Oh dear. From Belinda Goldsmith’s Reuters article yesterday…
The poll, released on Wednesday, found the use of cell phones and the Internet were becoming more and more an essential part of life with 48 percent of respondents agreeing they felt something important was missing without Internet access.
More than a quarter of respondents — or 28 percent — admitted spending less time socializing face-to-face with peers because of the amount of time they spend online.
It also found that 20 percent said they spend less time having sex because they are online.
Cell phones won out over television in a question asking which device people couldn’t go without but the Internet trumped all, regarded as the most necessary.
“It is taking away from offline activities, among them having sex, socializing face-to-face, watching TV and reading newspapers and magazines. It cuts into that share,” said Mack [Ann Mack of JWT who conducted the survey].
This is just the kind of thing Front Porch Forum is designed to counter. FPF members frequently report spending MORE face-to-face time with neighbors because of the service. FPF is an odd dot.com in that we want our members to shut down the computer and go outside. FPF postings are seeds planted in communities (real, not virtual). The harvest from this planting is usually offline, on the sidewalk, over the back fence, on the front porch.
Martha is funny. I still laugh thinking of some of the bits in her first show. She just posted this on her neighborhood’s Front Porch Forum and I see it spreading to other neighborhood forums.
Hey! I am very excited and proud to announce that my second solo standup comedy show will premier on Saturday, October 6th at Waterfront Theatre [Burlington, VT]. It’ll be a great night – Mike Robideau (winner of last year’s Comedy Battle) will open. Tickets are available through the Flynn at 86-flynn or online at http://www.flynntix.org. Hope you can make it.
Andrew Orlowski takes Facebook to task today, saying its “marketing goldmine may be crock of shite.”
Thirty-one per cent of users of social networking services enter false information into the sites to protect their identity, according to Emedia.
Much of the hype surrounding Facebook – and it’s tipped to be the biggest tech IPO since Google – is founded on its ability to monetise those 150 million users. For if at the cold, cold heart of Web 2.0 is a data collection and warehousing exercise, then Facebook has the most valuable database outside the Googleplex. Evidently lots of marketers agree – and activity around the Facebook API is frenetic today.
But what if that information is worthless?
It depends on what you’re trying to do with it. If you’re selling tangibles directly – such as concert tickets or photo prints – it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. For example, iLike boasts 850,000-odd users for its widget which lets you see what concerts friends are going to, then offers you the chance to buy tickets. TicketMaster is an investor to the tune of $15m, and must be one of the best investments it’s made. As a retail channel, social networking sites are good, as long as the audience is there.
But if you’re looking for “market intelligence”, then you’re going to be sorely disappointed. The web can tell us what we already know, the bleeding obvious – people get more drunk at weekends, for example, or talk about Harry Potter books more frequently when there’s a new Harry Potter book out. But if you want to infer anything more sophisticated, the Hive Mind is no help at all.
MediaVidea offers an interesting take on social networking sites today…
Recent research done in England suggests that the number of close friends you have is mostly a result of your face-to-face interactions in the real world.
Researchers at the Sheffield Hallam University say that your online friendships on social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Hi5 and others are ‘shallow’ in nature.
Researchers got more than 200 people to fill in questionnaires and found that most of respondents had around 5 close friends and many (90%) said their close friends were results of face-to-face meetings.
So, it seems that soliciting and clicking friend request on social sites is nothing but an ego trip.
He also writes about the difference between online tools, networks and communities.
There has a been a lot of debate online about communities and networks and many, including startups riding the web 2.0 wave have run into the habit of claiming that their startup is a community. VCs are also prone to this community fever.
So, it is important to note what Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us said about the pioneering social bookmarking site, a site that I think has more value than social news sites such as Digg, for great archival and research uses.
Joshua has said, Del.icio.us is a tool, not a community.’
This is very important. Most online services are first tools and the community of people who got together while using the service, comes later on.
Joshua Porter of Bokardo advocates a focus on ‘personal value over anything else’.
Differencing between communities and networks, Chloe Stromberg from Forrester Research says that ‘while communities are bound by emotion and passion, networks are simply communication links between people who have something in common.’
Interesting to mull over. I think Front Porch Forum is used as a tool by some (receive and spread information), a network for others (e.g., need 20 people to sign a petition to get a stop sign installed), and a community of neighbors for most. Many report that their FPF neighborhood forum has helped created a neighborhood environment where they can more easily establish and maintain genuine friendships.
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