A quick explanation would be that, according to Facebook, the Like count is the combined total of Likes, Shares, and Comments for an object, so, in all likelihood the object in question was shared or commented upon some 1,990 times, but only liked within the platform 10 times.  Possible – unrealistic given we never embedded a share button with the object, but possible; perhaps an old-school Facebook Share button was involved on a link to the object at a third-party site – its anybody’s guess.  Anyway, the count shown by the Like button is still sort of deceptive.  (If you’re unfamiliar with the difference between Like and Share buttons, read this.)

Now, a Facebook user can only “like” an object once, but they can share it as many times as they want.  This got me thinking – there’s a glitch in the Matrix! – anyone could easily pad the Like count for an object by simply sitting there and sharing it on their Facebook profile over and over and over – you could write a script to do this quite easily. I even tested this out on my own profile – I shared the same object 10 times, and the Like count next to the object’s like button, you guessed it, increased by ten. Each time an object is shared, it adds that share to the total Like count shown next to its Like button.

Think about what this means: that article on HuffPo or Mashable or Fox News has, all of the sudden, automagically been liked 10,000 times – it must be very popular!  Just think, someone could create a dummy account on Facebook, virtually hidden from public view, and set it up to share the same article’s graph object over and over.  Now, certainly NOBODY would abuse that kind of thing, right?

The semantic Web is, or could eventually be, a beautiful thing, but when a major social discovery platform like Facebook is going to deprecate functions in such peculiar ways (adding share counts to like counts, in this case), it gives one a bit of pause – can you really trust the numbers?  If I were Facebook, I’d stop tallying shares and likes together and treat them for what they really are (just because I share something doesn’t mean I like it) – but that’s just me.

///Special thanks to @johnfurnari of bigMETHOD for helping me discover this reporting oddity today.

Further reading: Facebook’s New Pages: A Hands-On Tour (PCWorld)

What is social media?

In a nutshell,

social media is the computer version of a whole bunch of people-to-people stuff we already do in real life.

It’s human interaction that takes place solely on your Internet-connected computer or cell phone.  And, as in real life we work to accomplish tasks and solve problems with other people, so too with social media – except, it’s a means of working with people to accomplish tasks and solve problems without the restrictions of distance or time.  Moreover, social media lets us specify what we need, filter out stuff we don’t want, and get straight to the stuff we do want.  In other words, it’s a very efficient way of working with others on all kinds of common objectives.

Want more information? Read on…

Taking a closer look, we find that social media is a very popular, growing business field functioning on the Internet today.  Free and paid websites, or ‘web services’, have popped up all over, designed to help us quickly and easily solve all kinds of real-life problems that have some interpersonal (human-to-human) component.  For example, one service makes it really easy to share pictures of your loved ones with all of your family members with just the click of a mouse.  Another service lets you discuss issues with fellow constituents and address your congressperson with what’s on your mind.  Yet another helps you share restaurant reviews with other consumers and find out what the best steakhouse in town is.  And, all of these things you can do any time you want, whatever you want, wherever you want.

What’s more, social media effectively eliminates or diminishes traditional forms of media.  Via instantaneous, unrestricted means, social media returns us to simpler times, when you relied on your neighbors, in this case, digital neighbors, to share news and help solve communal problems – even though these “neighbors” might be hundreds of miles away.  No longer do we have to listen to large institutions and the messages they have to share with us, because social media makes it possible for everyone to have a voice, big or small.  Imagine listening to your favorite pundit on cable news, disagreeing with that pundit, and then being able to interrupt his or her program and tell them what you really think.

Technically speaking, social media is a term for the way people interact with one another via computer networks.  Social media refers not only to human interaction, but also to the actual information about people that is shared over computer networks, and the technology that this information is collected and organized with. ‘Social media’ is also a general way to refer to the businesses that have been established that facilitate and organize this activity (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Flickr, and so forth).

