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?
Embracing Social Media…the Last Post?
Writing about the first presidential election in the Web 2.0 age (Taylor Hicks for President) was the last post for my Social Media class. You’d think I’d be happy.
When I started this class, you’ll remember if you’ve been following my journey, I likened blogging to a walk on the dark side. I wondered then who really cared about mine — or anyone else’s — random musings. And then I was introduced to blog stats. I don’t expect to reach Technorati’s Top 100 list anytime soon, but it was slightly addicting to see how many people were visiting my site, what posts they were reading and which links they were clicking on. I also got a kick out of seeing what sites led people to my blog (sorry all you Taylor Hicks fans).
And in the days since class ended, I’ve been surprised to find out that I actually have missed sharing my thoughts (though I haven’t missed the readings the class mostly responded to). Then there were the articles I was reading criticizing John McCain’s lack of knowledge about the Internet and Social Media tools. I dismissed the claims that it was generational. But, the article that expressed surprise at McCain’s lack of intellectual curiosity hit home. If I didn’t embrace social media, did I too lack intellectual curiosity?
That’s not a description a graduate student aspires to. Especially a former reporter who plans to work in public relations. So, today, I’m embracing social media and continuing my blog. Will I remain the Antibloggergirldc? Stay tuned, I’m still mulling the options.
But for now here is my confession: I also signed up for a Twitter account!
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.
Social Media and the Real World
I heard disturbing news the other night. A hometown friend’s son was one of 10 fraternity members arrested in New Orleans in May on charges related to a hazing incident at Tulane University. I Googled his name and was shocked to read the details: boiling water, pledge initiation, second- and third-degree burns.
The Smoking Gun had an explicit article about the alleged April 25th “Hell Night” activities at the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity house, and links to the arrest warrants and police mug shots of the frat members charged in the incident. The Google search also revealed several news
articles about the incident published in traditional news outlets in New Orleans and across the country in the boys’ hometown newspapers. And, since this is the era of Web 2.0, there were several blog posts devoted to the subject, including this “off topic” posting on PocketFives, a website devoted to poker. And, yes, there were comments. LOTS of comments. On the PocketFives site and on other sites, the hazing incident had definitely sparked a conversation. Or maybe it would be more accurate to refer to it as a shouting match, with some posters calling the fraternity members names that were nearly as awful as the incident that triggered the debate.
It struck me that regrettable behavior, whether associated with a college fraternity initiation or at any time in our personal or professional life, lives on long after resolution, in part, thanks to the Internet. And, perhaps unwittingly, the fraternity member’s friends may be contributors to the endless trail and the consequences. A Facebook page they posted, Free J—– B—–, has no privacy restrictions. There, for anyone to see, is his unflattering police mug shot along with news and wall postings that may be funny to his college pals, but probably wouldn’t be amusing to a potential future employer. 
And none of us should think that current and future employers aren’t looking at — and judging — our online presence. In its June 2007 issue, the Harvard Business Review published an interactive case study, We Googled You. The article poses a dilemma for an employer who thinks he’s found a dream candidate for a job until an online revelation proves that nothing from our past — even details found on page nine of a Google search — is ever erased.
Keeping the Blogosphere (and Everyone Else) Healthy
Cruising through the blogosphere I stumbled upon (pun intended) Diva Marketing Blog and her July 16 post on “Where Are The ‘Social Media’ Healthcare Organizations?” As I learn to love Social Media, and discover which companies have and have not embraced Web 2.0, I ponder the same question that the Diva raises: “Should healthcare organizations go ’social’?” 
We’re not talking about physicians here. The Diva claims that “thousands of physicians are active in social media.” I’m not sure if she means these docs have a Facebook or MySpace page to keep up with their friends or if they engage in online conversations with their patients.
The Diva is referring to healthcare organizations–hospitals, drug companies and corporations–which she writes treat social media as “more of a revolutionary strategy than an evolutionary way to reach customers.” I think she’s on to something. Shouldn’t healthcare practitioners go where their customers are?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could log on to the website of your local hospital and have a conversation with a nurse, department head, physician or some other representative to answer your specific questions about an upcoming procedure and your hospital stay rather than scrolling through the FAQ and not finding the information you are seeking. Reading the blogs of a hospital’s administrator or one of its doctors might give you a better sense of that organization’s philosophy or bedside manner.
Several of the hospitals that serve the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area where I live mail monthly or quarterly newsletters to local residents. These printed marketing tools provide updates on technology, treatments, personnel changes and public programs. Perhaps these institutions should save postage and help the environment by shelving the paper and going digital.
The Diva notes that those hospitals and drug companies that do have blogs have reaped the benefits. One Web 2.0 convert, Nick Jacobs, president and CEO of Windber Medical Center, credits his blog posts for speaking engagement invites around the country.
Nick Jacobs
Because of these presentations, Jacobs says he “was exposed to the magnitude of not only blog power, but also You Tube, Facebook, Twitter…” Jacobs tells the Diva that his blogging led him to write two books and four newspaper columns “that have increased our business by double-digit figures.”
