Amazing Facebook Facts

markzuckerbergEven though my college-age kids just can’t stomach the fact that I’m on Facebook, I think I’ll be there forever. Or at least for the foreseeable future. So there.

Why? It seriously is the most intuitive digital application I’ve ever been on. There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t find myself marveling over the fact that Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard college student from my neck of the woods, came up with this thing.

Brian Solis, who maintains one of my favorite blogs, PR 2.0, recently put together a list, Everything You Never Knew About Facebook, that just vindicates me in my Facebook Fascination. It’s a list of 20 factoids that are rather mind-blowing, especially when you consider that the popular application didn’t exist until it was incorporated in 2004.

Here’s a sample from the Solis list:

Facebook has more than 250 million users

120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

People 35 years old and older comprise the fastest growing demographic

More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide

30 million users update their statuses at least once each day

1 billion (!) photos and 10 million videos are uploaded to the social network each month

2.5 million events are created each month

45 million active user groups exist on Facebook

About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

Every month, more than 70% of users engage with applications developed for the Facebook platform

More than 350,000 active applications are currently available on the Facebook Platform

15,000, and counting, websites, devices and applications have implemented Facebook Connect since its launch in December 2008

30 million users currently access Facebook through their mobile devices

There’s a reason my kids love Facebook. Ditto for their Mom.

The Twitter Lists

Mashable, one of my favorite websites, has several different Twitter lists going on its well-known Mega Lists page these days, including:

85 Comedians to Follow on Twitter
100+ of the Best Authors on Twitter
85+ of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Know (scuse me?)
Twitter Professors: 18 People to Follow for a Real-time Education

If you’re a sucker for lists, like me, then you might want to check these out. Here’s just a sampling of some of the Twitterers on the lists:

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Nings as Social Networks

Image representing Ning as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase

I know that I’ve written about Nings for educators before, but I was recently asked by the National School PR Association to write a description of how Nings can be useful for anyone as a tool for social networking. The key thing to remember about using Ning as a social network platform (for adults) is that it’s NOT Facebook or MySpace. Although I have a fairly active Facebook page for professional and personal use, adults I speak to often cringe at the mere thought of creating a Facebook account.

So Nings are friendly, but generally free of rock music downloads, college drinking photos and references to “Jackass” and “The Real World.”

Here’s my description of how Nings can be used by thoughtful adults, along with links to several to which I can claim membership:

Using a Ning to Build a Network

Nings have become an increasingly popular way to network with other people and groups who share similar interests with you and your school district. Ning currently hosts more than 500,000 networks on the web, and that number is growing.

Ning provides free, easy-to-navigate online software that allows you to create a social networking website available to a larger group of members. Once created, it can be used as a platform for sharing best practices, links, photos, videos and other information. Generally, the success of a Ning depends entirely on its members and how they use it.

Here are a few examples of how you can use a Ning:

Nings can be used for small niche networks (teachers within a department, for example) or in a larger way (national or state public relations professionals).You can set the privacy level, restricting membership by invitation only or keeping it open to anyone who wants to join. Free Ning tools include discussion forums, chats, video sharing, photo sharing, link sharing, and more. You can also set the frequency with which you’ll receive updates from your Ning groups.

The Ning Premium service, at $19.95 a month, allows you to point your Ning to a domain name and to add or delete advertising, among other details. But the free service fits most groups well. You can also choose the domain name option for $4.95 a month.

Here in the Hudson Valley region of New York, we have created a group Ning for school public relations professionals, where we can share best practices and put our collective brain trust together on such topics as the local press, school budget challenges, and upcoming meetings. We have also created several subgroups within the Ning, including one on using technology.

Here are links to the Hudson Valley PR Ning and other sample Nings on the web:

Classroom 2.0 (A professional development Ning for teachers with 18,000 members)

http://www.classroom20.com/

PR Open Mic (A Ning for PR students, faculty members and practitioners with 4,100 members.

http://www.propenmic.org/

The Hurricane Information Center (a Ning for individuals interested in hurricane updates, with 700 members)

http://gustav08.ning.com/

The HudSPRA Network (A newly created Ning created for school PR professionals in the NY Hudson Valley region.)

http://hudspra.ning.com/ (We might be creating a new domain name for this site, so if this link doesn’t work, try http://www.hudspra.org.)