What can social media do, and why is it important?

Imagine attending a real-life community town hall meeting.  Present are your neighbors from down the street, strangers you’ve never met, important individuals like the mayor and school superintendent, and many others.  All of these people have gathered together in one place, though their objectives might vary.  This kind of gathering happens with social media; it just happens over the Internet.  So, instead of driving to the town hall, you “log on” to the town hall with your computer at home.

Now, during the town hall the issue of fixing the broken sidewalks around town is addressed.  The mayor gives a short speech about this pressing need.  After the mayor’s speech the floor is opened for comments and questions from the audience.  Anyone can have their say.  One person gets up to say they support what the mayor has to say, while another gets up to criticize it, while still another neighbor makes an elaborate, unrelated comment about some other neighbor’s cat always getting in their hydrangeas.  All kinds of comments are made, but of course, while this is happening you decide what you want to really pay attention to as you listen.

Eventually a stranger stands up and says he knows where to find inexpensive contractors to take care of the sidewalk problem, but they’ll need concrete mix to get it done.  You realize that you actually know where to get the best concrete mix, and you share that information with the group.  As the town hall wraps up, pretty soon a few of you in the audience have broken off to collaborate with one another on how to get this sidewalk project done.  You devise your plan, and then you go over to the mayor while the refreshments are being served and you give your new ad hoc team’s information to him.  The sidewalk problem is effectively solved, and it’s all because a bunch of people gathered in the same place, and then the right ones connected with one another, and a common goal and solution came about through their sharing and collaboration.  Most of all, mutually beneficial relationships were built that didn’t previously exist.

Now, this time imagine the same town hall meeting happening in the computer over the Internet.  Instead of talking in person, though, people type what they have to say, or “comment” and upload (aka, “post”) these thoughts to the online service that is enabling their town hall.  It’s a virtual version of a real-life experience.  And, as a user we can search through the comments and find what we are looking for, without having to give unnecessary attention to unrelated material.  But, the really great thing about it is that the people at this town hall can be anywhere in the world and can contribute any time that they want.  And, of course, all the while we can decide which contributions are worth paying attention to and which should be filtered out.

So, why, then, is social media so important? Social media helps us develop and participate in interpersonal relationships with other people without restrictions of distance or time, and it helps us filter (control and organize) the information that is shared in these relationships.  You can bypass what it is about the relationship that is less important, or the minutiae that often slows down relationship-building, and find what you really need.  In other words, it’s one thing to build relationships and work together with others in person; it’s another to be able to do so when it’s convenient for both you *and* for them, and also be able to get to the point more quickly, plus do so from anywhere you can get online.  We can bridge social gaps instantaneously.

That’s what social media does – it helps us strengthen existing interpersonal bridges plus build more of them in less time.  While that critical component of real interaction in the flesh will always be missing, social media solves the problem of balancing many different relationships and getting quickly to the purpose of these relationships.  We can share, collaborate, and take collective action to solve problems in mutually beneficial ways, while a real-time account of this relationship building  is published for other interested parties to see, so that they, too, can get involved if so desired, thereby further expanding the social bridge.  So, social media is part publicity, part organization, and part open accountability.  In other words, social media is kind of like writing a communal story of our times as we solve problems with one another.

So, grandpa, are you ready to take part in social media?  Your grandkids are waiting for you to accept their “friend requests“!

Or, in Web parlance, “You’re doing it wrong“.

See also:
Ryan Tate at Gawker, who referenced Laura Fitton and John Calacanis with these same concerns.

So, below I’ve reposted my response to this person’s comment on my director friend’s wall; I know I’ve said as much about this stuff in my post about silently unfriending people on Facebook, but I feel the need to discuss the issue further.

