What is your online persona saying about you?

In our Cooperative Education workshops and seminars we touch upon the topic of online persona’s but with all of the research I am doing for this blog I will now be able to work with my colleagues to enhance this portion of our seminars. Our student group for Cooperative Education, CESA (Cooperative Education Students’ Association) has a Facebook group, as does the Business Students’ Association who’s Facebook group recently posted an announcement for the launch of their new website, and I must say it looks great!  I also follow University of Alberta Alumni on Facebook and joined an alumni Facebook group.  I belong to multiple other Facebook groups. 

In addition to professional uses, I am an active Facebook user for personal uses:

If it wasn’t for facebook, I wouldn’t know that my cousin Ralph is heading off to work in Kaslo and he doesn’t know for how long and already he is missing his daughters and beautiful wife.

Considering the topic of social networking for this blog has been fun and has enabled me to explore aspects of social networking that I have never taken the time to in the past.  Living over 7 hours away from my family, Facebook has become a favourite personal communication tool of mine and I use it to send private and group messages to friends and family on a regular basis. 

There are also many fun diversions that friends send my way and sometimes I even partake in those! I can imagine that once I complete my master’s degree this summer and my schedule lightens a bit, (many who know me would make me insert a big ol’ lol right here, so here goes) lol, I may take my friends up on some of the many requests and invitations that I have been ignoring (yes, if you don’t want to accept or participate with an invitation, you can click on an ‘ignore’ button and move on with your social networking life).  Dakota, Terri, Kim, Lori and others I just might be accepting your FarmTown invitations in the near future and I realize that with 15,047,731 monthly active users this application is a popular place to be and I am sure that is because it is loads of fun!  With Facebook Scrabble coming up in numerous conversations with friends, I am sure that this too will be one of the first applications that I will give a fair try, when I have more free time.  Facebook Scrabble already purports 457,902 monthly active users and I have friends that have shared with me that it is their “sole reason for keeping their Facebook account;” not that I buy that of course, because after all they are using Facebook as the medium to send me that message.

As mentioned above in my introduction, I also use Facebook for more professional purposes and in many of these cases I joined Facebook groups which were already in existence.  My Facebook account serves as both a personal and professional tool and it provides more than enough options to keep the two separate, if that is what you desire.  The main reason I first signed up was because of the students I was working with at the time. I was the promotions and volunteer administrator, as well as the Asia study abroad advisor, with the University of Alberta International, Education Abroad Program Office and with over 100 volunteers to manage who were readily available to eagerly promote our various exchange programs, I was game to explore all the promotional tools that my volunteers recommended. The hands down winner, just two years ago, was overwhelmingly Facebook.  Not only recommended by nearly every volunteer I casually surveyed, it was deemed by my two assistants, Dennis and Ode, as the “place to be to engage our student audience.”   Both of my assistants were continuing university students and both had recently been on exchange and had their pulse on our audience and all things international on campus and so it took very little convincing for me to agree that we should give it a try.  Ode and Dennis were set to the task of creating our first Facebook group.  It was a success! Students shared pictures, stories, travel and cultural advice, and networked with peers that had like minded interests and I was able to join the group and it did not require me to become “friends” with every student.  

Groups can be set up to be private or public and can be managed in a whole host of ways.  For a great resource on how to create groups for courses or for student groups, see the video below which is from the “American Democracy Now” teaching tools for success Facebook series. This step-by-step instructional video will show you how to set up your group using Facebook.

Although safety and security are considerations for anyone who makes use of social networking tools, we in post-secondary settings do not experience quite the same array of concerns that my peers working in the K-12 system must deal with.  However, there are common safety tips which are necessary for everyone to consider, when socializing online.

Think before you post, is great TeacherTube video which I imagine will become a valuable tool that I can share in order to begin social networking safety discussions with students, staff, and family.

I have an ever growing online presence and support that we educate our students and ourselves in the best practices of online etiquette.  I believe that the collaborations which are already occurring online will only heighten and so since many of us are already there, we should be dialoguing about what it means to have an online persona.  Social networking is already in full force, as you can determine from the number of registered users listed on the extensive wiki list of major active social networking websites.

