Ghost of Midnight » Facebook

I share, therefore I am — Alone Together

Michael — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 18:17:49 +0000

From the Sunday New York Times yesterday, by Sherry Turkle, author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”…

We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.

At home, families sit together, texting and reading e-mail. At work executives text during board meetings. We text (and shop and go on Facebook) during classes and when we’re on dates. My students tell me about an important new skill: it involves maintaining eye contact with someone while you text someone else; it’s hard, but it can be done.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve studied technologies of mobile connection and talked to hundreds of people of all ages and circumstances about their plugged-in lives. I’ve learned that the little devices most of us carry around are so powerful that they change not only what we do, but also who we are…

Which reminds me of a favorite quote…

Sow an act, and you reap a habit.
Sow a habit, and you reap a character.
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.
- Charles Reade, 19th century writer

What acts and habits are we developing now with all this mobile technology? And does it add up to changes in our individual characters and destinies?

From a comment writer on the Times op-ed…

A few weeks ago, while having breakfast in a crowded restaurant, I was pleasantly surprised to note that a family of 4 across the room was saying Grace before starting their meal. Until my daughters pointed out that Dad, Mom, Sis and Junior were bowing their heads in front of their untouched meals because each one of them was furiously tapping the phones on their laps.

Unlike many online providers, Front Porch Forum does not want to keep its members transfixed to their screens for eight, 12 or 18 hours per day. Rather, we aim for five minutes of daily news and conversation from and with nearby neighbors. We aim to help people better connect with their actual neighbors and take up conversations… not online, but on the sidewalk, grocery check-out, and school playground.

From Turkle again…

When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device. Here connection works like a symptom, not a cure, and our constant, reflexive impulse to connect shapes a new way of being.

Think of it as “I share, therefore I am.” We use technology to define ourselves by sharing our thoughts and feelings as we’re having them. We used to think, “I have a feeling; I want to make a call.” Now our impulse is, “I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.”

So, in order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to connect, we flee from solitude, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves. Lacking the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people but don’t experience them as they are. It is as though we use them, need them as spare parts to support our increasingly fragile selves.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely. If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely.

Does Facebook make you sick?

Michael — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:23:18 +0000

Stephen Marche writes in The Atlantic Magazine (May 2012)…

Social media—from Facebook to Twitter—have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)—and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. A report on what the epidemic of loneliness is doing to our souls and our society.

Vermonters have many choices…

Michael — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:08:38 +0000

#VT - Lots of great discussion of various online tools today at the e-Vermont workshop in Randolph. I was blown away by first-hand accounts of Moretown citizens responding to Hurricane Irene, as well as the folks of Westford self-organizing a food shelf to help neighbors in need.

Vermonters have so many digital media tools in the toolbox from which to choose. That said, I’m partial to our Front Porch Forum for many applications. Apparently Doris in Argyle, NY feels the same way (from her current posting)…

Thanks to everyone who posted or emailed info about the Pleasant Valley public hearings, which my husband will attend tonight. I was pleased to see that Front Porch Forum published the info in a timely manner.

It occurs to me that one week of following FPF has given me more positive information and ideas than several years of trying to negotiate Facebook. With Facebook I have struggled to figure out who is seeing what information and I have not gleaned much of anything from a world of “friends” except for gossip and a lot of negative interaction. So, goodbye Facebook, and hello Front Porch Forum!

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t share this bit about Twitter… just in fun, of course…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update: And from Carrie in Argyle…

Doris, I agree…been thinking the same thing about getting rid of facebook. I love that the FPF news I hear is local!!! I feel so much more connected.

How many people use FPF in Burlington?

Michael — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 02:44:11 +0000

#BTV #VT – More than 9,600 members are active in Front Porch Forum now in Burlington, out of the 16,000 households that comprise the city. In 2011, they shared 26,000 postings with their nearby neighbors via FPF. Amazingly, HALF of FPF members spoke up and contributed to their FPF neighborhood conversations. In one survey, 93% reported feeling “more civically engaged since joining FPF.” About 100 elected and appointed public officials participate too.

FPF is expanding beyond Burlington… we now serve one-third of Vermont. More than 32,000 members participate in rural areas, suburbs, and cities. Imagine this level of engagement in every part of Vermont and beyond! Let us know if you’d like to help bring FPF to your town (just enter your address on our home page and complete the form).

Three cheers for the tens of thousands FPF members in Vermont… and here’s to vibrant neighborhoods in 2012!

DR Power Equipment puts FPF to good use in #VT

Michael — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 20:45:58 +0000

Found a gift in my inbox today…

As a Video Producer for DR Power Equipment, I need to find locations to highlight my company’s products. Front Porch Forum makes my job much easier and I get to meet really great folks. Thanks for your help!

I love being an FPF member. A friend recommended it to me and at first I thought, “no way, I don’t want any more emails” but it doesn’t take any time to go through the daily list.

FPF connects me to my community, makes the bond between us stronger, and personal conversations continue due to FPF postings. I look forward to reading it every night. I’m not a Facebook fan but I LOVE Front Porch Forum.