‘Digital friends’ are not the same as real life friends (though sometimes a friend may be both), and digital friendship does not possess the same obligations as real friendship – in fact, generally speaking, digital friendship has no obligations, apart from clicking ‘Add’ or ‘Ignore’. Networks like Facebook are a great way to narrowcast information to a niche audience of potentially interesting connections, and to acquire information from the same; depending on how you choose to filter (by actual settings or just plain old indifference) the data coming in. Because you’re dealing with profiles rather than having face-to-face encounters, you don’t actually have to do a thing when somebody attempts to interact with you if you don’t want to (“my Internet connection was down” or “I was busy doing something”, etc, etc. – What do they know? Nothing.) You deal with, or don’t deal with, digital friendship on your own time – it’s incredibly convenient!

And because there is no cost for acquiring a new connection (digital friend), then there is only ever a potential net gain from establishing it.

For example, 99% of what I publish (post) may be completely irrelevant to you; you can filter it out, ignore it when you see it, etc. However, there is always the chance that I will publish something that is relevant to you, that might catch your eye (for instance, a job opening at a company you’re interested in, news about a close friend that you might not have otherwise heard, or information about a deal on a new product – the list goes on and on). By *not* being Facebook friends with a person in order to illustrate to yourself or others that you are not real life friends with them, you’re ultimately only restricting the potential flow of useful information in your network. You stand to miss out.

So, when REDACTED added me he wasn’t trying to say “Hey everyone, Matt Stringer and I party every night on the Strip together, he’s like my best friend in the whole world!” – instead, REDACTED was merely opening a channel for a potential net gain in social capital and personal welfare, and it cost him nothing. I say good for him.

There are plenty of times when it’s appropriate to not accept a friend request – you don’t know or have never met the person, personal privacy issues, concern about appearances, etc.  Of course, these reasons can also be mitigated with a proper understanding of how to control privacy settings, actually meeting that random co-worker that wants to add you face-to-face, getting over what you think people think about you, etc, etc.  FWIW, I think if you’ve met a person and gotten to know a little bit about them, you ultimately only stand to gain by adding them.  Let’s face it, in the wake of Facebook’s privacy controversies and allegations that the network sold personal data on users in violation of their own privacy policies, at this point the word “Friend” on Facebook is basically a misnomer now.  I mean, Coca-Cola and Nike are pretty much your Facebook friends now, too…  so, I say, don’t worry about that word ‘friend’ anymore, think ‘connection’, and everything should be fine.  Because, the better connected, the better your life may be.  Assuming you’re not dealing with a creep (but as always, think before your post, and filter, filter, filter!)

This post is REALLY long. I’ve included headings that might help you navigate the boring bits, but skip to the bottom because it has the best parts.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but I have a lot of Facebook friends.  As of May 2010, I am clocking in somewhere near 1000 connections, though I’m sure that kind of number is far from unheard of on the Interwebs.  Still, I’d say it’s significant.  I believe I saw a statistic somewhere that mentioned that the average Facebook user has upwards of 400 Facebook friends, although some sociologists get all whiney about the Dunbar number and say you can only ever really have 150 stable social connections and yadda yadda yadda.  Listen, we all know there is a big difference between an on-line friend and a IRL friend, though often a personal connection can represent both.  In other words, I think the sociologists should find other silly facts to get all uppity about and let us have our social networking fun.

Being a man who works in social media, I find it important to have many Facebook friends for several reasons.  For starters, it expands my potential reach and overall presence on the Web (or, if you’re in marketing, it’s the more eyeballs the better).  When I produce a new video, write a new blog entry, find something remarkable in connection to a professional venture, or otherwise publish worthwhile personal- or business-related material, my 1000 connections get to see that.  And because I’m such an egotist, 1000 just isn’t enough – I ‘Add as a Friend’ just about anyone that I meet (this also helps me remember who they are as well as get to know a little bit about them based on their ‘Info’).