There are no guarantees of privacy online, so no matter how you set your privacy settings it is crucial to conduct safe online practices.  If you would be embarrassed if a prospective employer, your mother, a teacher, a colleague or someone else you respect, saw something about you or from you in cyberspace then that something doesn’t belong online.  It is important that users learn about the safe practices and appropriately set their privacy settings in all online accounts. There are many articles online that can point users in the right direction.  For example, About.com has articles on

• 22 Ways to Adjust Privacy Settings In Facebook
• 6 MySpace Privacy Features
• How Much Information Is Too Much?
• Privacy Can Be Important

and more…  As well, always visit the social network sites own help topics, for tips on privacy settings and safety.  For instance, if you will be using Facebook a great place to start is with their webpage, http://www.facebook.com/safety/ where you will discover many important safety tips and links to additional resources.

Common Sense Media provides a Social Networks: Facts of Life list that is directed towards parents but the list provides several important reminders for all social networking users:

• Sites like Facebook and MySpace have privacy controls;
• Some sites require kids to be older than 13 to have a profile, but younger kids set up accounts anyway;
• Social networks keep kids connected to friends, provide a space for self-expression;
• There are no guarantees of privacy (even with settings) since anything can be cut, pasted, and sent;
• Inappropriate pictures, posts, or messages can result in damage to kids’ reputations; and
• Kids can “tag” (or identify) their friends which can violate their privacy.

Visit the Common Sense Media website for more tips and an informative video that provides parents with tips for social networking.

There are plentiful resources, opinions, and recommendations about safety in social networking.  I came across a diverse selection of articles on the Life 123 website which provide many excellent tips and considerations to share with all audiences who are developing an online persona.  An article by Dachary Carey is about simple safety rules for your kids and addresses some of The Dangers of Social Networking Sites.  The same author also has articles about Online Social Networking Pros and Cons and in order to realize that there are many great reasons for social networking be sure to read the article, What Are the Advantages of Social Networking?.  At the same website you can also read about Internet Social Networking Etiquette, an article by Rochelle Valasek.

Facebook is constantly growing and adding new applications and features to the social site.  There are news feeds, Facebook notes, instant messaging, photo albums and applications to do a multitude of amazing and creative things with your photos.  There are games, calendars, groups and the ability to create events and send out invites.  There is also a private message feature that is much like email where you can send a private message to any of your Facebook friends.  I have noticed in my time on Facebook that the privacy features are updated as the site grows too.

You can become a fan of facebook, which I did and I now am one of over 4,474,015 fans (that was the fan count when I wrote this post). Not only are new apps are created every day on Facebook but new groups are also created every day on Facebook.  Facebook is seemingly everywhere, from The History Channel Facebook to the Make Poverty History Canada Facebook, which is a social campaign that I support and actively participate in and which I also now follow as a Facebook fan.

I firmly believe that there are many great things coming out of social networks, including an ability to advocate and support causes that interest us by joining various social networks or groups within networks, such as, ‘facebook groups’ to discuss issues and gain support.  As well, through Facebook events, we are even able to set up f2f (face to face) events and meetings, if our groups see the need.

Many people are finding a way to make a difference in the world through Facebook.  There is an application for Facebook Causes that allows individuals or groups with a passion for a cause to create a “cause” in order to mobilize and gain support. 

There are countless applications inside facebook, as mentioned above, and now facebook connect has applications outside of facebook too, so that developers can implement facebook sharing on external websites and users can share these external sites with their facebook account by connecting on the external site and bringing the apps into facebook.  One example of an external stand-alone social networking site that is now also able to be shared to Facebook is myTripBook, a social network where you can keep a travel diary and future trip planner.  You can keep your travel diary private, share with friends or have it open to all online. It is a site where you can keep a record of all your trips and travel experiences. You can enter trips that you have taken and ones that you are planning for the future.  You can add photos and videos and also keep a diary for each trip. There is also a section to add recommendations for any hidden gems that you have discovered and want to share, such as a bar, restaurant, hotel or hostel or just a particular activity.  You can add friends on the site and see their research and you can share your travel diaries or keep them private.  You can also add content from other sites, such as Flickr and myTripBook has an integrated trip diary application for facebook users.

There are several other social networking sites that I will now briefly consider:

Chain Reading is a social networking site with a focus on books for book lovers.  “Chain Reading is designed to cater to those of us who have an addiction to reading” and the site enables users to:

• Let people know what you are reading, planning on reading, and recommend;
• Suggest books to your friends;
• Browse books recommended by others;
• Write book reviews to share your opinions; and
• Keep track of books that your friends suggest.