Marianne Eaton
Producer/Editor
Country Home Products

Natural disasters, neighbors and social networking

Michael — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 20:36:04 +0000

NPR recently covered Daniel Aldrich’s work… he’s looking at how neighbors help each other during disaster. We watched this on Front Porch Forumthis spring when flood waters ravaged many Vermont communities and people rallied to help those who lived nearby. From NPR…

Aldrich’s findings show that ambulances and firetrucks and government aid are not the principal ways most people survive… a disaster… government interventions cannot bring neighborhoods back, and most emergency responders take far too long to get to the scene. Rather, it is the personal ties among members of a community that determine survival during a disaster, and recovery in its aftermath. When Aldrich visited villages in India hit by the giant 2004 tsunami, he found that villagers who fared best after the disaster weren’t those with the most money, or the most power. They were people who knew lots of other people — the most socially connected individuals. In Japan, Aldrich found that firetrucks and ambulances didn’t save the most lives after earthquakes. Neighbors did.

Meanwhile, from Keith Hampton and Pew colleagues…

Do [social networking sites] isolate people and truncate their relationships? Or are there benefits associated with being connected to others in this way?

In their fascinating report, they share several observations from their survey, among them… ”In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%) say they use at least one of social networking sites.” The adults surveyed are using Facebook mostly to connect with people from their past… high school, college, family. Facebook doesn’t appear to be used much among current neighbors (chart)… less than 2% in this survey. So, can social networking sites be used by neighbors to help each other… during disasters, as well as with more pedestrian issues the rest of the time? Hampton’s earlier work suggests yes (e-neighbors study and a previous Pew study). Portia Krebs of USTelecom (The Broadband Association) reported this past week…

Consider this: 28% of Americans know none of their neighbors by name, and fewer than half of American adults know most or all of their neighbors. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Americans who go online daily are more likely than non-Internet users to know some of their neighbors’ names – and 27% of Internet users said they used digital tools to talk to their neighbors and keep informed about community issues. Front Porch Forum – a neighborhood-based network serving small cities and towns – gives registered users an opportunity to discuss everything from road repairs to the school budget. According to FPF, half of the residents of Burlington, Vermont subscribe – and an astonishing 90% of those users said their local civic engagement increased thanks to this online service.

Facebook works so well to help connect old acquaintances. But it’s not so good at helping neighbors find each other. Perhaps that’s because Facebook is all software and no community management. The role of effective online community management to bring diverse people together online in civil and constructive conversation is critically important. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson weighed in recently on this point…

Modern community building isn’t easy but if there is one thing the Internet has taught me over the past 15 years, large engaged communities are incredible powerful things, both commercially and socially. Building them is important and ultimately very valuable work.

Amen! We’re excited to see the dozens of online neighborhood forums that are bursting with activity on Front Porch Forum and we look forward to expanding to more places in the near future. Check out our new web app.

Note: This post originally appeared on the PBS MediaShift IdeaLab blog.

Authentically Local gets organized

Michael — Fri, 13 May 2011 01:11:20 +0000

Baristanet and another 30 local-focused U.S. blogs just launched Authentically Local…

Local doesn’t scale. Local isn’t McDonald’s, even if the McDonald’s is right down the street. Local doesn’t send profits back to a home office somewhere else. Local is something that’s part of what makes where you are unique. As unique and flawed and loveable as your own kids. Something is authentically local if it’s the first thing you’d want an old friend, visiting from the other side of the world, to see. It’s authentically local if its disappearance could potentially break your heart.

Local is suddenly the newest, hippest, most lucrative frontier. The local advertising market alone is estimated to be $100 billion a year. Companies like AOL, Google, Apple and Groupon all want a piece of the action. Some of the devices they sell you are even collecting data about everywhere you go – all to help their local campaigns.

Certainly big corporations add a lot of convenience and consistency to our world. They also threaten to homogenize it. If you want home to feel different from everywhere else in the world – or if you want a world that’s interesting to explore, support what’s authentically local. Know the difference, and vive la difference!

Just today, I was on a panel at the annual VBSR conference and responded to a question along these lines. Many folks in Vermont prefer to eat local and shop local, but do they click local? That is, they prefer the locally owned coffeeshop over Starbucks, and the locally owned hardware store over Home Depot or WalMart… but do they think about iBrattleboro vs. Facebook in the same way?

Local businesses buying lots of social media advertising

Michael — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 17:56:41 +0000

eMarketer predicts that U.S. marketers will spend $3 billion on advertising on social media in 2011…

With a great portion of that flowing to Facebook…

And most of that ad money seems to be coming from small and medium-size businesses. From Greg Sterling…

AdAge reports and rounds up some of the Facebook ad revenues data that have come out in the wake of the Goldman investment in the social network. However here’s the interesting part of the article:

[W]hat is surprising is the majority of revenue, 60% or $1.12 billion, was earned from smaller companies in 2010, those more likely to be using self-serve tools rather than work through a media agency. That’s greater than the $740 million coming from major marketers like Coke, P&G or Match.com.

Local small and medium-size businesses continue to snap up Front Porch Forum advertising space. Many are repeat customers, eager to reach FPF’s active audience of neighbors.

Me vs. Us: Can Social Media Prioritize Groups Over Individuals?

Michael — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 05:57:34 +0000

I just revisited a blog post by Dan Schultz titled In Search of a Community That Takes ‘Me’ Out of Social Media. I came to it after a fan of Front Porch Forum pointed out to me why she likes FPF so much… its design puts neighborhood before individual. Many of the giants of social media these days go the opposite way… they’re all about optimizing the experience for the individual. Here’s Dan’s chart…

Thou shalt not question Facebook

Michael — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:33:57 +0000

I’m shocked that John Stewart would cast aspersions on our omniscient corporate overlord. How dare he! It’s imperative that we all march lock-step into Facebook’s warm embrace.

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