Posts from — November 2007
Trivial - just like real life human connection
TV shows are full of ‘big’ moments: high drama, life and death decisions, the last 2 seconds before the bomb explodes. My life on the other hand is full of decisions about what to have for dinner and wondering if I’m going to miss the bus.
For most of us, real life is mostly trivia. And when we communicate with people, that trivia is what connects us. After all, which are we more likely to hear during a coffee break:
- Oh really? I was just thinking about the fundamental ethical questions in human cloning too!
- Or: Oh really? Our cat brought in a rat at the weekend too.
Those trivia connect us: those moments of common, ordinary life. Micro-blogging tools such as Twitter build up the intimacy of dozens or hundreds of shared moment of reality, both trivial and lofty.
Alison Black posted in Shift6 — PR data bites:
…I found MIT Technology Review’s recent interview of Twitter’s founder, Evan Williams, and two (very articulate) Twitter users so appealing. If you had not understood the potential for ‘ambient intimacy’ that Twitter enables, the real user experiences described in the video would go a long way towards convincing you.
The video is: Twitter and Ambient Intimacy (movie, 7 minutes 13 seconds). My favourite parts:
Evan Williams: Co-founder of Twitter and Blogger:
It feels intimate because you learn things about people that you wouldn’t know unless you were very close to them.
Evan Williams:
Twitter is by nature more ephemeral and more trivial in some respects, but it’s social connection that makes people take it up — it’s the same reason you talk to people.
Kate Greene, Information Technology Editor, Technology Review:
The concept of presence and sharing ideas and thoughts immediately with people — I think that’s something that’s so intrinsic to us that it’ll stick around just because of our basic human desire to do that.
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November 22, 2007 No Comments
Niche Social Networks
Many community groups already know they need to set up places where their ‘clients’ can share experiences with others who really understand. But sometimes they don’t so much need to set up venues as to locate existing possibilities and establish a presence or provide the links.
ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick has an article about niche social networks, triggered by the appearance of SoberCircle. He begins his article, The Nearly Never Ending Market for Niche Social Networks, with a nice, clear explanation:
What is a social network? Typically, it’s just a website that offers users a profile page, the ability to publish to the web, to add other users as friends and to send user-to-user messages, or sitemail. That’s simple but powerful stuff;
Then he goes on to make several points, including this fundamental observation:
People will share information with groups of people they know they can relate to that they never would share in a general public forum. We all seek empathy and many of us have life experiences that cannot be meaningfully discussed outside of a context of shared understanding and a base of common experience. People in recovery from substance abuse is one such huge market, people with communicable diseases another, the insanely wealthy yet another - and the list goes on.
November 20, 2007 No Comments
Facebook and community organisations
Wild Apricot Blog provides Ten Innovative Ways Nonprofits Can Use Facebook:
I often receive questions from nonprofits about how to effectively use Facebook. So here are ten different ways that nonprofits can use Facebook. Many of these tips can be found in my Beginner’s Guide to Facebook and How to promote your Cause on Facebook articles.
Uses include raising funds, communicating with potential supporters, getting support on issues, raising awareness, recruiting volunteers. Go see what others are doing on Facebook.
November 19, 2007 No Comments
Raise funds online
There are some excellent tips about online fundraising here: 13 Secrets of Holiday Fundraising Online, including this one:
People want vivid examples of how their donations will be used. So if your audience has given before, tell them all the great things they’ve done - then all the wonderful additional things more support will bring.
[Via Katya's Non-Profit Marketing Blog: 13 Secrets of Holiday Fundraising Online.]
The whole thing is worth a read.
November 19, 2007 1 Comment
Government of Canada works differently with the web
The Government of Canada are looking at ways to use the Internet differently, to interact and collaborate, as the article CIO > Web 2.0 at work explains:
Government 2.0 is really a concept; it’s a substantial shift from where we are to a different mode of operation. The reality is we are already starting to move toward that direction. Government 2.0 is about a number of things: it’s about the right environment; it’s about the right tools; it’s about the right management. There are some key challenges, and one of them is that we don’t just focus on technology, we focus on people and culture and to operate more effectively as an organisation. We really need to focus on how we work together, how we use the tools in the workplace more effectively.
One of the things we’re doing is we’re using some of the Web 2.0 or social networking tools to help us solve problems in a very interactive fashion. So trying to get (staff) to use social networking software like wikis and blogs is difficult. I think our challenge is to get people to work with tools differently, to collaborate in a different fashion.
[Thanks to MiramarMike.]
November 13, 2007 1 Comment