The University of Alberta Online Community is getting on board with social networking in hopes that they can engage past alumni and other target audiences. They report that they already have a network with over 15,000 people and they are hoping to keep ties with alumni, students, faculty and staff in one online system.  This is a work in progress and it is reported that the newest version includes:

• Social networking: Similar to other Social Media sites, the OLC offers you a detailed profile page where you can share information with other members of the U of A OLC;
• Photo Galleries: Create photo albums to share with other OLC members;
• Contact lists: Connect to other U of A alumni by building a contact list;
• Groups: Set up interest groups, arrange a study group, create a class page, plan a reunion…; and
• Personal Messaging: send a personal message within the OLC. Notifications will be sent outside of the system letting people know that messages are waiting for them.

As the University of Alberta keeps apace of all that is Web 2.0 they note in their coming soon announcements that “New features will be added regularly including: RSS feeds, blogs, faculty landing pages, career advice centre, and file-sharing.” 

The final social network that I will comment on is LinkedIn.  I am a fairly new user of this network and am just getting a feel for how I might use it for my work.  The wiki on LinkedIn (pronounced /ˈlɪŋkt.ˈɪn/) states that this social network “is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 is mainly used for professional networking. As of May 2009, it had more than 40 million registered users, spanning 170 industries.”  This social network has some great add-ons and just last week I was able to install the WordPress add-on so that my blog post updates can be found on my LinkedIn profile page.  If you want to learn more about my work, and maybe you have a co-op job or two for my students that you would like to send my way, then visit my LinkedIn user profile to learn more.

With my past blog posts, I discussed how my colleagues and I might use the Web 2.0 tools that I was considering and for the most part the tools were all new to me.  For this post my approach was to consider how I, our students, and my colleagues are already using social networking.  Facebook and other social networking sites are already in high use by post-secondary students and many staff are also actively creating their online personas.

I have an ever growing online presence and support that we educate our students and ourselves in the best practices of online etiquette.  I believe that the collaborations which are already occurring online will only heighten and so since many of us are already there, we should be dialoguing about what it means to have an online persona.  Social networking is already in full force, as you can determine from the number of registered users listed on the extensive wiki list of major active social networking websites.

In a USA Today article Jon Swartz (2009) reveals that not everyone is keen on social networks, “social-networking services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter may be generating lots of buzz. But old-fashioned, non-digital, face-to-face conversations aren’t out of vogue just yet.”   He comments on a market research survey that,

About 87% of 1,000 adults questioned in June said they prefer to deal with other people in person instead of via computers or smartphones… What’s more, half of the respondents said that they do not use social networks.”

Will it last and to what degree?

Watch the YouTube video embedded below, where TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington asks YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg what their respective companies may look like five years into the future. 

“Social networking applications and sophisticated mobile devices are combining elements of the real and virtual worlds, and delivering an augmented experience of reality.  How is this digital experience changing consumers and communities?”  The World Economic Forum tackles these questions and more in their forum on The Next Digital Experience which includes the excerpt shared in the above YouTube video.

The USA Today article by Swartz includes current statistics that support that social networking has caught on and is being used in full force:

Facebook has 250 million members, 50 million of whom joined in the last three months. In April, its members spent 13.9 billion minutes on the site, up 700% from April 2008, says Nielsen NetView. MySpace has nearly 130 million members.”

Although there may be adults who are reporting that they do not yet use a social network, we know our students are already there. As a concluding reminder of the intent of this blog post I will reiterate that I believe we have a responsibility to educate students on how to responsibly use these amazing Web 2.0 tools and the first step is for us to use and understand the tools ourselves, so that we can share best practices with our students.

If you haven’t started with a social network yet and are interested in setting up a Facebook account, I recommend you visit Molly McDonald’s tutorials on the Finer Points of Facebook.

 She demonstrates everything from un-tagging yourself from unflattering photos, super charging your privacy settings, creating your own Facebook family page, adding a Facebook badge to your site or blog, and even hiding parts of your profile from certain people, like your boss, your co-workers… or your Mom.  In this 10-part series, Molly runs down tips that will make you a Facebook power user in no time.”

References

Swartz, J. USA Today, In survey, many adults say they’re not sold on social networks, 08/03/2009. Retrieved August 3, 2009 from Canadian Reference Centre Database (AN J0E314785080909)

Want to explore more social networking sites?

Top 10  http://social-networking-websites-review.toptenreviews.com/

350 + list of sites: http://mashable.com/2007/10/23/social-networking-god/

 

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