Category Archives: Web 2.0

I’ll admit to a bias towards technology drivers for fundamental change.

More about facebook

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I created a group for a high school reunion, more to see what the group creation process is like for the admin than really expecting those celebrating a 40th reunion to change their behavior and switch over to Facebook. [They haven’t really been using the Yahoo! group/e-mail list established for the 35th, so why would this be different?]

Facebook is seductive that way — while there are professional groups, it’s easy to find groups that deal with the rest of your life. I’m still struggling with whether that is a good thing or not.

For instance, I’d like to make the discussion boards open to just the members of the reunion group. That way I’d be free to post things there that wouldn’t really be of interest to others who might stumble upon me in one of my other personas. Is that an “over 50” way of looking at the world? Do we compartmentalize our lives in ways that the core Facebook population does not? This might also work for other kinds of groups — e.g. AAUW branches who want to have some public face (posting on the facebook “wall”) but might also want to keep their discussion board “private” (as a member benefit, or just to change the tenor of the discussion to be a known group in the midst of the millions and millions of Facebook users).

Please holler at me if you’ve thoughts on this issue (or if, on the technical side, you know where to find “Facebook: The Missing Manual” that explains how to configure things that aren’t obvious.]

Making progress with facebook

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Okay, I’ve progressed somewhat with facebook. I may eventually come around to “no, just don’t go there,” but I’m beginning to see the lure of its community building features. Will it turn out to be a solution for AAUW? I can’t tell yet, but here’s what I’ve seen so far.

The whole system is *very* centered on the individual. This is a paradigm shift for me where I think of information as stored in organizational buckets (e.g. web sites) with the particular author somewhat “hidden”. Blogs are, obviously, a step towards exposing authorship, but the way I’ve been using them it’s still been the “content” that’s the focus, not the characteristics of the individual (activities, likes/dislikes, etc., etc.).

Individuals can be connected tightly (by becoming friends) or loosely (by joining the same network or the same group), or just be two members of facebook without any connection.

If they are friends, they can (subject to preferences that can be set on either end)

  • Share contact information
  • View each others activities within facebook
  • Share RSS feeds

If they are members of the same group they can

  • Be notified of each others’ postings on the group’s wall or discussion board (because, by default, one gets notified of all changes to the group area)

If they are members without any common connection, they can still send each other messages within the system. This is different from LinkedIn. Sending a message to a stranger does expose some of the author’s personal information, and I suppose there are recipients who ignore all messages from folks that they don’t actually know.

Networks, like groups, provide a place to “discuss” and share information. In addition, events are tied to networks — when you create an event you select one of your networks to associate with the event. While branch events can, of course, be posted as part of the local network, this may be a reason to figure out the administrative steps needed to have an AAUW network created rather than just using an AAUW “group.”

The process of notifying a group about an event seems to be a two-step thing. You can invite “friends” to an event, but to get the word to a group, you need to post to the group area (probably the “wall” since there’s apt to be little discussion?). However, if you’re the group administrator, you can invite the group members of the “related event” at the time it is created.
There’s still the sticking point that to see ANYTHING on facebook, you must be logged in to facebook. This is a huge issue for using facebook as a general purpose tool. But if there is a need to reach the audience that facebook makes available, the effort of the double maintenance may be appropriate.

I really want to like Facebook, but …

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Okay, I’ve been experimenting with Facebook for a couple of weeks. I really *want* to like it, but I just find it frustrating.

  • It’s easy to create “groups” but there seems to be very little support for “networks” that would support national membership organizations. For instance, there are now two groups named “American Association of University Women.” Wouldn’t it be fine if there were an AAUW “network” and then subgroups could form — and be encouraged to use a more specific name?
  • It’s just so closed…. You must register with Facebook to see any of the content.
  • Its support for RSS is limited. You can set it up so it looks like your RSS reader, but you have to click on the RSS link to see the messages. There’s nothing like just putting the headlines on your main page (ala blogger).

See this post from the NTEN blog that pretty much captures my reaction. [Props to Brett Meyer for an excellent job of capturing the tone.]

All that said, my branch is working on a project where we’re trying to connect to college students and it’s likely we’ll use Facebook as an organizing platform. Oh, well.