Facebook or Google+ (or both or neither)

As of a week or so ago, I'm a "user" (if you want to call it that) of both Facebook and Google+. I don't know which is better or if you need either or both products, but I thought I'd mention a few of the biggest things I've seen thus far:

Facebook

Well, I guess the biggest thing is that everybody's already there, so don't assume that it's going away any time soon. Will users want to convert or add a second 'primary' social networking resource to their to-do list? There are also third-party apps that integrate with Facebook and that are used to post updates and interact with the Facebook environment. As mobile as everyone is today, this is a big deal and something that any competing product will need to implement soon. There are also games... I can't STAND the concept of logging into Facebook and seeing ads or requests from friends playing FarmVille or Mafia Wars, but I can't deny the fact that lots of people apparently do play these games and they aren't (as of yet) on the Google platform.

Google+

The biggest thing I've seen at first glance is that there's an effort to make sharing easier via drag-and-drop access to 'circles' that you create to group your contacts based on interest. If you don't want your quilting updates to interrupt your discussion of whether Aquaman felt like a fish out of water amongst the Super Friends, then you can create separate circles and update each of them individually. It's easy to manage right now, but it remains to be seen if this will remain the case when there are hundreds of people that need to be moved in and out of circles. The lack of games and clutter is an attraction to me but, as noted above, that may not be the case with other users and it may not stay this way forever.

Video chatting seems to be a big deal to both players. Google+ has its 'hangouts' feature for this and the recent Facebook/Skype announcement about video calling is a move in that direction. Personally, I haven't seen the need to use a social networking site to initiate video calls with others. I've been trained for years to believe that the whole concept of social networking is to create a ton of shallow connections with people that I may not be able to pick out of a lineup and have no interest in seeing in real-time video. :) The big players are developing it, though, so let's just assume there's a need.

Facebook lets you 'like' a product or 'become a fan'. The Google option has 'sparks' that allows you to pull different interests together in a way that suits you. The concepts are similar, I suppose, and I would guess that each will evolve as the user feedback grows.

It's a quickly-changing landscape and this post will be dated about as quickly as I click 'publish'. Facebook has taken some lumps over privacy concerns and their latest competition has had its own issues over what it does with search results and privacy concerns with products like Buzz.

Final edit: I can't even get 'publish' clicked before this take becomes dated. It's all about privacy per this article as well. **Sigh**

[Image: Library of Congress, 1865, Lincoln's 2nd inauguration. Old-school social networking.]

The future of the blogging platform...

While following offshoot links from linked articles (!), I ran across a couple of interesting articles from over a year ago. One is a NY Times article cleverly titled "Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest" and the other, referencing that article, is a Guardian blog entry about the future of blogging. There is some relevant insight in those articles as well as some of the comments that follow those articles.

One comment compares the state of blogging to the Gartner 'hype cycle'. I would agree with the comment that, for various reasons, blogging as a concept may have fallen into the Trough of Disillusionment. With this blog, I certainly never sought book deals or notoriety that some bloggers seem to have been seeking. This is one premise you'll find stated in the linked articles. I do agree, though, that blogging is time-consuming if done well. In some circles, it has likely been replaced with easier and more immediate tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

To me, that comparison is somewhat of an apple-to-orange comparison. When using Twitter, it's difficult to expound on anything too meaningful in 140 characters or less. Granted, when time is of the essence and you simply want to share an article you read, a tweet makes sense (unlike a forwarded email with an entire article attached, which I get my share of). For the Facebook crowd, I'm not sure how the blog comparison works, but I will say that a Facebook status update I make will likely have more readers than this blog post may have. It's apples v. oranges, though, because the purposes are different.

Blogging, to me, is a chance to share thoughts on a given topic. My topic of choice, in this case, happens to be my job. For many, the topic of choice is a hobby of theirs. Your readers - should they happen to exist - are naturally going to be those who share a common interest. Blogs specific to an interest should naturally lead to a group of people using that mechanism to share insight on that interest. It would be difficult to share many details in 140-character bites via tweets and responses. Facebook is more general in nature and, while you could certainly create a Facebook group for a particular interest, it doesn't have the same look and feel as a blog post.

I use Twitter and Facebook on occasion and it's obvious that I haven't been blogging as much lately. However, I think my reasons are due to work and personal obligations eating into my time rather than the blog being replaced by some other medium. Also, as previously stated, it requires some time and effort. I'll turn right around and tweet a link to this and it will certainly take much less time than this post took. If you have to choose between a retweet, a comment on this post or a blog entry of your own, which would you choose and why?

To complete the hype cycle thought, I feel like the blog will remain in some form and that the 'Plateau of Productivity' will be seen as common interests are found and expounded upon by writers who choose to take the time to write about what is important to them.

The Crystal Ball

As I look ahead to the next school year for our districts, I thought I'd take a moment to mention a few trends that we'll all likely face in the next year or two. We're already seeing some of these topics coming up in some districts, but I feel like these trends will continue and accelerate:

* $$$ and doing more with less (or withOUT) - I mentioned Title IID concerns a year ago and they have come to pass, so there will be less federal money for education technology. Kentucky's budget for 7/1/10 through 6/30/12 called for technology funding cuts and that will have a large impact from the state perspective. And then - THEN - it seems that our state may have a $200-$300M shortfall (after these passed budget cuts, mind you) if we don't receive a federal Medicaid funding match. That could mean that we face further budget cuts during this budget cycle. I don't enjoy hearing about and talking about budget cuts any more than you do, but I emphasize these to point out that the cuts are real and we're going to feel them. I have school districts that are cutting staff and hard decisions will also have to be made regarding replacement of aging technology. As one example, a district is considering replacement of some devices with the NComputing 'virtual' computers. As stated in the title for this section, there's no doubt that districts will be trying to do more with less and, with all of the fat trimmed from budgets, I feel like some will be forced to make the tougher decisions to do without resources, whether those be personnel, new hardware or new software.

