Robert Paterson's Weblog

Facebook and My Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday - I tell you this not to make those who forgot feel guilty - you know who you are - but to make comment about how different this birthday has been.

I am on the road and thought that this would be a birthday that even I would forget. BUT I have had more than 20 happy birthday greetings on Facebook. I ended up feeling very loved and supported. Even more surprising, many of those who wished me well are men and as we all know men don't remember birthdays.

I cannot recall a birthday where I have felt so good.

So here is a small part of the Facebook world - a lead that tells you of upcoming birthdays that adds to a person's life.

So to all of you who did remember - Thank you - you gave me a lovely day

Is it safe to use facebook for tough topics? Is community about tools or people?

I had a long meeting today with some friends in an organization that does a lot to help mums. We are talking about how we may extend what we do in the face to face world to the virtual world.

Many young mums already use Facebook. We debated how we might use it to extend what we do.

Of course, we don't know the answer. Any suggestions?

I can only look for now at what others are doing? How are others using Facbook and other social media tools to help each other when confronted with major challenges that we would normally keep private?

In my family, a recurring curse is depression. I have been spared but my sisters both have this as does my niece. It has been part of our family for generations and has been at the heart of much heartbreak and death. It has been one of our family "secrets". But has keeping it a secret helped us? 

Part of the suffering of depression is that non depressives cannot fathom it. "Buck up and take your meds!" or "Are you insane" are frequent responses.

Part of the suffering is that most suffer on their own surrounded by those who have no idea of what it is like.

Looking at it like this - the answer is no - keeping this reality that everyone finds out about anyway a "secret" has not been a help. The secret has been actually the problem.

My dear Niece Astrid has decided to act. She wants to end her isolation and to look for and to offer help.

Here is a link to her Facebook group. There is already a wonderful conversation going on - I am so proud of her courage to try this.

Which brings me to my other point - I am so frustrated with most of the current discussion about social media - so much of it is about the tools and features of the tools. What I want to learn more about is how can we use them to make a difference.

Imagine it is 1540. All the new media conferences are about Ink and Type. Yes for printers these were important. But for the world - they could not have cared less. What was important was that people who had no power coud get their ideas out there and make a difference.

It was these people like Luther and their ideas that changed the world not a new printing technique.

The conferences that I would enjoy would be ones where people who are getting their power back by using these tools told their stories. I want to hear from Astrid or Tara at UFIT or Jack's people at KETC

I want to hear from you about what you are doing or what you would like to do

More on Facebook and Canada

From Thought Balloons April 2007

It's prom Week - The Police are Watching Facebook

On PEI the Police are looking for bad behavior at Prom Parties by combing Facebook

Bluefield graduates in North Wiltshire west of Charlottetown, have set up a Facebook page titled "A Night of Mayhem." It advertises a prom night party off the Riverdale Road, complete with lights and DJ, and about 300 people have signed up to pay $15 to attend.

Comments on the page include a promise to bring beer, and vows to get drunk.

The talk of alcohol, at this and other parties, has RCMP on alert.

"We're going to have extra patrols on those nights, with road checks in the different areas we feel that are more in demand," RCMP Sgt. Denis Morin told CBC News Monday.

   

Facebook and Canada - Why has Canada taken to FB so Big?

Why is Canada the Facebook hot nation?

1. Toronto, ON (643,951)
2. London (589,485)
3. Vancouver, BC (283,726)
4. Norway (267,079)
5. New York, NY (249,960)
6. Chicago, IL (229,974)
7. Washington, DC (194,503)
8. Calgary, AB (164,713)
9. Boston, MA (159,571)
10. Ottawa, ON (147,994)

Will Pate - Centre of my Facebook Universe

I tried the neat tool to look at my Facbook Network and this is what emerged.

Will is the main connector in my world - he also started all the key links for PEI bloggers a few years back by asking us all out to lunch. My bet is that this is who Will really is - a connector.

As I look at the map - a few things pop out. I have a number of worlds that I inhabit on Facebook

• My Family - Diana and Astrid
• Public Radio and TV
• Linked into Europe - Euan Johnnie Ton etc
• PEI
• Small bit of the rest of Atlantic
• Small Ottawa group

Looks like this:

As the Facebook world takes off my bet is that most of our "worlds" will look like this.

I winder if Facebook will not soon become a big help in emergenmt and natural organizations.

But if you work in a conventional organization they will pretend that your organization looks like this.

I know the one I prefer to work in.

Facebook - MarketPlace - Personal Ads

Well it had to happen - starting this Friday Facebook starts a personals section that they will call Marketplace.

The core of eBay's success is that it created an ecology of Trust that enabled people who did not know each other to safely do business. Facebook approaches this from another angle. It has created communities of Trust that now can do business with each other, In effect, it has recreated the Village Market where true personal reputation is the underlying currency.

I sense that this is the beginning of something very important that Doc Searls talked about last year at Reboot. The new marketplace will no longer be anonymous but social. Transactions will be embedded inside not a legal but inside a social framework that is more trustworthy than a legal framework.

Whilst some speakers still spoke about how to make a better commerce website, many such as Doc Searls, Euan Semple, J P Rangaswami and Lee Bryant were clear. Community and personal reputation will increasingly be amplified by social software and will creates "Places" in which commerce will take place, just as markets themselves were once social spaces. Participation is not a feature of this emerging paradigm but its centrality. Community will be the container into which things will happen directly between people. Social relationships and hence trust will be the critical factors.

As we have seen in the last 3 years, it is foolish to trust the legal aspects of a transaction where faceless institutions hide behind the law. Think of how big pharma has behaved or how your phone company wishes to hide from you.

If I was to sell a friend my car or rent my cottage to a friend both sides are really on the hook to deliver not just the item and the money but a car that works and that the renter behaves well in my cottage.

With 22 million members and counting - Facebook has the kind of scale that makes this very exciting - no wonder the faceless institutions hate and fear it so much. In their bones they know that this type of social power can take them down and they will try anything to destroy it.

Facebook - The Inquisition?

So the Government of Onario has banned access to Facebook for all employees and elected officials. Today on the Sheila Rogers show on CBC - passionate put downs and great fear for what Facebook will do to our kids - unless they are properly taught!!!!

So what is going on?

I think that the system is really really frightened. Intuitively they know that power of this type of tool and they are going to root out the heretics. But it didn't work the last time and won't now

Is not the DRM Digg thing the same?