Leone, FB Birthday Etiquette from Abigail Noonan on Vimeo.

Leone, systems architect, talks about Facebook etiquette on your birthday.

I have been waiting on tenterhooks to receive my Google+ invitation. It’s been the talk of the social media town. What I realized today however was that I already have a thriving community in my Google Reader and through it’s commenting system. It sounds like Google+ will be the natrual extension of this (and includes my original Google Circles thoughts!) The comments my friends have added to Kellygo‘s original share about Google+ have kept me entertained for the past two days. The first half is us entertaining ourselves, the second half is google friends/aquaintances being brilliant and insightful.

Shared by Kelly Osborn

This sounds similar to Diaspora….

Kim, Knowledge Manager at Institute for National Strategic Studies from Abigail Noonan on Vimeo.

Kim talks about her research into social media’s role in the Arab spring.

Update: The report to which Kim is referring is AMIR (Arab Media Influence Report) and can be found on the PBS website here.

Jay, Investing Consultant from Abigail Noonan on Vimeo.

Is there a revenue model for microblogging platforms?

Mark, parent from Abigail Noonan on Vimeo.

Talks about catching his daughter in a lie through Facebook.

Elizabeth, developer from Abigail Noonan on Vimeo.

I once posted a picture of EHGf sitting in the sunbeam on a spring day on Facebook. I found it on my phone as I entered the office one day, and it made me feel that sun and the contentment I’d felt taking the picture. I posted it with the caption, “Sun. Book. Beer,” wanting to share my happiness.

Late that night my boss posted on my page, “Job?” I saw the single word the next morning and felt my cheeks turn red as nauseated anger flushed through my veins. The only interpretation I could see in his word was a condemnation of my using Facebook during work. Or maybe it was a threat—him telling me that my job was in danger because of that use. Or maybe it was just a contemptuous little jab. I reposted his word and tried not to think about it. I do have a tendency to read just a tiny bit into things. But it nagged at me for the rest of the day, what was he thinking, and why would he post as my boss in my private space?

I confronted him about it later. It was, of course, a joke. He is a good guy who doesn’t care what I do at work as long as the work done. We laughed at my paranoia.

But the incident stayed with me. That weekend, unable to stop thinking about it, I sat down and started sorting my 260 Facebook friend into lists. I made categories for myself: acquaintances, work, friends. Not complicated. It took me 3 hours. Finding where to make the list wasn’t easy. Clicking through and putting each single name individually into a list wasn’t easy. Once I was done with that I made several privacy rules. People on the work list couldn’t see my photos or wall posts unless I specifically said they could. People on the acquaintances list could see everything by default, but I was able to mark certain things as unable to be seen by work and acquaintance friends. People in the “friends” category could see everything by default. This added another half an hour to my adventure. I tested it several times, seeing what my profile would look like to a work friend, an acquaintance friend, and a friend friend. Another half hour. Add this time to the hour I spent the year before finding all the privacy settings and making sure that strangers didn’t have a window into my life, and I’ve spent 5 hours trying to have a modicum of control who actually sees what I post for my friends.

Several months later I signed up for Diaspora. I made a user name and password. I friended the people who I knew were also using the new platform. I was asked to classify them immediately. Were these people friends, family, or work? I put them into my friends category. Later I put my older brother into both friends and family. My signup took 5 minutes, maybe. Each time I added a friend, I spent an extra 5 seconds putting them into an aspect. When I post on Diaspora I can click a small gray bar and determine which aspect/s will see what I’m writing or who can see my photo or link.

I have this functionality in Facebook. It took me 5 hours, and unless I remember to click into my safety settings and allow my acquaintances and work friends access, only my friends see my post.

I have this functionality in Diaspora. Below my post I have small tabs to push to determine who can see it.

I now use Diaspora to vent, to despair, to complain, to rejoice, to argue, to philosphize. I use Facebook to share random information, photos and event information. They are both social media, but one somehow feels a lot more social to me these days.