* Even MORE controversy as boundaries are crossed - I could link hundreds of articles to make my point, but I'll limit myself to a single link and humbly ask that you make the time to read this New York Times article on school districts being pulled into difficult issues related to technology use and abuse. I have several districts who have noted that they're getting called weekly on Facebook-related issues. I know of staff members who have been questioned about their curious choice of Facebook profile picture and/or status, particularly when some of their 'friends' are students. I know of districts who have had to deal with their users posting very inappropriate content to sites like these. The instinct for district leadership is to call the CIO when something occurs, because it's on the Internet and a computer was used. As the article points out, what do you do when the issue didn't occur on school grounds or with school property? Some parents will demand the district to intervene while others would claim their rights have been violated if the district were to intervene in a personal situation. The lines are blurring and it's making the K-12 CIO's job more difficult.

* More personal devices in the classroom - If you think about it, the first two bullets make this one almost inevitable. In most cases, the money isn't there to buy district-owned devices for everyone. More and more high-schoolers (and younger) are carrying personally-owned devices that have tons of functionality. While we will certainly wrestle with boundaries, inappropriate use, Internet filtering and other issues, I feel like some districts will also look to take advantage of these devices. They are resources that many kids are carrying, that CAN be used in positive ways and that the kids really want to use.

I'm sure there are other things on the horizon (eBooks, for example), but these have been on my mind as of late. Agree, disagree or add topics of your own. Take care!

Privacy and user rights - a few 'horror stories'

As our group discussed Acceptable Use Policies last week, someone suggested that it might be useful to have a few of the 'horror stories' to share with others. Sadly, they're very easy to find and I thought I'd take a moment to highlight three that I've heard about. Each of these highlight certain 'gray areas' surrounding a staff member's desire to gain some information. Students were put in precarious positions and, in each of these cases, lawsuits resulted. Some (if not all) of these cases are ongoing and any comments are not meant to pass judgment on any parties involved; rather, I'm simply highlighting the circumstances surrounding the situation and pointing out that today's use of technology requires us all to be knowledgeable and respectful of the rights of others...

* Quite recently, the Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania was sued over the remote enabling of a webcam on a district-issued laptop computer. The case alleges that a student was disciplined at school with a webcam-based photograph (taken while the student was at home with the laptop) being used as evidence for the discipline. Privacy issues are being cited and there's some debate over who knew about the potential to remotely activate the webcams, how was this feature used, etc.

* A few years ago, cheerleaders at a high school in Pearl, MS were asked to relinquish their Facebook passwords to their cheering coach. One student did so and her private Facebook email was accessed. This information was shared with others in the district and the student was disciplined for some of the contents found. A lawsuit has been filed and this case will help determine whether school administrators have the right to request access to these private conversations.

* Closer to (my) home, a school district has been sued over the review of contents of a confiscated student cell phone. According to the suit, the phone slipped out of the student's pocket. Administrators read the content of text messages on the phone and the student was expelled. The lawsuit claims that this was an illegal search of private property.

Those are a few examples and I'm sure you can cite others as well. This shows the need we have as technology leaders to become more aware of district policies and lead be learning and educating our own staffs about what can and cannot be done as it pertains to these new technology devices and tools.

"To Fee or Not To Fee" - What Should Be Free?

Granted, the title of this post isn't well thought out. I'm sure that's why I'm blogging and not publishing a novel. I did want to briefly touch on a coming debate that could impact us in education. An eSchoolNews article today mentions the topic. It's probably in the current news based on comments made at the World Media Summit. Comments from the summit by Rupert Murdoch center around the need for 'traditional' news sources to charge internet search engines and other web sites for news reports.

There's some validity to the point. I regularly read news stories from any number of popular search engine sites. I can't say with 100% certainty that they are paying for that content. I haven't been paying specifically to read those stories. However, a reporter somewhere is being paid to write much of what we consume as 'news'. We've read about it as newspapers struggle to maintain subscribers, as network news programs struggle to maintain viewers. Our methods of news consumption have changed. The medium for delivery has changed. At this point, though, many of the sources of the news have not.

How does this affect K-12? As the eSchoolNews article points out, it might leave students scrambling to access certain resources (assuming that some resources go out of business or price themselves beyond some of their customer base). The debate goes beyond newspaper sites. Tech-savvy users tend to gravitate toward free, easy-to-use products with great features. YouTube is a great example and is used by many K-12 teachers. One of the biggest questions asked since Google's purchase of YouTube (and asked here) revolves around the eventual need to generate revenue.

The same could be said for popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter. How do these sites make money? I'm not sure they do as of yet. "Advertising" is always the most common answer, but there are no ads on Twitter and only limited ads on Facebook. However, both companies have had sizeable investors. Why? Because people are gathering and communicating and this is where they're gathering. Become a part of it, we're told.

Just as newspapers are dipping their toe in the water of fee-based content (in an effort to survive), I think we'll see companies like this do the same. The ad revenue won't be there forever and these free services still require a hefty infrastructure and personnel to maintain and update.

I think the business model will be similar to the highly-profitable text messages we all send. Perhaps it will be similar to another very profitable model, iTunes. Eventually, I think we'll be asking ourselves whether it's worth a penny per tweet to use Twitter or worth some minimal fee to 'subscribe' to Facebook and keep up with others.

Can it all really be free forever?