Fuzzy Content

Many of you have heard of Blackboard’s social bookmarking initiative, Scholar. This new service allows the Blackboard portal to become one-to-many, rather than one-to-one. It connects all Blackboard institutions (or at least those with the latest upgrade), and gives faculty and students the ability to share academic resources with each other.

I attend several conferences a year and have seen the art of networking amongst peers and competitors. Now, the academic community has a tool to practice this activity as well.

Read their press release for more information.

I did a presentation this week regarding Social Media in Higher Ed i thought I might as well post it. I think it is a pretty good primer to give to beginner to intermediate level people about social media in higher ed. I gave the presentation to a group of communications and marketing people on campus and they were very receptive and had lots of questions. People are still following up with me regarding it, so maybe we will get more going here on campus.

-Matt Herzberger 

I had a chance to attend SXSW earlier this month in Austin. The leaders of the Web converge every year on this conference, and it’s an opportunity to rub shoulders with these giants.

I took particular interest in the sessions that were discussing the direction and uses of the Web’s place on mobile devices. I’ve been a user of the Web on my treo, but that certainly doesn’t make me an expert.

I wasn’t alone. Surprisingly, my Web brethren see this as early on as well. During one particular session, a couple of questions were asked on the usage of the Web on their mobile device and the crowd’s reaction was sparing.

This is going to sound odd, but that question was asked to the wrong people. Although we are the most Web-savvy, in my opinion, we aren’t necessarily the ideal end users. As I walk across college campuses, through airports, and talk with my brothers (high school aged, college bound), I recognize that these are the people that rely on Mobile Web.

For teens and college students, MoSoSo (or Mobile Social Networking Software) like dodgeball and sociallight are becoming addictive applications on their cell phones. Beyond texting, it allows you to find friends. It allows you to see where people are in relation to you. Most importantly, it provides a constant connection between you and your friends. For these cell phone users, mobile Web means controllable communication. It’s opt-in, it’s instant, and it’s constant.

For the heavy travelers, common applications and communication are a plus (like email and chat), but local information must be accessible. Directions (I use GoogleMaps), local restaurants and activities, and flight status are the most common that I see. On the road, these people want to feel like they are not outsiders. The Mobile Web allows the same world of information a computer provides, but no tie to the laptop.

That’s the thing about Mobile Web. Although it’s not here for all of us yet, it’s here for a large demographic. Here are the handful of concepts Mobile Web must provide:

• Quick. For services on the Web, it must download fast. I can’t wait for a 300Kb page to load when all I care about is clickthrough navigation.
• Constant. Like dodgeball or twitter, it’s always on. I don’t need to keep logging in or refreshing. It is as much part of my phone as the phone itself.
• Convenient. I won’t think I need a service until I actually need it. If it is a pain to log in or register or download, it’s not a convenient service.
• Relevant. Location-based information is the most relevant for cell phone users. If I am at a conference, I want to see the schedule and nightlife (thank you sxsw.mobi). If I am looking for a restaurant, I better be able to punch in a zipcode or be picked up by GPS.
• Singular. A one-stop shop for all relevant services would be great, but that’s a world that is pretty far away. I want GoogleMaps to do one thing and Dodgeball to do another.
• Cheap or Free. Per-use service is only beneficial when it is unsuccessful, if that makes sense. If I love texting, I don’t want to pay for every message. One-time or monthly fees that are reasonable make me use services.

It’s still early on in Mobile Web, which brings opportunity. In three years, a cell phone is more a part of communication for people than computers…let’s find the right applications.

Social content on the internet has reached a blistering pace. My head spins, but my eyes twinkle at the possibilities. For example:

For all of you who enjoy regular podcasts, you now have your favorites. I listen to about 4 or 5 podcasters on a regular basis. Some have daily podcasts, but others are for less frequent. For those everyday podcasts, I find it hard to catch up. But a service has been out there for a few months that caught my eye. Pluggd has Hear Here, which allows you to search podcasts for appropriate content. So, let’s say you are listening to Chris Pirillo, but find his hour-long daily program too much. You just want to know more about the new ChaCha search engine. Type in ChaCha, or “search engine” and it will show you where in the hour-long program that may be discussed. Brilliant! I’m not supporting their service, but if you use it and like it, let me know.

How does this relate to you? It is now more important than ever to expand your walls of the .edu site. If there are no services that push people to your site (besides standard Google searches), you are missing the boat. Your podcasts, blogs, and events need to be found in aggregators, microformat searches, and blog searches.

It’s a crowded marketplace…your content needs to rise to the top.

I was talking to an admissions person at the school I work at. We were discussing student chat sessions using things like Chat University. It got me thinking why dont we do this with audio, like a confernce call? I have been using Skype for alot of my personal communication recently at home. I have a mic, the Skype client and a buddy (on my buddy list).

A little background for those of you who might not know about Skype:
It is like instant messanger but with audio. You have a buddy list and you click a person and start a chat. It literally has the same interface as an IM program. All you need to do it get a mic. Nothing special just a cheap one.

Anyways, so from here Skype has a thing called a Skypecast. You can have a free online confernce call or chat. You simply set it up on the site and then people can join in to the chat. Exactly like the old school chat sessions but with audio. I think it would be a bit more personal than simply a chat box. I am trying to run with this from here. There is new version of Skype coming out soon this will have stronger integration with Skypecast. It is currently in Beta.

