Monthly Archives: February 2009

Geni.com: Stealth social media

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My mom is a Baby Boomer, and I don’t really think she could be labeled as an early adopter of technology. She teaches elementary school and uses the computer in her classroom probably better than most teachers (she made a blog for her kindergarten class one year and had the students post a sentence each day about what they learned). But my mom doesn’t really participate in social media on a personal level, and in fact, she’s pretty skeptical of it. I’m pretty sure she’s never heard of Twitter or LinkedIn, doesn’t subscribe to any blogs, and definitely, definitely doesn’t want anything to do with Facebook. She’s wary of posting personal information online and thinks that Facebook is “something that you young people do.”

Geni

But a over a year and a half ago, I started creating our family tree on a site called Geni.com. You can create profiles for members of your family tree and invite them to join. If they do, they take over control of their profile and can then add additional family members. My family tree now stands at 500+ members, stretching back to Tipperary in 1816. Each family member can add photos and videos to their profile, edit personal information, and post messages to other family members’ pages. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

My mom and her siblings love Geni. They post birthday greetings, anniversary messages, and comment on pictures of relatives’ kids. My mom’s oldest sister has really gotten into it and added scanned images of birth, death, and wedding certificates of some of our first ancestors. She’s connected with our third cousins twice removed (Geni calculates those weird relationship rules for you) and added all the family genealogy data that previously was scattered around on a dozen different paper trees.

My mom is all over this “family” version of Facebook. She doesn’t view it as social networking; maybe because it’s a little more controlled and she knows that only her family members will see her profile. But she’s actively participating.

The PEW Internet & American Life Project recently published a report on Internet usage for American adults. According to the report, 19 percent of online adults aged 45-54 have some sort of online profile (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) and only 10 percent of online adults aged 55-64 have one. These numbers are increasing but the report shows that by a wide margin, social networks are, as Brian Solis puts it, “still a phenomenon of the young.” The report also indicates that 60 percent of adults restrict access to their profile so that only their friends can see it.

My extended family’s online presence seems to mimic the age splits in the PEW report. Most of the cousins in my generation have multiple social network profiles and have joined Geni, but we all prefer to connect to each other through Facebook. We post pictures there, send birthday greetings to each others’ walls, and connect and share family news. Many of my cousins are fairly open and don’t restrict their profiles.

Family members in my mom’s generation use Geni for all the same purposes, but almost none of them has a Facebook profile. In many cases, Geni is their only online profile, and they’ve set it up so only members of our family can see it. I’m not sure if my mom is intimindated by Facebook or just thinks it’s not for her, but I’m wondering if Geni will serve as the “gateway drug” for her to branch out and start accepting social media more openly. We’ll see.

My Five Squared

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Okay, first of all, I’d like to know why whoever started this increasingly popular meme chose the number 25. That’s a LOT of randomness to come up with! Especially for someone like me who’s not used to sharing. But since Arik Hanson tagged me, here goes:

1. I grew up in a REALLY small town. My high school graduating class was about 90, and we were abnormally large that year. I think my entire school district from K-12 only had about 1,100 kids in it. This is probably the main reason I went to a huge college 1,000 miles away.

2. On Saturdays in the fall, I wake up and start watching ESPN College GameDay at 10 a.m. and pretty much watch football all day long. My husband thinks this is bizarre and can only handle about 90 minutes of football on any given day. A bit of a role-reversal in our marriage.

3. I played Rosie Alvarez, the lead character in “Bye, Bye, Birdie”, in my high school’s musical when I was in 11th grade and I still remember most of my songs and lines.

4. I’m really close with my extended family on my mom’s side. This means not only my first cousins but also my mom’s cousins and their kids. We don’t really distinguish levels of cousin-hood and just refer to everyone as a cousin (which totally threw my husband for a loop when he first met everyone).

Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

Victoria Harbor

5. I lived in Hong Kong for a summer and worked for a PR firm there as part of a scholarship grant I received. I was the only American in my office and picked up absolutely NO Cantonese the whole summer– not even the dirty words they tried to teach me!

6. Before college, I had never been on an airplane. My first flight was home to see my parents at Thanksgiving during my freshman year. I’ve made up for it since then!

7. I don’t eat seafood of any sort. If it lived in water, it doesn’t go in my mouth. I got sick from bad seafood when I was a kid and have never been able to work up the gumption to try it again.

