MediaVidea offers this today:
Rolling Stone will one of the first mainstream magazines entering into the social networking field... Comscore analysis shows that:
– More than half of Myspace visitors are now 35 and older.
– 71% of the Friendster’s 1 million user base is 35 and above.
– 50% of Facebook users are 25-plus, despite that it has now almost become mandatory for new college and high school students to register there.Aiming an aging demographic is a smart idea. They have the buyer and stating power, vis- -vis the fickle younger crowd.
Adult-oriented social networking sites are already up and running, Multiply for example.
Next up: A social network fro Esquire and New Yorker magazines, perhaps?
Front Porch Forum members appear to range from teens to 80s. Since entire households tend to subscribe, I’m hard pressed to guess an average age.
Debbie Block-Schwenk points out a couple new resources today for citizen journalism sites:
Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism was released by J-Lab. The report by Jan Schaffer consolidates and analyzes responses from 191 people involved with or familiar with online citizen media, including 31 operators of citizen media sites.
Also enabled by J-Lab and the Knight Foundation via their New Voices program is a new “cook book” sharing the experiences of the first year of community site Hartsville Today. The site was started by Douglas J. Fisher, a journalism instructor at the University of South Carolina and Graham Osteen, Publisher of The Hartsville Messenger. The report, entitled Hartsville Today: The first year of a small-town citizen journalism site, documents in detail the steps they took, from deciding on a web site domain name to training staff.
Thanks to a couple Vermont women for bringing a Vermont Woman article to my attention today… that’s Melanie Brotz and Nancy Osborne. In the April 2007 issue, Ann Hagman Cardinal writes about Marci Young who has given up driving for environmental reasons… commendable! But here’s the part that caught my attention…
“I ended up catching a ride home [from Solar Fest] with friends I hadn’t known were going. That’s why we need Front Porch Forum!” she says, referring to the Internet-based neighborhood networking movement.
That’s right, we (all 4,300 members to date) are a movement! Alright! Love it.
The Local Onliner brought an interesting couple articles to my attention today by New York Times writer Jonathan Berr:
“I was reminded of what made eBay a success while I was reporting the story,” writes Berr, in a separate story picked up by AOL Finance. “First, it’s still a very affordable way for many small businesses who don’t want to spend the money on search advertising to sell their wares on the Internet. eBay also seems to be replacing garage sales as the means that people use to get rid of their junk.” [emphasis added]
I find this last bit troubling. I assert we need more garage sales, not less. Let’s compare on a few fronts:
Community building:
Garage sale… Talk to the blue-haired lady a few doors down about her antique lamp and what the neighborhood used to be like. Buy a watered-down Dixie cup of lemonade from the four-year-old who may be cutting your grass in another ten years. Talk with real people, face to face as you shop… “do you think I’d use this bread machine?” Find a deal.
eBay… Email distant strangers about Barry Bonds bobblehead dolls. Sit by yourself and decide you must have it.
Sustain our environment:
Garage sale… Walk up and down the street. Pull loot home in little red wagon.
eBay… Box up bobblehead, big delivery truck picks up item from sender’s house, trucks and jet aircraft ship across country, another big panel truck rumbles into the neighborhood and leaves cardboard and plastic-entombed doll at your doorstep. The way our society looks back in befuddlement at the Salem witch trials and wiping out millions of buffalo, and other past obvious atrocious behavior… that’s how our kids/grandkids will view behavior like this… “what were you thinking, Gramps?”
Keep your money in the neighborhood…
Garage sale… Your $20 goes to the guy who lives a couple blocks away. He then spends it at the corner store, etc.
eBay… Your $20 is split between the distant seller, eBay, Visa, UPS, Staples (for the box), etc. and leaves your community behind.
We should all put more thought into our personal dot.com practices and avoid uses that cause more harm in the long run than good. Thus ends today’s sermon. 😉
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more