Just a quick note.
Today is my birthday. This is also the day that my inbox changes from communication tool to Facebook birthday comments receptacle. If this were the only function of Facebook, to ensure that on the anniversary of your birth you are told over and over again to be happy, it would be an amazing tool.
I feel special. Thank you friends.

Mike, Developer from Abigail Noonan on Vimeo.

On Facebook Democratization

I walked on to the Harvard rowing team when I was a sophomore. To say that I was clueless would be understating everything. Let’s just say that, like many other facts about Ivy Leagues, I didn’t understand that Harvard crew team had a good rep. However being a runner served me well and I turned out to have a natural talent for pulling hard. The TECHNIQUE of it never really came naturally, or at all, but I fell in love all the same. I think that passion for my new sport came through loud and clear to my coach and teammates and, before illness took me out of school, I was one of the de-facto leaders of the novice team. As such a couple of unofficial duties fell to me. The only duty however that really stressed me out was leading the novices in skits presented to the varsity team. I came up with something stupid. Something about the date of the final regatta (May 17) that our coach kept drilling into us. Something that may or may not have involved me chanting the date while shining a flashlight into my face. It was embarrassing. I stood there, the flashlight glow illuminating every red-cheeked moment I’d ever had, bringing them to the forefront and exposing them to my audience.Except they’d been there in their own novice years. And they weren’t my audience. They were my team.

It was a right of passage. Today hazing has a horrible reputation. If hazing means drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning, or putting young people in degrading and dangerous situation, then it shouldn’t be tolerated. But if it means creating slight social discomfort to facilitate bonding, then it might it’s place in social groups. I have my doubts. But whether is safe or immoral I can’t say, anymore than I can say if  The Tiger Mother’s parenting should be illegal. It is there, sometimes its’ results are beneficial.

I suspect however if I were to walk on to that crew team in this decade I would have a different experience altogether.

My Extremely Hot GirlFriend is a rowing coach at a major University. She is passionate about her job—talking about her “kids” at all hours of the day or night. Usually she speaks of their rythmn, or whether “Sarah” has returned from injury, and the erg score of a particularly gifted walk-on. But her kids adore her just as much as she does them. They share the stories of their crew social lives with her and I hear them in return. The latest one fascinated me and brought me back to my brief moment in the spotlight.

Major University spends their spring break in town rather than traveling south for warmer waters. I thought this a stingy policy and felt bad for the rowers braving icy water. I felt even worse for EHGF as I watched her dressing at 5:15  in the morning, pulling on 5 layers of soon-to-be-soaked clothes to go and sit in the boat following the athletes. But all of EHGF’s stories indicate that her rowers are made of finer quality than I and they make their spring break on campus a time for fun and bonding.

They ate all their meals together. They had different themes for each day and costumed themselves accordingly (schoolgirl day, patriotic day, etc).They did skits (!). But the main event of the week was the Facebook boyfriending.

The rules were: Each person on the women’s team had to ask someone on the men’s team to be their boyfriend on facebook. They would remain such for a week and then publicly (online) breakup. The ask was the part that EHGF told me the most about. It was usually in public: on the line-up board, hung from a bridge over the river, shouted from atop a table. The imaginative ways they asked were astounding. The way that having had morphed in my 10 years away from a college sport was baffling.

The ramifications were myriad. What if they were Facebook friends with their parents. Would they concernedly ask about their daughter new boy or girl (female coxswains) friend? I imagine that people their age have been on facebook since middle school, accumulating hundreds if not thousands of friends. How would the non-Major University/nonrower friends react to a sudden status change? What if they already had a significant other on facebook. Did they first have to break up with them online, to be “in a relationship” with their new partner from the men’s team?

I thought back to the naked feeling of being on a public stage from my small skit in front of my team. How magnified would that feeling be in front of nearly everyone I’d every met? Would they go through any effort of list-making to make the announcement viewable to only certain people?

This post has taken me a very long time just to say: it’s a brand new world. We’re doing the same things in it. But in such a different way. If every part of our lives shifted like this, to be more public and more open, by the pervasion of social media into every part of our lives. If so, is that a good thing?

So much more to write on this. But it’s been a while since I posted! So, up it goes. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Pages ... 1 2