It’s all about reach…

Now, before you accuse me of thinking that my friends are just numbers to me, let me illustrate what I’m really talking about here in terms of online reach: a couple of months ago I had the privilege of producing a video of an awareness event for the Greater Northwest Chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.  Volunteering in this capacity, I found out through the Chapter that the video was to air as part of a special program regarding MS on a local university’s TV channel.  Through my on-line social connections I was able to inform a social networking specialist at the local NBC TV affiliate, who in turn relayed word about the event to their thousands of Twitter followers, so those followers in turn could be aware and come out for the event that day.  None of this would have been possible if it wasn’t for my drive to ‘Add’ everyone I meet, including this TV station’s social media person.  Although the our social network indicates we’re Friends, in reality we hardly know one another.  But, by knowing her something great happened; it’s got nothing to do with merely numbers – every number is a real person, and good things happen when you’re dealing with real people!

…which brings me to my topic – the silent unfriend, or rather, the sad fact that the silent unfriend even happens.

Putting the ‘Myspace’ in Facebook

Now, this is purely conjecture, but it appears that for many people, Facebook is as much about connecting and sharing with friends and loved ones as it is about narrowcasting to the world, at least to some circle of connections, what you’re all about. danah boyd could probably speak better to this, at least when it comes to Myspace, that digital badlands of youth self-identification, but overall I’d say plenty of self-identifying similarly takes place in the way Facebook profiles are populated and maintained by individual users.  This would certainly apply to who we’re Friends with, because even that list of Facebook friends can say a lot about who a person is – or, at least, who they want the world to think they are.

“I unfriend, therefore I am“

With that ‘self-identification via one’s Friends list’ in mind, there appear to be countless submissions across the Web on the topic of unfriending.  Yes, Oxford’s 2009 Word of the Year, “unfriend“, the act of removing a connection from an on-line social network, has become common parlance.  Lovers unfriending exes over their broken relationships, children unfriending nosy parents, employees unfriending overly-informed bosses, etc, etc.  Generally, there always seems to be some legitimate, viable cause for the unfriend – and it always seems to receive plenty of attention amongst those affected.  It says a lot to proclaim to the world that you’ve unfriended someone.

Silently unfriending

But, then there is the silent, seemingly baseless unfriend.  The one you don’t notice until one day, as you’re looking up some certain somebody to share a link with or ask a question of or otherwise reconnect, you realize that you and that person are no longer listed as friends.  They’ve silently, quietly, casually unfriended you.  And this happens in silence because Facebook, for matters of obvious privacy, does nothing to inform you that you’ve been unfriended.

Reasons for a silent unfriend: 1) Digital Housecleaning

In trying to think of reasons why a connection might silently unfriend a person, several ideas come to mind.  The first I would link to simple housecleaning, although this digital housecleaning is not without certain meanings.  Perhaps you’ve been silently unfriended because the person thinks they were never really friends with you to begin with, or they haven’t heard very much from you apart from occasional postings in their News Feed, or they previously meant to unfriend you for otherwise legitimate reasons like those seen above, but just never got around to it.

2) Image

Then, what next comes to mind is more in the self-identification realm.  Perhaps they’ve unfriended you because they don’t want others to know or think that you’re friends – that that connection might say something to the world about their identity which they feel they don’t have the social capital to pay for.

3) Annoying applications, annoying people

Third, I think about simple “nuisance factors”, although I think this says more about the unfriending party’s ability to employ Facebook’s robust filtering and application-blocking options than it does about the annoying unfriended party.  Sometimes one-too-many Farmville invitations are enough to warrant a silent unfriend.  Or constantly updating one’s status with the contents of one’s day in such a way that virtually begs for an unfriend (warning: link not safe for the easily offended).

4) “Omg U R so creapy (sic)”

Fourth, but sometimes most frighteningly obvious, is that a Facebook user is fearful of an old connection having access to too much of their personal data.  Is that creepy ex-boyfriend stalking you?  How can you really know?  Is he STANDING OUTSIDE YOUR WINDOW RIGHT NOW WATCHING YOU READ THIS? and so forth.