Tonks and Figg

8. I have two kittens named after characters from Harry Potter (Tonks and Mrs. Figg).

9. I went to college with Ryan Seacrest’s sister. I didn’t really know her and didn’t have any classes with her, but he came to our journalism school graduation ceremony and I had my picture taken with him. It was the first or second season of American Idol so he wasn’t insanely famous yet, but he’s pretty much the only famous person I’ve ever met.

10. I hate cooking, and as a result I have a pretty poor diet. My husband and I are constantly saying we need to eat better and get into cooking, but then always end up nuking rice or making pasta.

11. I got my MBA from Drexel University, but did it through their distance learning program, so I never actually set foot on Drexel’s campus until the graduation banquet at the end of the program. It was a great (and hard!) program and all the classes were taught by full-time faculty from Drexel’s business school – but I still find myself trying to defend to people the fact that I did it online. I think some online institutions rightfully get a bad rap, but I was really pleased with Drexel’s program. Go Dragons!

12. I had to move every six months with my first job. I lived in three different places:  Albany/Capital Region of NY, where I ended up; Fort Worth, which is my favorite city I’ve ever lived in; and Orlando, which is my least favorite. It’s weird living in a place where everyone is on vacation.

13. Big Mark Knopfler fan. Saw him in Philly last summer and it was the best concert I’ve ever attended.

Rockin the Spandex at Montreal Bike Tour

14. My husband got me into cycling about four years ago and I’m obsessed now. Before that, I hadn’t really ridden a bike other than as a kid. This summer I rode about 1,600 miles, commuted 18 miles to work on my bike most days, and rode my first metric century (62 mile ride). I have no desire to competitively race, but I love riding for fitness and enjoyment (my ride of choice is currently a Jamis Coda Sport).

15. My husband and I both drive old cars. I have a 2000 Nissan Altima and he drives a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser Wagon. We have no desire to have car payments and that big white station wagon comes in VERY handy for hauling around skis, bikes, etc. Plus I don’t have to worry about him picking up chicks because of his car.

16. I was on the Homecoming Court at UGA, so I got to have my dad escort me out onto the field at halftime of one of the football games and wave to everyone on the JumboTron. Then we had our picture taken with Uga VI. My dad also went to UGA, so being out on the field was heaven for him and I’ll never forget that moment!

17. I played the saxophone in elementary and junior high band. Poorly.

18. My wedding reception was in a car museum while a SuperCars exhibit was going on. So we cut the cake next to a Mercedes McLaren and had our first dance beside a Ferrari Enzo. I have brownie points for life with my husband and his pals.

19. My Myers-Briggs type is ISTJ, so apparently I should have been an engineer. I scored very, very strongly on the I. I’m not necessarily shy, but it does take me a while to open up to people and I’d rather have a smaller group of close friends than a whole lotta casual ones.

20. I have never been in the hospital, broken a bone, needed stitches, etc. As a result, I think I have an irrational fear of and intolerance for pain. I always think everything is going to hurt worse than it does!

Eww.

21. I’m a Gator Hater. Gators wear jean shorts. ‘Nuff said.

22. I was at the Georgia-Tennessee (hobnail boot!) game in 2000 when we came from behind in the last :25 seconds to beat Tennessee… but I was already walking to the parking lot when the final touchdown drive occurred because I thought we’d lost and didn’t want to get heckled to death by the Tennessee fans. Sometimes I omit that part when I tell people I was there.

23. We don’t have cable. We have the $9 “network plus” package that gives us the main networks plus (randomly) ESPN, NatGeo, Style Network, and Oxygen. I don’t think Time Warner knows that those last four channels come through. There are definitely shows that I miss, but my husband and I already feel like we watch way too much TV and having another 100 channels would make it all the worse.

24. Like Lauren, I’ve never smoked a cigarette. I’m not even sure if I’ve ever held one. I barely remember when smoking was even allowed anywhere. It’s just never held any appeal to me whatsoever.

25. Oh gosh, I’m really running out of randomness. Glad this is the last one. I’ve been out of college six years but have already worked at three different companies. I’ve had a good reason for leaving each time – I left my first job for a promotional opportunity and to move back near my husband, and I left my second job because I wanted to branch out from employee communications to a marcomm role. I want to be sure that I’m always growing and learning in my career. I’m always looking for new challenges!

