other – gives each of us access to knowledge and information that is limited only by our curiosity. I may have unearthed a small detail that I was searching for, but I also discovered how a blogger in Australia responded to the news.
Wherever our curiosity takes us; however we quench our thirst for knowledge; whatever our intent, Google and the search engine community have made the world all the more accessible for each of us to explore. And that is a good thing.
