Disney's smart to acquire Togetherville, which I called social-networking training wheels for families last spring, when the kids' social site launched. Why families and not just kids? Because kids under 13 hardly need training in online socializing – most start that at young ages, in online games and virtual worlds (like Disney's Club Penguin, which it acquired from a smart Canadian startup in … [Read more...] about Togetherville a great acquisition for Disney
Social Media
How 2 teach w/ Twitter (esp. rt now!)
There's great material for a media literacy class (or dinner-table discussion) in Twitter these days – both traditional and new media literacy – especially if you and your kids or students follow Andy Carvin (@acarvin), NPR's senior strategist for digital media. I've seen hundreds of tweets and retweets by Andy as I've been following the protest movement in Egypt and around the Middle East. Today … [Read more...] about How 2 teach w/ Twitter (esp. rt now!)
Social media: Adapting to us, not vice versa?
In his review in the New York Times of MIT Prof. Sherry Turkle's "fascinating and readable" but "one-sided" book Alone Together – in which her mid-'90s optimism about digital media is "long gone," he says – author Jonah Lehrer makes an important point: "We are so eager to take sides on technology, to describe the Web in utopian or dystopian terms, but maybe that’s the problem [I think so; it's … [Read more...] about Social media: Adapting to us, not vice versa?
Facebook an antidote for shyness: Study
A University of Texas study found that Facebook is helping people on the shy side of social. "Surveying 900 current and recent college graduates nationwide, Craig Watkins and Erin Lee of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas examined the impact of Facebook on users’ social lives," the New York Times reports. "Four to five years ago, Dr. Watkins said, young people’s … [Read more...] about Facebook an antidote for shyness: Study
Following Egypt’s story on Twitter, YouTube
We have been watching history happening in realtime this weekend with the unprecedented help of social media. To me, this 3:30 video interview with Waseem Wagdi, an Egyptian in the crowd outside his country's embassy in London, says it all – what's on Mr. Wagdi's face and in his words is clearly what's in his heart and many others'. Most of the short video is in English, but he speaks in Arabic at … [Read more...] about Following Egypt’s story on Twitter, YouTube