Category Archives: Facebook
Christian Science Monitor: Maybe FPF better than good fences
Carrie Leber writes on The Christian Science Monitor website about the challenges of living with difficult neighbors. Her bottom line…
Maybe Internet forums, not fences, are what make good neighbors.
After discussing her own hard-to-live-with neighbors, she says…
Ironically, rather than face-to-face discussions, it may be that the Internet is the best source of info about potentially exasperating neighbors. You can go to sites like RudeNeighbor.com, where people post items about loud parties and bad behavior.
Although researching online kvetching about your potential neighborhood is one option, I really like the notion of the Front Porch Forum.
Started by Michael Woods-Lewis and his wife, Valerie, about 10 years ago, Front Porch Forum is comprised of groupings of neighborhoods in Vermont, each of about 400 homes. People sign up and must clearly identify themselves (no anonymous ravings), and then post items of concern or interest to local neighbors.
To date, 17,000 households across 25 towns in that state interact and discuss what’s going on in their neck of the woods.
What’s key about FrontPorchForum is that it is a micro-community, not a giant group of users such as on Facebook or Twitter. And while the geography of the organization to date has been limited to the Vermont area, FPF will set up a forum in any area for a fee. Or you could start one of your own!
From a real estate perspective, this is a great option for giving insight to prospective buyers about the nature and zeitgeist of a neighborhood. Had there been a forum for my community in Connecticut, I most likely would have seen the many qualms others in the area have had with the infamous Mary and Jerry over the years (no, their ire has not just been focused on me).
Media Crap Index… How do you score your media?
How about this? Go ahead and score each form of media on your very own Media Crap Index… MCI.
For example, email channels are flooded with spam, some reports put it at 95% of all messages sent. So, email gets an awful 95% MCI… that is, 95% of email is crap.
But how about other media? TV… considering all channels, 24/7, including ads… my TV MCI = 95% too.
Radio… well, I’m a picky listener… I find myself drawn to a 95% score again.
Daily local newspaper? What I actually read (without regret)… better than above… maybe MCI = 80%.
Facebook… oy… sorry “friends”… my MCI = 95% too.
Twitter… I guess I’ve got to get into some better hashtags or something… MCI = 85%
A question… how easy is it to glean out the non-crap portion from these various streams and let the unwelcomed bulk float away from you ASAP? Spam filtering, when it works, makes email a good fit for me… cutting my email MCI down to about 10%.
But TV and radio? The best filter for me is abandonment… so I instead stream shows/music online that I want to see/hear… but they still come with ads that don’t appeal… so my streaming MCI might be around 25%… much better.
Print daily newspaper… hard to filter… but I’ve been doing it since my first paper route in second grade… so my custom-built neural filter is well-honed, slicing thru the crap ably.
Facebook… well, to confess my Web 2.0 sins, I haven’t managed well, and now I just don’t have the wherewithal to wade in and pluck the lovely items from frothing stream of… what… I guess my Facebook flow calls to mind a tittering group of junior high girls around someone’s locker before 4th period. So I don’t know how — and I’m just not motivated to try — to cut my FB MCI below its painful 95% crap level.
Twitter… I know there are ways to filter… to get the noise down… but I just haven’t seen enough value to convince me to build myself a better experience with a tolerable MCI.
Well, now I’ve likely offended several friends and colleagues, and for that I apologize. I don’t begrudge people their media choices, and I understand that the more popular a media option becomes, the higher its MCI climbs (gotta pay the bills with ads, and you gotta attract the teeming masses). But the hype around today’s darlings can get overwhelming. At what point can we start talking about Facebook like reasonable people did about TV in the 1970s and 80s… they watched a few hours of it every night, but drove to work the next morning with a “Kill your TV” bumper sticker proudly displayed.
So, I look forward to better filtering across the board… drive down those MCIs on the super popular choices. And I’ll keep looking for niches with lower MCI ratings… oh… here’s one… a hand-written letter from a loved one? MCI = 0%!
P.S. I reserve the right to change my mind on this. Educate me, please!
Today’s Youth Consumed by Media/Electronics
A lengthy post has been growing in my mind about the recently release Kaiser study that shows just how awful U.S. teen media/electronics consumption has become. And by “consumption,” I mean how many hours a day media/electronics are consuming our kids, not vice versa.
Well, Mike Lanza over at Playborhood just saved me the trouble of writing out my thoughts. I encourage you to take a look at his full post. He’s a clip…
… those of us parents who grew up with no Internet, no video games, no cell phones, and four boring channels of TV are left to wonder, “How will this electronic media saturation affect our children?”
We are left with a very real possibility that our kids will be more comfortable with mediated, virtual worlds than they are with the real world.