But, as pertinent or innocuous as any of these above-mentioned reasonings may be, the sad reality is that so much is not achieved by way of the silent unfriend.  If Facebook’s constantly eroding privacy policies have anything to say about it, the termination of a friend connection by someone who just doesn’t want to deal with the unfriended person any more, despite whatever previous association they might have mutually experienced, doesn’t really do much anything to block them from a great deal of publicly available data.  Granted, fear of being stalked or engaging in unwanted exchanges completely warrants an unfriend – but it might not do anything to stop the unwelcome behavior in real life.

The truth

All of these things aside, ultimately, I’m going to go with a fifth and final reason for why most unfriends take place – they just don’t like you any more.  Or maybe they never did to begin with and they were just being nice when they accepted your initial friend request (although it’s more obvious their feelings have turned if they were the one’s to originally request you).  I often come across old friends that I have noticed have given me the silent unfriend and think to myself: “I’ve done nothing I know of to offend this person. I haven’t even spoken or interfaced with them in ages.  What gives?”  In this new dawn of Likes and Unlikes, could it be they’ve just decided to Unlike me?

I’m a firm believer that people rarely act under coercion or by sheer random chance – they only do what they want to do.  If a person silently unfriends me, it’s because they don’t want to carry some supposed extra social weight, the “responsibility” of being a Facebook friend.

The non-responsibility of being an on-line friend

But, seriously, let’s face it, is there really much responsibility associated with being a digital friend?  Most people just leave their connections on the Friends list, and in doing so, in doing nothing, they’ve already met their social obligation to them.  It’s nothing like in real life, where actual conversation or genuine interaction might be called for.  While I believe that social media is the perfect analogue for real-life social interactions, sans restrictions of geography or time, I don’t presuppose that that comes with some mystical, additional social responsibility.  There is nothing uncomfortable about the online Social, when compared with real life’s social quandaries.  Turn off the computer, pretend you lost your Wi-Fi connection, or just click ‘Ignore’ to begin with.  Not adding a friend is so much more ambiguous in meaning than what actually adding them inherently implies.  The fact that you’re not even in the same room really saves a lot of personal anxiety!

A word of warning against the silent unfriend

In conclusion, before you silently unfriend that old connection, think about the true meaning of digital friendship.  It really has no meaning, so there’s not much to lose in maintaining it, but there might be much to gain by keeping it up.  The next time that random someone posts they’ve just completed research on your favorite medical topic, or that they’ve struck it rich and they’re buying everyone lunch, or that they’ve found the location of Amelia Earhart’s plane which they discovered on their expedition to the south Pacific, or, (and I so wish this would happen to me) their best friend Shaquille O’Neal is having a house party and his friends are welcome to bring guests, you won’t be missing out because your ego is too big for a few extra numbers on your computer screen.  As you can tell, the ‘silent unfriend’ only creates silence in an age where “knowing is half the battle”.  Let this be a warning to you.

You don’t need to have anything to do with me, I understand that.  You don’t even need to be my friend, I also understand that.  I screwed up and handled the break-up and/or how I treated you when we dated incredibly poorly, I definitely understand that.  I am really crazy, like probably chemically crazy, we can probably both agree on that, too.  And, of course, people often just don’t want to associate with exes (or crazy people), I understand and respect that clearly as well.

Nevertheless, I happen to still think you’re pretty cool, so…

What I also understand is that there is often an unhealthy, if minor and mildly annoying, tension – an almost NEED that we artificially create in our minds to protect ourselves – a subconscious (or very concious) game of thinking about how to avoid a person that we previously had some kind of fallout with whenever they happen upon us.  At least, that’s what happens on my end.  Of course, I know I am not the most popular guy in the world, so your side and your thoughts when seeing me in a room could be quite different, but generally, I think that’s what happens.  Negative energy ensues.