Here are two articles with further info about the Beta and Skypecast integration
Skype 3.0 Beta - A Bloggers Paradise
First Look At Skype 3.0 Beta
You can also record the chats and make podcasts. And hey that is a buzzword so I’m sure you can sell someone on it

-Matt Herzberger

Early Monday morning, Bob and I will be flying to San Jose, to join the Netsquared Conference, the coolest conference at which I ever had an honor to speak. Together with Youthnoise’s Ginger Thomson, and Ami Dar of idealist.org, we will talk on Tuesday night about social networks. I can’t guarantee anything, but I think this is going to be a blast. Judging from the vibrant activity on our topic page, we will have precious little time to fit all the questions, ideas, and concepts bouncing around.

In addition, the microformatters will try to get together for an hDinner, a small but ever-so important event where eating is just as good as the learning, except for all the calories. If you are interested in joining the crowd, just watch the event page on Upcoming.com for time/location updates.

There is a good article on the Christian Science Monitor this week about how people are frequently misunderstood in their e-mail messages. You have probably had this happen to you; either some one misunderstands your meaning in an e-mail you sent them, or you misunderstand them.

“It’s All About Me: Why E-mails Are So Easily Misunderstood” csmonitor.com
According to the study, the problems occur because people need more than just words to interpret meaning and context. We loose clues to context like tone of voice and facial expression without face to face interaction. (I don’t think we needed a study to know that, but it’s nice to have our supsions confrimed)

I think this partly why things like emoticons caught on so early after e-mail hit the big scene. The need to have a cute little, “I’m not mad at you,” icon was needed to infer the tone of the sender. You could really knock some one down in an e-mail and as long as you used a simely face, everything was cool. How many times have I gotten a message like this:

“Jeff,

Got your proposal. It’s really a piece of c**p. You really don’t have a clue. I’m surprised they let you drive a car.

Call me to discuss, if you can operate a phone “

This makes me think of one possible reason why social network sites that have lots of images on themm like Flickr, Facebook, and Myspace, are so popular. There is more than one medium for interpretation. Images, really help the visitor to understand where the writer is coming from.

Eric’s previous post got me thinking. While journey/destination analogy seems logical as applied to context and content, my personal experience with social sites tells me that often the context (or the journey) is more interesting and exciting than the content itself. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell which one comes first.

Back in high school, me and my friends used to have this spot where we hung out, a little old gazebo on the back of the school year (not even our school!). The structure was old, rusty, and leaning slightly to one side, so it wasn’t the looks. The wood on the benches was burnt by vandals who came long before us, so it wasn’t the comfy seating. But that was our spot. Most of our deviant adventures originated from that spot. All of our evenings began there.

That gazebo wasn’t significant as content. It was the context of us gathering there that made it special. Similarly, I doubt readers deem myspace.com content worthy of being a destination. It’s the people you hook up with, the friends that junk up your page with their silly testimonials — the content has become secondary, the lowly servant of the overwhelming web of context.

The introduction of reader-created content and social networking messes with the pristine definitions of journey and destination. It becomes harder and harder to distinguish what’s more important or what’s primary: content or context. But then again, just like with the chicken and the egg dilemma, who cares?

About that Net2 Conference ….

Ideas, research and tools could converge into an old way of doing things. And that couldn’t be better for the Web.

The Net2 conference will focus on how non-profits can use online tools to improve their recruiting and fundraising.

Millennials (born from 1978 to 1990; give or take) carry more social capital than most X’ers and many boomers.

This seems to point to an opportunity for the digirati and the self-defined Web 2.0 crowds to go public.

IPO baby! This is our Initial Public Opportunity.

If you choose to buy into anything that Howe and Strauss (”Millennials Rising,” “Millennials go to College,” “13th Gen,” “Generations,” and the new “Millennials and the Pop Culture”) have to say–and I do–then this social Web thing is ripe for the masses, if not mom and dad.

Consider this beta.

We need to get these tools out of the hands of our friends and into the hands of college students. Granted they’re too busy with Facebook right now, but that is just practice for the cooperate world non-profit and government sectors.

This means fewer gmail accounts and more Yahoo! accounts signing up for Ning.

Millennials, it is said, hold similar cultural and social values as the GI generation did/does. And those were the folks that made society as we’ve read about it. They won World War II and put the fez in fun. They are dying. Millennials, like their grandparents, are drawn to a larger purpose and feel a sense of civic duty.

“Generations” said something to the effect that the Lost Generation (those people who came of age in the 1920s) skipped active civic and political life in favor of creating things and the means to create things.

The Lost Generation made an impact not by crafting policy in the hallowed halls of corruption congress, but by influencing the policy makers.

Reading Howe and Strauss’ descriptions of the Lost Generation is like watching Reality Bites or Friends. There are common, obvious themes between Gen-x and the Lost Generation.

This X-er is looking for a way to do what he does best and to help someone else do what they do best. If there’s any truth to the blather above, we need to take these tools that we’re so keen on and pass them onto someone who will use them for good, not evil.

Net2 might be onto something, but the tool du jour never seems to have a purpose beyond flipping or impressing a-list bloggers. Let’s do something about that. How can YASNS improve the real world? Before us navel gazers go the way of My Bloody Valentine?

What is e-mail? Technically? Where’s the magic? (That’s what all us non-programmers call code.)

More specifically, where does it have to be? Can a client hold all the e-mail protocols and such to make e-mail and one-to-one/many-to-many tool? Can we remove the server and embed everything in a client that we all share and that publishes to the Web?

Set up an encrypted Web site (now I really know what I’m talking about) and have the client hit that site for authentication, group awareness, label reading, past history and backup. Needs to be open source so we can all see the magic. Give each client a unique key as a password for one-to-one communication.

Give an option to post to all readers who have similar tags, (would be fun to post to all readers who have antonym tags) or post to just one reader or to the whole world on a public site.

Open up my mail! I don’t need privacy in e-mail. I need communication and wider network. I need more ways to find people.