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Get Yourself a Twitter Mosaic

I stumbled across Twitter Mosaic over at Joan Vinall-Cox’s blog, WebTools for Learners. I follow Vinall-Cox’s blog pretty closely, checking in with her to read about the latest trends in instructional technology.

Lo and behold — a recent post showed Joan’s Twitter Mosaic and I decided to try it out for myself. Twitter Mosaic simply asks for your Twitter ID, then quickly provides you with a code that you copy and paste onto your blog to view your own mosaic — a look at the faces of your followers. How cool to see it all in one place. BTW: It’s the longest code ever, so keep that in mind. And the more users you have, the longer the code.

So here’s mine. (I’m not sure how Sarah Palin got in there, but I’m sure I’m not following her.)

Get your twitter mosaic here.

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Curious about Twitter?

I meet more people in my line of work who have finally created Facebook or LinkedIn accounts, but consider Twitter the final frontier in their online/digital life. I hear: “Who’s got the time?” Or: “What do you use Twitter for?” Or: “I already suffer from Information Overload!” Nevertheless, Twitter has presented us with grounbreaking implications for our everyday lives and for the way we communicate. There’s probably no better way to explain this than to show you a video from a TED conference, in which Twitter co-founder Evan Williams explains its many uses. By the way, during 2008 alone, Twitter exploded in size by 10 times.

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Immaculate Reception — Vatican Goes Video

VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - JANUARY 08: Pope Bene...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

OK, so maybe I shouldn’t be sacriligious about this.

But you have to admit, it’s pretty Web 2.0-cool when the Vatican launches its own YouTube channel, and that’s exactly what happened on Friday. Pope Benedict XVI joined President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II in launching his own channel, the latest effort by the folks in Rome to reach out to the digital generation. (It probably won’t work on my college-age kids, however.)

At a Vatican news conference, an executive of Google Inc., parent company of YouTube, joined with the Catholic clergy to announce that the Vatican had posted its first 12 videos on the pope’s new YouTube channel. The Church hopes to publish three new videos each day.

“This is in particular directed towards the young, but not exclusively,” said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See. “This is a step toward better communication. The pope encouraged us to adopt new ways of communication in order to reach out to the people who are interested in the pope’s message.”

Initially, the new YouTube channel will post videos in four languages — Italian, English, German and Spanish — and more languages will be added later.

Way to go, Ben!

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Adults: All Aboard for the Web 2.0 Train

Some of Facebook's gifts, as displayed in the ...

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According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, social networking has become more mainstream among adults. That includes me, at least the last time I checked the crow’s feet in my 10x magnification mirror.

According to the folks at Pew, the number of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% four years ago, to 35% now. That’s amazing, and encouraging. I have conducted a number of workshops on the subject of social media, and I still get attendees who look like deer in the headlights when I talk about Facebook, LinkedIn, and the whole sphere of social networking and social bookmarking.

On the other hand, I get plenty of people — of all ages — who are eager to dive right in.

Although those of us over the age of 18 stumbling through the social networks should be proud of ourselves for trying, don’t get cocky. We’re still light-years behind those lucky kids between the ages of 12 to 17. A whopping 65 percent of those crazy kids have an online profile on one of the big social networks — Facebook and MySpace, primarily.

It seems that the older we get, the less use we seem to have for social networks.

According to the Pew study, 75% of adults ages 18-24 use these networks, compared to just 7% of adults 65 and older. “At its core, use of online social networks is still a phenomenon of the young,” the study says.

Other age groups and their use of social networking sites:

– 57 percent of those aged 25 to 34

– 30 percent of those ages 35 to 44

– 19 percent of those aged 45 to 54

– 10 percent of those aged 55 to 64

Another interesting finding: We adults use social networks for professional and personal reasons, and we often maintain multiple profiles, generally on different sites.

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