This is where I draw the line. It’s a religious tenet of mine, in a way:
“THE REAL WORLD IS PRIMARY. NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE WORLD IS AS IMPORTANT IN ANY WAY.”
That’s my limit, not total saturation of every hour outside of sleep or school. So, in other words, I define my media limit not in terms of total hours of exposure per day, but in terms of the real world skills my children have.
For instance, being able to hold a 15-minute conversation with another person is far more important for my children than chatting with others online. Building a fort with cardboard boxes is far more valuable than building a “Sim City” in a video game. Playing a baseball game is far more valuable than watching one on TV…
Thanks Mike… your post saved me a chunk of time that I can now use with my kids in real time and space… maybe we’ll read a book or work on their snow fort.
The good, bad and topsey turvey of Pew social isolation study
In trying to digest the conclusions and supporting evidence presented in “Social Isolation and New Technology: How the internet and mobile phones impact Americans’ social networks,” I’m getting a little carsick. It’s a great ride, but I’m having trouble with some of the unexpected hairpin turns.
The authors of this Pew study start with broad conclusions that social isolation in the United States isn’t so bad and the internet, mobile phones and online social networks are essentially making it better. Then, reading on, whiplash approaches from statements like these…
- Users of social networking services are 30% less likely to know their neighbors.
- Users of social networking services are 26% less likely to have used neighbors as a source of companionship.
- With the exception of those who use instant messaging, internet users are 26% less likely to have received small services (e.g., household chores, shopping, repairs, house-sat, lent tools or supplies) from neighbors.
- Internet users are 40% less likely to have been cared for, or had a member of their family cared for, by a neighbor. And, users of social networking services are 39% less likely than other internet users, or 64% less likely than those who do not use the internet, to have received family care from a neighbor.
- Internet users who are frequent users at work are 57% less likely to borrow money from neighbors.
Other points from the Pew study to consider…
Do you know the names of the neighbors who close to you, or not?
- 40% Yes, know all or most
- 30% Yes, know some
- 30% Do not know any
- Apartment dwellers are 60% less likely than home dwellers to know at least some of their neighbors.
- Those who are married or cohabitating are 31% more likely to know their neighbors.
- The likelihood of knowing at least some neighbors increases 3% for every year of age.
- Residential stability, the longer one lives in any one place increases the odds of knowing neighbors; 6% per year.
- The odds that women know at least some neighbors are 41% higher than for men.
- Those with larger, core networks are more likely to know neighbors. The odds are 19% higher per core tie in their network.
- The odds of knowing at least some neighbors are 50% lower for African Americans and 43% less for those of other races, in comparison to white Americans.
And…
And this chart is very interesting (although it calls into question the whole notion of people self-reporting, given the difference between the responses to the two versions of the question)…
More interesting survey results…
- Bloggers are 72% more likely to belong to a local group.
- Those who frequently access the internet at work are 49% more likely to go to a non-fastfood restaurant, 35% more likely to visit a community center, 21% more likely to visit a public park, and 71% more likely to go to a bar.
- However, frequent internet users at work were 26% less likely to visit a library.
- Those who contribute to a blog are 61% more likely to go to a public park than internet users who do not blog.
- Users of social networking websites are 40% more likely to visit a bar, but 36% less likely to visit a religious institution.
- Users of instant messaging are 21% less likely to visit a library than those who do not use IM.
“The Lonely American” – Part 2
I just finished reading The Lonely American: Drifting Apart in the 21st Century (earlier post about it) and I recommend it to anyone interested in community in the United States. 
The authors, Harvard clinical psychiatry professors and husband and wife, Jacqueline Olds and Richard S. Schwartz, put forth a compelling thesis. We see evidence of many of their points through our work on Front Porch Forum. From their summary…
We began with a simple but compelling fact from the General Social Survey: in the past twenty years, the number of Americans who have talked to no one about something of importance to them during the previous six months has skyrocketed. That number is now a quarter of the population. In all the debates about how socially connected we are to one another as a nation, that fact stands out. Whatever the average connectedness might be (and there is convincing evidence that average connectedness has also declined), a socially isolated core has now grown too large to be ignored.
We then explored the cultural and psychological factors that currently shape so many small but life-altering choices that push people in the direction of greater disconnection. We described both a push and a pull. The push is the increasing franticness of daily life, which makes one want to step back whenever possible to reduce the deafening background noise. The pull is the American ideal of the self-reliant loner-hero, which can make stepping back feel like a badge of superiority.
Next, we examined the effects that stepping back has on an individual. We found that the experience of social exclusion, seemingly so petty, is in fact so powerful, so deeply embedded in both neurobiology and personal experience, that it takes hold and starts to reshape a person’s feelings, thinking and behavior — even when the individual has unknowingly left him- or herself out by small steps back. We also found that once people have left themselves out, it is very hard to find a way back in, party because a set of slightly paranoid feelings take over and people stop trying.
