I saw a TED Talk recently by my former Nobles Yearbook Business Advisor Seth Priebatsch: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html. I was SO psyched to see him presenting on the TED stage. Go Seth!
He says right at the start that the social network is done, and it's called Facebook. Businesses and organizations that are still trying to build an online community that requires you to log in, create a profile, and select your friends, are twelve to eighteen months late to the party. The connectivity layer is done. The more interesting layer is the one on top of the connectivity layer, and how can we leverage that layer to shape behavior? That's actually a much more complex and interesting question.
I want us to stop debating over whether to use Ning, or elgg, or Moodle, any of the other social networking sites to try to build an academic community of interest. We've made too many sites that we force students, or teachers, or conference attendees, to register for, create a profile, and visit in order to build connections and access content. Then they visit a bunch of times during the project, then they never come back. I've lost track of how many times I've recreated my resume online on some social networking site, then tried to find friends and get other people to sign up. In the end, I keep going back to Facebook which is where everybody is already. The connectivity layer is built, and it's Facebook and the Facebook API.
It's as if we're still fighting over what kind of railroad to build when the rails have already been laid. Shouldn't we be more concerned about what kind of trains will be running on them?
I'm going to spend more of my time trying to figure out how to use Facebook, like it or not (I actually don't really like FB but oh well) to aggregate and share content, build communities of interest, and construct different layers of privacy to manage the content I put up. I believe that managing Facebook is going to be a 21st century skill. Our summer lab school (teachers come to Punahou from all over for tech training and to hear keynote speakers) will probably be using Facebook for collaboration. I suspect more and more young employers of young people will ask that the members of their team also be on Facebook, to collaborate.
Many of my older teachers who are scared of technology won't sign up for a Ning site or a Moodle page because they are wary of giving their information out to just anybody. But guess what? Most of them are on Facebook in the evenings, because their kids or their grandkids showed them how to do it, and that is where the social connection is.
I think that's the key to reaching the largest number of people and forming communities of practice in our field. The social connections are what gets them to use the rail system in the first place. Now that they're riding the rails, it's much easier to get them to jump trains.