But, I also think we all have kind of a common bond, and that’s our mutual associations, friends, and, potentially, future social exchanges of some kind, all of which remains worthwhile.  As for the latter, I’m talking “exchanges” of information, business, or maybe even service, in the least.  I think we just can’t close the “mutually beneficial” doors that life may present to us from time to time.  I know that in my chosen industry, a networker’s paradise, we pretty much never ignore a soul because someday we might be working for them, and vice versa.  Even if not financially.  You might show up for that community volunteer gig and find out the guy you loath is the one with the clipboard!

Anyway, despite all of that, there is a wall that we’ve propped up by our pasts.  It’s this imaginary blockade that requires people to have to circumnavigate it when sailing the social seas.  But, it’s a wall that just doesn’t need to be there, and I personally think it will relieve everyone involved if we just let it go.  Letting it go doesn’t mean becoming insta-friends, or hugs or high-fives, or even smiles; it’s just a shattering of notions, a dismissal of the preconceived (without forgetting the past – which past prevents those hugs and high-fives and maybe even smiles from reoccurring to begin with – trust me, I know how bad I can be).  It’s just an armistice and a decompression, that’s all anybody needs, and all that I seek, so that when encountering a room full of mutual connections one is not thinking about who they hope is not there and so that one is instead simply looking at a room of people and friends, known or not known, and not thinking about anything – there are no mental chess games taking place.  If we manage that, then there are no fake smiles or awkward passings-by, … just, instead, you see that old “once was” (you know, me) and you say “Hey, what’s up?”, or maybe I say it first, and you actually stop to listen, even if just for long enough to indicate your disinterest.  I don’t think it’s a major thing to ask of a person… in fact, I think it’s the price we all pay for simply knowing who a person is.  And you don’t get to un-know.  Knowledge is permanent.

Or, to put this all in more nerdy terms:  I know people are not computers and that life is not a network, but to me, seeing a person that I can’t say hello to and know a little bit more about and associate with when warranted (certainly never forced) is like finding a server that I can’t ping, that’s gone down.  I hate seeing a node down when I scan a list of servers.  I even don’t like knowing that there are nodes physically present that I otherwise can’t see because they’ve been unplugged or something.  To me, they are hiding in plain sight!  I want to bring them all back on-line so that the data of social existence can continue to flow without any workarounds.  Nothing is re-routed, no matter how automagic and indistinguishable the maneuver may be.

So, what I’m getting at is… honestly, I hate routing around you, and I’m tired of it.  Sure, I think you might hate that I exist, but if you look at me from the same perspective that I look at you, heck, in my mind we are all important, and even the least appropriate server to route your connection to has real substance for the overall integrity of the network.  It all fits together.

So, I propose that we reset the connection just so we don’t have to feel like we’re hiding in plain sight anymore.  You know, even if it’s just a case of “friends close, enemies closer”… all that good stuff.  Why?  Because, like I said, I still think you’re cool even if you can’t stand what I’m all about, and you still matter to me and the integrity of the networks we otherwise share, no matter how insignificant they may seem.

Early last week Google began to roll out their new social sharing service “Buzz” to all of their Gmail users. Buzz is a “lifestream” (a lot like your News Feed in Facebook) where everything you are doing is combined with everything those you are “following” are doing, allowing for real-time sharing of Web content, images, status updates, and so forth. It’s pretty nifty in and of itself, considering that Google had also recently created social profiles of all their Gmail users and placed them in Google search results – basically, everything that’s already publicly available about a person through search brought in to one simple profile page (which users can control for privacy, of course). With the profile roll out and Buzz, users can now easily find and follow other people and see what they’re tweeting, what pics they are posting to Flickr, what music they are listening to on Pandora, and on and on.  Almost overnight, Google became one of the largest social networks in the world by turning their search engine in to a makeshift social network.

The only problem is, Google Buzz, the flagship and most critical functional element of this new Google social network, is a horrible mess!