Finally, we looked at the consequences of social disconnection, which turn out to be both extensive and remarkably diverse. Social isolation reduces happiness, health, and longevity. It increases aggression. It increases substance abuse. It correlates with increasing rates of violent crime. It probably reduces the effectiveness of democratic government. And it squanders the world’s resources in environmentally damaging ways.
And they write in some detail about technology…
In our drift apart, is technology part of the solution or part of the problem?
They cite research supporting each view… some in direction opposition to the other’s findings. They also discuss the richness of face-to-face interaction at a brain-science level… different things happen in our heads when talking with a friend a foot or two away, then when using a technological connection. They also make some interesting points about online porn as it relates to all this. And more…
Here are two intriguing bits of information: customers of online dating services go out with less than 1% of people whose profiles they study, while participants of speed-dating events go out with more than one in ten of the people they meet… “The people at these [speed-dating] events realize that there aren’t an infinite number of possibilities. If they want to get anything out of the evening, they have to settle for less than perfection. They also can’t help but notice that they have competition.”
The authors also cite Barry Schwartz’s “The Tyranny of Choice” that the assumptions that more choice is better and people with more choices are happier are wrong. Basically, online social networking can offer infinite choices, and too many choices tends to lead to unhappiness for us humans.
Lots more packed into this little volume. Again, I recommend reading and thinking about this book.
Breaking down social media
How do you compare what Facebook does with Twitter, YouTube, or our own Front Porch Forum? Apples and oranges in many ways. Dan Schultz at MediaShift Idea Lab provides a framework for thinking about this today. Here’s his chart…
Reaching beyond social media’s “Big Three”
Inman News columnist Gahlord Dewald posted a piece today aimed at real estate professionals about how they might make the most of social media tools. This clip caught my eye…
… If you expand beyond the “Big Three” social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you might find very specific platforms that align with your goals. For example, in Burlington, Vt., we have an awesome forum system called Front Porch Forum. This platform is highly targeted by neighborhood and operates via (wait for it …) e-mail.
Not what you might think of when you think super-new-cool technology. But FPF is a highly valued resource in our town. About 40 percent of the local population are members (and this is a college town). The neighbors talk about the neighborhood. Pretty relevant for a real estate professional.
Spending the time to locate active social media platforms that are topic-focused — to round out your me-focused Facebook-LinkedIn-Twitter participation — is a good idea…
Free Press: “Front Porch Forum… [is] largely passive.” Not.
In classic form, the Burlington Free Press published an unsigned editorial today following up a recent piece of its reporting. Topic? Local government should use online social media…
More communities throughout Vermont should make better use of social media if only to keep residents informed and engaged. More people are turning to online services such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to be informed (entertained) and connected.
Local governments must make every effort to be where the people are. The Free Press reports that connection is missing in many towns and cities. Many towns post information on their official Web sites. Some towns also monitor Web-based networks with a hyper-local focus — by streets or neighborhoods — such as Front Porch Forum. But these kinds of online tools are largely passive…
Yes, I agree that local government’s mission is well served when they make effective use of social media. But the reporting and conclusion about Front Porch Forum miss the mark. (In fact, here are two examples of past Free Press articles that reported just the opposite of today’s editorial… here and here.)
For example, in the City of Burlington, 40% of the households subscribe and nearly every city councilor, school board member, and state rep. uses the service. Most Neighborhood Planning Assembly steering committee members partake, as do almost all City departments. In all, 250 local public officials make use of Front Porch Forum in Chittenden County, our pilot region.
And their use of it is anything but passive. A call to City Councilors, like Joan Shannon or Bill Keogh in the South End, would have set the record straight. They, like many other public servants, make frequent use of FPF to engage voters about a wide array of issues.
Further, citizen use of FPF is certainly not passive… that’s who does all the postings… thousand upon thousand of messages are exchanged among clearly identified nearby neighbors through Front Porch Forum (as many of the Free Press reporters and editors should know from personal experience in their own neighborhoods).
“… these kind of online tools are largely passive” — that’s actually a better description of traditional media, e.g., a newspaper, where professionals provide nearly all of the content. On FPF, the content comes from your nearby neighbors.
Finally, “social media” consultants are a dime a dozen these days, and most are telling businesses, governments, nonprofits, etc. the same thing… get into social media and start screaming your message across many different platforms. Anyone deaf yet? It’s growing ever harder to get people’s attention and hold it, let alone to get them to contribute to a discussion. Gratefully, FPF is full of more than 15,000 local people, most of whom are tuned in and making a difference.
UPDATE: An update is posted above.
About Blog
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
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