“Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users.” Stay tuned, this and more deadly news at 11.

Once again, parents are being warned that something else in the world will harm/kill or otherwise damage their children. A neuroscientist, Susan Greenfield, from the UK is claiming that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter shorten attention spans, encourage instant gratification and make young people more self-centered.

Kids and Computers. CC on Flickr, Tanya Ryno

I’ve read the article in full three times, and I am still having trouble taking the whole thing seriously.

Greenfield, an Oxford University neuroscientist and director of the Royal Institution, believes repeated exposure could effectively ‘rewire’ the brain. Computer games and fast-paced TV shows were also a factor, she said. ‘My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.’ [source]

I’m certainly not sure that I agree with this, but then, I admit, I am not a mother of young children. I have friends with children, for sure, and some of those children are old enough to play video games, watch “fast-paced tv” and are active on the computer - primarily on sites their parents approve - and none of those kids live for the moment anymore than the rest of us, or have a shorter attention span than anyone else.

Greenfield has taken her argument all the way to the House of Lords debate last month. She’s still arguing that all of these technologies and current communication methods will leave a generation of people with poor attention spans.

‘I often wonder whether real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf,’ she said. [source]

While psychologists have also argued that digital technology is changing the way we think, no one else seems to be arguing so strongly against these seemingly dangerous communication methods.

The whole attitude of “the sky is falling” we’re seeing around these social networking sites and “newfangled” communications tactics makes me roll my eyes. If you’re seeing a short attention span in your child, and they are spending a ton of time in front of a computer, a video game or a tv show, perhaps it’s more important that you find something else for them to do, or you to do with them, rather than blaming social networking websites. Again, I say this without having children of my own, so I am in no way telling anyone how to raise their child.

What I am doing, however, is saying, as someone who works and specializes in the social networking/marketing field, that the entire blame can not be placed entirely at the feet of these communication tactics.

/steps off soapbox, for now.

sxc.hu

I’ve lost count of the number of newspapers which have gone under since the beginning of the year. We’re not even through the first quarter of the year and yet, many (except those in the business who are desperately staying on top of every single death)  have simply stopped counting the number of traditional news outlets that have disappeared.

The latest in the series of death knells is the Rocky Mountain News - Denver’s 150-year-old daily newspaper. They are shutting the doors today and limping off into the sunset.

There’s lots and lots of people who are jumping up and down and claiming either that the traditional newspaper is not dead yet goddammit!!! or that it is! and that we should all just give up, pack up and never print anything on paper, ever again.

So ok, where’s the actual truth? I think it’s somewhere in between. Yes, advertising revenue - the old standby that kept many print editions afloat - is on a rapid decline. Newspapers are losing money and many are still adamant that they’re not ready or able to make the leap to an entirely digital format. That would require a complete overhaul of their entire business model, from top to bottom and would also likely create quite a dip in revenue that they’d have to dig out of.

I’m still waiting for the actual solution, if they don’t want to do either.

Time Magazine printed an article recently about whether or not the Newspaper industry needed a bail out. I say hell no, they don’t, what they need is a swift kick in the ass to move forward into the now and to listen to what their customers want!

When was the last time you bought an actual newspaper? We stopped daily delivery of the paper about 6 years ago. I, and most of my peers get all of our news online and from friends. Even the venerable Pew Industry recently released a report that says for the first time in history, more people say they get their national and international news from the internet.

The Daily Beast has a fantastic suggestion from yesterday’s column:

Forget the newspaper industry. Let’s launch the News Industry. Say hello to News Inc. Let’s do what every industry does: Identify consumer demand and meet it.The good news is that consumers are just learning all the new ways they can get news and are still figuring out what works best for them. There is still time for those of us in the news industry to work with them and find out at the same time. [source]

Hear hear! There’s a lot more room to move in a News Industry than there is in the newspaper industry. Think about it.

Yes, it will require a drastic change to how the news industry is run, and yes, it’ll probably bleed money for the first little while, but every other industry can adapt and change to consumer demands, why can’t the news industry adapt?

Oh Facebook. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Recently, an eighteen-year-old young male was accused of posing as a girl on Facebook (named either Emily or Kayla) and convincing at least 31 male classmates into sending him naked photos or videos of themselves and then blackmailing some of them for sex acts.

Eighteen year old Anthony Stancl, of New Berlin WI, was charged in early February with five counts of child enticement, two counts of second-degree sexual assault of a child, two counts of third-degree sexual assault, possession of child pornography, repeated sexual assault of the same child, and making a bomb threat.