The purpose of Web 2.0 (or whatever buzz word you want to apply to today’s Web innovations) is publishing, aggregating, and filtering.  Content from around the Web that we care about should come together in to simple, constantly updated feeds.  RSS feeds for our blogs help us with simple publication, tools and services like Digg, Google Reader, and Pageflakes help with aggregation of content, and services like search.twitter.com and settings for our Facebook Walls help us to filter for what we want to see.  Now, granted, this is a time of a lot of transition and change in the social space, so these sorts of systems are not perfect, but in general most Internet users have figured out how to filter for what they want with the toys at their disposal.

And now there’s Google Buzz, arriving at the party like some drunk Microsoft application.  Like most new iterations of Windows OS, it’s incredibly powerful, almost everyone is using it (whether they want to or not because it’s in Gmail), and it’s a total disaster of an interface.

Because anyone can follow anyone, comments made to content items in your Buzz feed update in real-time, potentially flooding a buzz item (or, referred to as just a “buzz”) like some never-ending stream of communal consciousness (if you don’t believe me, just follow Mashable in your Buzz to see what I mean – I haven’t seen that much fellating of a product since Apple fanbois went gooey over the iPhone  – plus, everyone commenting sounds REALLY IMPORTANT).  While one can “mute” a buzz, removing it from your stream, there doesn’t appear to be any way of getting it back.  What would be more effective is the ability to collapse a buzz with a really large comment thread going, or to see those completely collapsed automatically, but that’s not possible.

Perhaps the worst offender in all of this is there is no way to filter your Buzz – just because you are following a person on Buzz doesn’t mean you want to see EVERYTHING they post.

Another annoyance (though Gmail filters themselves allow for a workaround) is that once you’ve commented in a Buzz thread, you’re going to get a perpetual stream of emails in your inbox from that thread.  This is especially cumbersome for keeping a clean inbox in third-party clients like MS Outlook or a BlackBerry.

I’m certain Buzz will eventually have columns, collapsible threads, filters, and a way to undo Buzz from the floodtide it creates in your Inbox.  Plus, another feature that would be nice is a way of unsubscribing from individual comment threads (which goes along with keeping that inbox clean).  Apart from these egregious FAILs in the Buzz system, one can’t help but see Buzz as a real game-changer for Twitter and Facebook.  Of course, as soon as Facebook launches a real email interface with POP3/IMAP/SMTP, etc., Google has been very wise to launch Buzz and go after those other giants of social media before they come after Google.  The only problem is, in remembering to publish and aggregate, they totally forgot about filtering, something Twitter and Facebook have been doing effectively for a long time.

For now, Google Buzz is just a mess.

When I began my studies as a graduate student in the Master of Communication in Digital Media program at the University of Washington, in my very first course, awkwardly named something like “Research Methodologies for Digital Media” – I cannot remember exactly what it was called, but some students cleverly nicknamed it “Research 2.0″ (get it? like Web 2.o, only smarter), the very first book we were asked to look at was Shirky’s “Everybody”.  Since what you are reading here is my very last book review in the program – expounding now upon the item for Kathy Gill’s Net Economics course a little over a year later – as the opportunity presented itself, I felt I ought to revisit “Everybody”.  I’m doing so not only to see how my understanding of the book might have changed after continued in-depth education on all things digital media here at the MCDM, but perhaps also to see if the very things Shirky writes about – sharing, collaborating, and taking collective action in the digital world – have become realities for me during the course of my education.  And the answer is ‘yes’, they have, in the most beautiful way possible.