Johnson and Johnson and GlaxoSmithKline are two corporations that use blogs to communicate with the public. The J&J site notes that “everyone else is talking about our company, so why can’t we?” Recent posts have focused on nutrition, first aid and the company’s health channel on YouTube. The GSK site is built around its alli weight-loss product.
How many people have logged onto WebMD at one time or another? Quantcast, the media measurement service, ranks the medical information site in the top 50, with more than 15 million people in the U.S. visiting each month. With so many consumers in the marketplace for health and medical information, doesn’t it just make sense for these organizations to join the Antibloggergirldc and step into the 21st century?
S is For …
So many countries, so few blogs.
For my Social Media class we are tasked with reviewing blogs from a country that begins with the first initial of either our first or last name. The Global Voices website gave me 22 choices for the letter S, including the Caribbean nations of Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and St. Kitts. Maybe I was dreaming of a beach vacation when I decided to explore the online conversations in those countries. Surprisingly, or maybe not, there were very few blogs, irregular posts and limited topics.
In their book, Naked Conversations, Robert Scoble and Shel Israel write that culture plays a key role because “Some countries are conducive to the openness required in a successful blog. Others are less conducive.” Economics and politics are also important factors.
Since I have always wanted to visit South Africa, I decided to tour that country’s blogosphere through Global Voices. Again, I saw that economics and politics are key influencers. On one hand I was surprised to find limited posts in general but not surprised that the blogosphere heated up around political topics including the Spring elections in Zimbabwe and the recent spate of attacks on foreigners in South Africa. One regular blogger, Muhammad Karim wrote on May 31 that bloggers need to do more than just write about xenophobia. Karim is a freelance writer and South African blogger who dishes on a number of topics including Playboy’s ‘Hottest Blogger’ contest.
Some of the interesting items I discovered was that South Africa has its own answer to YouTube. Zoopy was launched just a few months ago and has already attracted 120,000 visits a month (compared to the 120 million monthly visits to YouTube. Even the Cape Town mayor has gone digital: http://www.zoopy.com/helen.
A posting on the annual South African blog awards took me to thought leader, winner of both the best political blog award and Blog of the Year honors. The blog is affiliated with the Mail and Guardian newspaper, supporting Scoble and Israel’s claim that the most interesting blogs reside in either very large or very small companies.
Politics, religion and criticizing the media were all popular — and frequent — topics. Maybe our cultural differences aren’t so far apart. Even in advertisements. On one post discussing religious issues there was an ad for an online Muslim marriage service followed a few paragraphs later by an online dating site for Jewish singles.
Scanning for the Latest Views
I’m feeling Wikified. I’ve spent time these past two weeks trying to make sense of the laws of Wikipedia–how to edit, reference and code entries and updates for this online encyclopedia. Who out there, besides myself and my Social Media classmates, is contributing to the 2.4 million articles that appear on this site just in English?
I figured I’d have a little fun (a class requirement and a personal priority) and choose a topic not only of interest to me, but one that might have a little controversy attached. At least on the discussion boards. For my Wikiscanner Report, I decided to investigate who is editing, updating and revising the entry on the Indy Racing League, also known as the IRL. 
I wasn’t all that surprised when Wikiscanner reported that there were 246 edits made to the page between 2003 and 2007. Unfortunately, there are no reports for this year. On WikiScanner FAQ, creator Virgil Griffith admits that he has not updated the database since August 2007 though he plans an overhaul and update this summer.
Comcast Cable Communications Inc. (Indianapolis) had the most entries, with 15 edits primarily related to the cars’ engines. Layered Technologies Inc. posted 11 changes, including some external links. IP 69.192.229.42 spent three days in September 2005 making nine different adjustments related to cars, engines, Rookies of the Year and controversy.
There is nothing like a good sporting controversy.
Because some of the IRL edits were so old and have since been updated, I found more interesting comments on the IRL discussion and talk page. It started out much as I might expect: “I was looking at Wikipedia today and decided to see what they had on the EARL. The article wasn’t sufficiently negative, so I made some changes.” Another editor responded that “someone else might want to respond to that.”
And then quickly the tone changed. “I sure hope you’re not referring to me as the terrorist, cuz I think my edit history shows differently.” Huh, I thought, where did THAT come from?
Kurohone continued with his discussion that an entry on injury problems needed to be “NPOVed” or neutral point of viewed. “If you don’t like mine, what do you suggest,” he asked.
Another response requested the source for the post that the IRL gives away “tens of thousands of tickets.”
And then Kurohone posted: “It’d be nice to keep the trolls off of here, this is an encyclopedia, not a messageboard. Keep it to crapwagon, alright, guys?”
And they say that Indy racing controversy is only on the track.
The rest of the discussion truly did sound like a message board, with complaints of “vandalism” and negative or biased posts. Some facts were thrown in occasionally, but sourcing was limited. Which renews the question debated previously on these pages: Should we trust what we read in Wikipedia, and should it be open to everyone or just verified experts?
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.