The incidents allegedly happened from spring 2007 through November, 2007.  Thirty-one victims were identified and more than half said the girl they thought they were talking to tried to get them to meet with a "male friend" to let him perform sex acts on him, or he on them. If the boys didn’t cooperate, they were convinced that "she" would send the videos and photos to their friends and post them on public sites on the web, according to a report by the Associated Press.

This is just one of the reasons that seventeen social networking sites in Europe, including Facebook, signed a pact on Tuesday, aimed at protecting the privacy of underage users and curtailing "cyber-bullying".

There’s been so many incidents of pure cyber-bulling - from the teen who committed suicide in the US after a woman posed as a teenage boy harassed her, which is at one end of the spectrum, to threatening text messages sent by people I’ve personally met on Twitter, but who won’t tell me who they are, and an incident of pure aggressive abuse aimed at several in the Vancouver social media scene one evening, both of which are far from anything at the level of suicide or sexual assault, but can still have an impact.

The European Commission (the 27-nation EU’s executive arm) said the agreement will cut the risks of children harassing peers online and curb "grooming" — the practice of adults befriending children online with the intention of committing sexual abuse, according to a report from Reuters.

The British Home Office took similar steps to improve online safety last April, while 49 State Attorneys General in the United Sates have signed similar separate agreements with Myspace and Facebook.

Here’s hoping that these agreements and the steps that the individual sites themselves are taking will have a positive impact on cases like the one in Wisconsin.

Proving the adage that if something is important, it’ll come bubbling back up to your attention, is this video, that appeared at first on TechCrunch. I saw the headline  ("You Need to See This Video"), but it didn’t make me want to click through (hrm - something to note - give your posts descriptive titles that are sure to interest people!), but then when it popped up again on Eat, Sleep, Publish, I sat down to watch it.

And now, I give you, 1981’s prediction for the future of the newspaper:

Wow. Just… wow. Like Eat, Sleep, Publish, I just don’t even know where to begin.  To think about what they predicted and what the reality is now, is just astonishing. Thoughts?

Kevin Rose gave his cold a twitter account (which has 800+ followers!). Jason Calcanais’s dogs both have twitter accounts. Both of these make me roll my eyes, but it’s not entirely surprising given the egos on both men.

No, what I am finding interesting is the number of television show characters with twitter accounts, and who are twittering, in character. And interacting with viewers, in character.

I was first followed by Betty Draper, a character from Mad Men. She and her "friends" had me fooled at first - they’re pretty good at remaining in character. It struck me as odd at first though - why her bio said she was "The Real Mrs. Donald Draper", and her site in her profile goes to a blog "Welcome to the Drapers", also written in character. Even the kids have Twitter accounts.

I’m not a fan of the show - in fact, I’ve never even seen it - so after following for a little while and realizing what was going on, I unfollowed and went on my merry way. But, with 9500+ followers, there’s obviously lots of people who are fans of the show.

I didn’t make much of it at first, until I found Sookie Stackhouse from True Blood, on Twitter as well. She’s there, Bill The Vampire, Eric Northman, Pam, Sam Merlotte, Jason, and other characters are all Twittering. I’d seen the Drapers interact with people a little, but the Bon Temps crew was new to Twitter, and I wanted to see how, and if they responded.

I struck up a conversation with Sookie, and not only good a DM from her, but also had a complete conversation about the Bon Temps shifters, the Vampires and more. I also talked to Eric recently.

All this character twittering makes me wonder. It makes me wonder if this is intended as a loyalty builder for fans - as only fans would even know who Sookie is (her bio says "I’m just a waitress.") or would want to engage her in conversation. I also wondered whether or not this was intended as a way to increase ratings, and if it was, how that was working out.

Maybe it’s all of these things - or maybe it’s simply a fabulous use of social media tools to help support a brand. The way that we’ve all been working to get other brands to do.

Have you bumped into any other characters on Twitter? Or, which or your favourite characters would you like to see on Twitter?

[image source: cropped screen shot from Twitter]

Tags: Twitter, True Blood, TV Characters, Mad Men, Sookie Stackhouse, Betty Draper, HBO, The Vampire Bill, Eric Northman, Sam Merlotte, Jason Stackhouse

There’s a ton of posts out there that talk about how social media will change in the upcoming year, what will happen with our communications and predictions for the year to come and looks-back at the year that was.

Me? Sure, I did the ranty (although, perhaps it was a little too ranty!) post the other day about the things that I hoped would just go away in 2009, and I’ve been looking aroung at the posts that try to predict 2009.

Twitter gained a major following this year and started to go mainstream, big time. Growth is off the hook, (I can’t believe I just wrote that in all seriousness. What the hell does that even *mean* anyways?) and I can only imagine that will continue in 2009.

