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Walking across campus this morning, I passed a couple dozen students with laptops open, sucking the wifi network. I wasn’t trying to snoop, but I noticed that well over half of them had browsers open to Facebook. It struck me that they are spending much of their time pumping content and data into a proprietary commercial venture. And they’re fine with it. I’m pretty sure they’re capable of understanding what it means to provide so much information about themselves - what they like, who they know, what they’re doing, the music they listen to, the books they read, their vocabulary, things they’re selling/buying, etc…

But, I fear they don’t actively think about what it means to give this personal data so freely to a commercial venture that has one singular purpose: to profit from their information, in any way possible.

And Facebook isn’t alone - we’re using Google Docs and the rest of the Google Apps suite, essentially teaching Google’s advertising engine with the most intimate and powerful data about ourselves. The Google Toolbar tracks what we search for, and what we see.

Universities are also guilty in this - we compel students to publish their content within the confines of the sanctioned LMS, where it can evaporate at the end of each semester. We provide them with email addresses, web space, etc… all of which evaporate when they graduate, and are not truly “theirs”.

It strikes me that an entire generation of our upcoming best-and-brightest minds are developing in an environment where they are comfortable not owning their own information, and even worse - they are comfortable with corporate entities mining every bit of minutiae about themselves in order to make a buck. In a “best case” scenario, these students simply aren’t aware of what this means, and this becomes an education issue. In a “worst case” scenario, they are aware, consenting, and active participants in this.

This scares the hell out of me. These students will be forming our governments in a few years, and running our companies.

How do we steer this ship onto a more wholesome, individual-centric course, where individuals not only want to own their own information, but also to effectively control who has access to it, and what they can do with it?

I’ve been thinking about this for some time, but haven’t taken the time to put it into words. Most recently, a post by Jennifer Jones nicely sums up why Twitter is important, and I think it goes even further than that.

Twitter is important because it makes many of the intangible human connections more readily available to people who are separated by distance. I often feel more closely integrated with the people on my Twitter stream than I do with people who work in my department. Why is that? I see those people every day. But - the people on Twitter are constantly reinforcing my connection with them, and vice versa, through the unceasing flow of status updates.

But, why is this important? I think this brings the real, visceral connections that are an essential part of a vibrant community (whether online, offline, or blended) into the forefront. I can tap into my Twitter contacts and ask questions, float ideas, or just shoot the shit. Things that are largely outside the domain of a traditional “online community” resource. The always-on nature of Twitter, and the strong sense of vibrancy and vitality, are what make it so compelling to me. At almost any time of the day or night, my Twitter stream is active, with people posting tidbits on a stunningly broad range of topics.

Sure, many of these are purely banal things like “I’m bored” or “heading out to the pub” - but those are important if only because they help reinforce a connection. I may not care that someone is going to a pub (especially if they’re in another city/country/continent and I can’t tag along), but by seeing their status update, it makes me mindful of them. I think about that person, even if briefly, and the sense of community is strengthened.

So, Twitter is valuable for so much more than simple “nanoblogging” - which is how I initially perceived it. It is important to me because it makes the sense of community and connectedness more tangible. And Twitter isn’t the only tool to help on that front.

One of the reasons I’m a raving, rabid Flickr addict is that I can follow the photos from my contacts. If they do something and post a picture, I see it. I may not have bothered to go hunting to find the picture, but the fact that Flickr streams it to me helps me keep up to date on what dozens of people are doing. I am more mindful of these people, and feel more aware and connected.

Tools like Flickr and Twitter are powerful because they are informal. It’s much quicker and easier to post a simple status update for something that wouldn’t warrant a full blog post. It’s simple to shoot a photo and hurl it up to Flickr - even if it’s not a great photo, it’s an easy way to share what’s going on in a person’s life.

One thing that newcomers to these tools often mention is how simultaneously noisy and empty they seem. Viewing the public Twitter update stream is a confusing and uninteresting activity. It’s not until you find the people that you care about - in real life - that these tools really start to get interesting. It’s not about “contact whoring” or trying to collect the most “followers” - it’s about finding the people you care about and maintaining a state of mindfulness. Something that is surprisingly easy to do with these various banality broadcasting engines.

I’m still thinking through how these tools compare with Facebook. I do know that Facebook has a decidedly different “feel” to it - with the endless flow of zombie-bites, pokes, application requests, and the like. Facebook has become annoying enough that I might check in on it once per week. I usually have Twitter and Flickr open in tabs all the time.  Facebook is evolving into a monolithic environment - the “applications” are so tightly integrated that they might as well be compiled into the kernel of FB. Small Pieces Loosely Joined is basically thrown out the window. Although I can integrate other resources, they become awkwardly sucked into FB, often providing redundant information or functionality (do I post status updates to Twitter, or to Facebook? do I post photos to Flickr or Facebook? etc…). I should be able to do these activities in one place, and one place only, and have the information pulled seamlessly together. Facebook just ain’t it.

Danah Boyd published an article comparing the demographics of MySpace and Facebook. The conclusion? Geeks, jocks, and preps head to Facebook. Stoners, goths, and bangers head to MySpace.

So… Essentially all cliques are steadily moving into personal and social publishing spaces. And they’re finding where they feel most comfortable.

vs

I’m not seeing the problem. Do we really expect the various groups of kids to all flock to the same communities online? It sure doesn’t happen offline.

The key is that they’re reading and writing much more than they would have been without becoming active in online publishing. That’s fantastic, no matter where they do it. I’m quite sure there are large groups of kids who are most active in other online communities like Nexopia and the like. So what? The goal isn’t to collect them all into one big bin, but to let them find their voices, however they need to do that.

The take away message for me isn’t that there is some socioeconomic segregation of youth, but that we need to remember that not all youth hang out at the same place. This isn’t new. It’s been going on for decades (centuries)? but us “web 2.0″ types seem to forget that it’s a natural part of being a kid, and assume that everyone’s playing in the same sandbox. That just ain’t so, and it’s not necessarily a bad (or good) thing. It just is.

Photo attributions:

• “Facebookers” - untitled, by aslakr
• “Myspacers” - P1080317, by Grant Mitchell

I've been posting to my blog far less frequently than ever before, in the entire history of this blog. Why is that? I'm still busy doing stuff. I'm still active in all the same places. The only shift lately is that I've also been much more active in social networking sites, specifically Twitter and Facebook.

Now, both Twitter and Facebook are essentially social networking systems. They are about forming and building connections between people, rather than publishing content. So, that shouldn't have an impact on my posts here.

The only thing I can think of is some kind of defusing effect that activity on social networking sites may have - I post there, and it satisfies the social component of posting here. Posting here doesn't affect posting there.

So, I'm starting to think about the relationship between social networking and blogging. They're definitely related, partially overlapping activities, but they also have their own subtle difference. Blogging is (for me) about personal knowledge management. Capturing the content and context of what I'm doing. Social networking is about context more than anything. Which looks at first blush to be purely banality. And yet, it affects me on a deeper level.

I was in Vancouver for an "eCOP" pathfinding meeting, and found that I flipped open the MacBookPro during breaks. What did I check first? It wasn't email. It wasn't my blog (or blog stats, or blog referrals). It was Twitter. I felt more connected to my distributed community of edubloggers (and others) because they're always there with me, no matter where I am. That's powerful stuff. Now, how to better make sense of that? Or does making sense of it suck the soul out of it?