When I began the MCDM program, I knew, at least, that I was a storyteller, and I knew, at least, that I was working on telling stories in the digital space, meaning with the Web.  Since earning my Bachelor’s from USC in 2004, I had annually produced short videos and authored DVD versions to give to friends and the people I made them with.  When I discovered YouTube, things radically changed for me because now I had a venue in which to share my little creations.  When I joined Myspace and Yahoo! Groups I suddenly had an on-line collaboration platform – a social network – where I could find other filmmakers, performers, and storytellers to collaborate with on new video projects.  And, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was one of perhaps millions of people who, without any real hierarchical governing body or officially certified and organized industrial sanction, was actively taking part in a global collective action that was completely changing the face of the media content production world.  And why were we all doing this?  Simply because we could.  Nevertheless, it was totally unbeknownst to me the scale or importance of what it was I was involved in.  It had no label, at the time, for me.

Reading from Shirky’s “Everybody” finally helped me understand what it was that I was collectively participating in and finally gave me a label for it, or, really, a modus operandi for myself.  “Everybody”, along, of course, with the overall educational experience of coming in to the MCDM program, has everlastingly provided me with an explanation for and a means of identifying what it was I was up to in this post-undergraduate on-line world.  Prior to Shirky, the closest I had come to some loose cognition of what all of this playing around in the digital sandbox was was in the work of Henry Jenkins at MIT, who, as a self-described “Aca-Fan” (meaning, academic researcher and pop-culture enthusiast), had been working to define the process by which fans of any particular pop-culture phenomenon (say, Star Wars) were co-opting and commodifying anew (say Star Wars fan videos) their beloved prior texts, creating a new “participatory culture” (see Jenkins, 2006).  I knew that I was taking part in some element of that (especially because I didn’t know anything about the concept of “copyright infringement” – and now, sadly, I know too much!) but I didn’t really think about the how of it all.  What Jenkins did for me is help me to define myself as a “New Media Producer” – I was producing videos with a heavily memetic co-option of all that Web and pop culture I was familiar and enamored with (I made movies with titles like “Revenge of the Jocks” and “Epic Wingman“), and I was uploading them to a new medium.  But, here’s where “Everybody” comes in.  Thankfully, It defined the how of it all for me, and the how was social media.  Understanding the how has helped me to define myself as a New Media Producer working in social media, a personal brand and a unique voice in the digital space ready to tell stories with purpose in my post-graduate world.

So, this is why I love Shirky – his writing defines what I am.  His book, at least how I interpret it, really sets in place the three pillars of social media:

• Sharing
• Collaborating
• Taking collective action

Whether its thousands of eggheads passionately crafting Wikipedia entries on everything from Lingual frenulum to World War II, or just a few dozen people helping to recover a woman’s lost cell phone, social media has exhibited a power and a promise never before seen in the mass communications era (and let’s go ahead and date that back to, say, the invention of the telegraph).  By eliminating barriers of time and geographic distance with increasingly more evolved technological determinism, social media services and applications empower Jill and Joe Everbody to accomplish more efficiently the work of what otherwise would have been the old entrenched forces of a rigid industrial economy.  As Shirky points out, social production flattens and dismantles the old hierarchies of business (Shirky, 2008).  The Web, with it’s Facebooks and Twitters and Wikis, creates a network for making things happen (in my case, content creation – e.g., storytelling) without a need for top-down structures.  Naturally, this scares the ever-living crap out of the old guard, the Microsofts and New York Times and Republican Parties of the world.  But, I guess I really get a kick out of being a part of that!

Shirky writes with real insight and respect for the power of social media in “Here Comes Everybody”.  He considers the pros and the cons but astutely inclines the reader towards understanding the positive effect.  Not everything is perfect in, or perfectly accomplished through, social media, and Shirky discusses that, undoubtedly.  But, one really gets the feeling that Shirky is on social media’s side.  I’ve joined that side, too, and I recommend not only his “love letter” to social media, but also taking part in it, to anyone.  That’s my love letter in return.

References

Jenkins, H. (2006). About me. In Confessions of an Aca-fan: The official weblog of Henry Jenkins. Retrieved 7 December 2009, from http://henryjenkins.org/aboutme.html.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here Comes Everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.