Newspapers and magazines folded, went entirely online and started to get the whole social media thing just a little more. I think that’s only going to continue in 2009. I will be stunned if by this time next year, more mainstream media has adopted some serious social media interaction and tools. If there’s an industry that seems like it should be picking this kind of interaction with readers up quickly, it’s the mainstream media, however they’re one of the industries that seem the most reluctant.

Companies and Brands are starting to get involved in social media… some of them are going it really well and others are …well, not. Here’s to brands and companies getting it more.

Advertising has taken a huge hit for 2009, and I anticipate that will continue… I think that the people are seriously tired of the spin and marketing messages that come with sales and want to know the honest truth about the product or service they’re looking at.

PR is the same as advertising at this point. It’s changing dramatically and people don’t believe the marketing hype of stories like they used to.

Even the way we communicate is changing.  More and more I find I pull away from email, towards SMS (text) messages and twitter, but even more so, if I need more than 140 or 160 characters, I pick up the phone. It’s faster, easier and accomplishes the same thing in minutes rather than hours. Partly, I think we’re moving away from the technology and going back to our “roots” so to speak, and partly I think people want to do things the most efficient way possible.

What do you think is going to come to the forefront for 2009? Are we going to get more simplified or are we going to move towards more and more social media tools and communications?

On December 20th, a Continental flight slid off the runway mid-take off. There were some minor injuries, and of course, the whole thing made the news.

What’s different about this crash however, was the fact that Mike Wilson live-tweeted the whole thing.

Wilson has since been interviewed on several mainstream media stations including NBC, Fox News, and more. A Google search for “denver plane crash + Twitter” yielded more than 22,000 results.

It looks to me like 2008 was the year that Twitter started to go mainstream. It’s becomming the go-to for many for breaking news - the Denver crash was reported on Twitter before it hit mainstream news. Same goes for that F18 that crashed into a San Diego backyard a while back.

Personally, I find this fascinating. It used to be that we learned about the actual news from television news or the newspaper the next morning. Now we can get a play-by-play of events as they unfold. Usually, by the time mainstream news gets ahold of the stories, most of Twitter has already heard about it.

I’m wondering how this will change mainstream news reporting in the upcoming year. Thoughts?

(image source 2DrinksBack’s twitter stream: Twitter)

In late October, I moderated a panel called Tough Talk for Tender Causes for the Vancouver Board of Trade with three other social media experts, and today, I appeared in an article in the Vancouver Courier, all about Twitter!

Coplick claims she hasn’t read a mainstream newspaper in years. Her Twitter friends alert her to news that is important and then she follows up on online websites to find out more. Word of mouth, whether breaking news or about new movies, is what she says is driving the new communications media. Old fashioned media hype, advertising, marketing and promotions will all change when everybody has the opportunity to express an opinion publicly. It’s the ultimate democratic tool, an “online voting system” where honesty and integrity will be far more valuable than traditional corporate PR spin. [source]

My fellow interviewees include Michael Allison from PACE Group Communications, Steve Jagger from Reachd, and John Starkey of FCV Technologies, all of whom were on the panel for me.

Now, while several of the Vancouver Sun reporters and editors have begun to Twitter, the fact that the other papers are starting to pick this up means that, at least locally, Twitter is starting to go a touch more mainstream! (image source  courtesy The Vancouver Courier, Jason Lang)

The New York Times is beating the bushes to generate more interest in their website, trying to get more eyeballs on the site in order to convince their advertisers that online really is a good thing!

I have to admit, the videos are pretty good. The site calls them “candid conversations with someone’s most interesting conversations about their passions, their lives and NYTimes.com”. They’re unscripted and are, for the most part, just pure fun. You can see them all here.

I think my favourite has to be the Ben Stein one, but that might just be because the dog is adorable.

The Pulitzer Prize criteria has expanded to include news organizations which publish only online, the Board announced today. The Pulitzer is a holy grail in journalism, and has traditionally been available to American journalists whose work has appeared in print only.

The Board also will allow entries made up entirely of online content to be submitted in all 14 Pulitzer journalism categories.

All material entered must still come from United States newspapers or news organizations which publish weekly at a minimum. These outlets must also be “primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing stories,” and that “adhere to the highest journalistic principles.”

The Board will continue to exclude entries from print magazines and broadcast media and their sites.  I’m also bugged a bit by the fact that it’s only American-based publications.

“This is an important step forward, reflecting our continued commitment to American newspapers as well as our willingness to adapt to the remarkable growth of online journalism,” said Sig Gissler, administrator of the Prizes. “The new rules enlarge the Pulitzer tent and recognize more fully the role of the Web, while underscoring the enduring value of words and of serious reporting.”

The Board, Gissler said, hopes that the change will encourage the submission of more online material in the competition.
(image courtesy Pulitzer Prize Organization)