So, there you have me. I’m struggling to think of anyone to tag who hasn’t already done this. I know KarenRussell (@KarenRussell) is avoiding it like the plague. I guess I’ll see if my good friend Christine Hartter (@CHComm) wants to give it a shot!

My Olivia Newton-John continuum of social media

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Everyone has seen the movie Grease, and if you haven’t, they’ve probably revoked your US citizenship by now. I think I first saw it in middle school, and I remember loving the last scene when Sandy comes out with teased-up hair, high heels, and a black leather–what was that–a jumpsuit? Sandy had multiple personalities throughout the movie, going from uptight Aussie good girl to vixen at the school carnival.

Looking across the various ways I participate in social media, I’ve noticed you can plot my social media personalities against Olivia Newton-John’s transformation in Grease.

Facebook = “Summer Nights”

At the start of the movie, Sandy shows up at Rydell High in a conservative poodle skirt and sweater set, and no one knows too much about her. I have a Facebook profile, but you can’t find it. I have the privacy settings turned up as high as they’ll go. My profile won’t come up if you search on my name (although there’s a lovely-looking Amy Mengel from outside of Chicago, apparently). I don’t show up in people’s friend lists. You can’t request to add me as a friend by entering my e-mail address. About the best you could hope for is that I’m tagged in a photo that one of our mutual friends posted. And I’m pretty careful about what photos I am tagged in.

Facebook is my inner sanctum. Maybe this comes off as sounding elitist (or terrified), but I want my friends on Facebook to be exactly that – FRIENDS. I only have about 50. People I went to college with and still talk to. Good pals I see often. Family. I don’t really count someone I shared a biology lab desk with in 8th grade as a friend. I don’t really want ex-boyfriends checking out pictures of me on vacation. I don’t want bosses or colleagues knowing what causes I’m partial to.

My Facebook personality is Sandy on her first day at Rydell High – buttoned up tight and not willing to share much with strangers, other than a very G-rated version of her summer fling: “We went strollin’, drank lemon-ayyy-ade!”

LinkedIn = “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee (Reprise)”

At this point in the film, after the drag race between Danny and Kenickie, Sandy starts thinking about opening up more and changing her image. I actually joined LinkedIn long before Facebook, but because it was professional and not personal, I didn’t have too many qualms about sharing my information in this forum. My profile is public, I have a corporate headshot as my photo, and I have some detailed bullet points about my work experience.

As far as connections go, my general rule is that I’ve at least had to have had a conversation with the person before I’ll ask for or accept a connection. It can be an online conversation, but it has to be meaningful. Most of my connections are former classmates or colleagues, but I have a few folks on there with whom I’ve had only limited interactions. The best examples are staffing managers for companies I’ve interviewed with. I have typically followed-up a phone screen with a thank-you message on an invitation to connect via LinkedIn. I’ve stayed away from randomly connecting with people I haven’t ever engaged with before, especially those with hundreds of connections, because I don’t want to dilute my network. If one of my close connections sees that they’re a 3rd level connection to someone via me and wants me to broker an introduction, I can’t really do that if my connection is through someone that I don’t even know.

Twitter = “You’re the One that I Want”

Twitter is where I become somewhat of a floozy. I don’t protect my updates and I let just about anyone follow me. I’ll check out new followers’ profiles and if they look interesting, I’ll follow them back. I’ve gradually grown from just following a couple of friends to a TweetDeck with half a dozen categories that beeps incessantly during my work day – and I’m just scratching the surface right now (I have no idea how people manage to follow several hundred or thousand people!). I tweet probably 6-10 times a day and don’t censor much of anything. In Grease, Sandy lets it all hang out there by the end of the movie – and I’ve taken the same approach with Twitter.

I’m not sure if my social media multiple personality disorder is the right approach. I’m sure I’m probably missing out by being so buttoned down on Facebook. It’s probably true that not connecting to certain people on LinkedIn leaves some doors closed. And for all I know, crazy people from my past may have found me on Twitter by now and are intimately aware of where I ate lunch yesterday.  But for now, it works for me. I’m sure I’ll need to keep revisiting as I grow more comfortable blogging and sharing myself online. I may need to adjust my strategy. But I’m comfortable with my onlilne presence right now. It kinda goes together like ramma-lamma-ding-dong.