Does social media actually increase conversation?

Considering how often some people not only update their status, but also check it, news gets old fast.  This includes personal news.  Events happening in people’s lives are now instantly updated on their social media sites, such as Facebook or Twitter.  Previously people would have to wait until the next day to give friends details of an event the previous evening.  This would mean people would spend time discussing it the next day.

However, with social media this is no longer true.  People are updated about their friends lives almost instantaneously.

Imagine you are a teenage girl (for some this will be tricky, but stay with me…).  You update your status one evening with “OMG I can’t believe that happened!”  Within moments friends will be asking you what happened, and you can answer them and tell them all about it.  You might even include pictures or video to illustrate what you are seeing or doing. Friends comment, you answer, you discuss the entire situation online.

So now what happens the next day? Do you have this long talk about what you all did the previous evening?  Not so much. It’s already been discussed (“I saw what you wrote on Facebook last night”) and evaluated so no longer do you to spend time in your day talking  about it.  So now what do we talk about?

This is the question.

Now people have more time to discuss other things. But do they?  Is it possible that because we now have some of our conversations online that we can increase the conversations we have offline?  I would like to see if it is possible to study the effect of social media on verbal communications.  In the mean time, social media has found its way into our vocabulary, where being “DMed” or “Facebooked” is quite normal and seen a just an extension of our communication skills.

Just a thought….

As promised, here is my Facebook Page for Beginners Guide.  This guide will give you a step by step instruction on how to use Facebook as a page, including how to upload photographs, create an event or view stats.  I hope that you find it useful!

Download: Facebook for Beginners

I will be updating this blog more often now my computer is fixed, so watch this space for more tech-museum related news and updates!

Due to unforeseen computer problems (truely unseen as I only had my harddrive replaced a few months ago), I won’t be able to update the blog with my next guide Beginners Guide to Facebook, or my template of a Twitter Strategy.  When I get this fixed I will be posting more.

In the meantime, I would love to hear from people who attended Future of Web Design (http://futureofwebdesign.com/london-2011/) conference recently and what they took away from it.  What presentations stood out for you?  Where can museums use this information?  It was a shame I couldn’t attend, but followed much of the twitter stream as I could on #fowd.

So please comment below about your favourite parts of the Future of Web Design.

I’ve been using social media for many years now, and Twitter in particular and I get constantly asked to go through how you use Twitter.  I recently created a how to guide for Twitter, giving step by step instructions to how to use the site.  We’re talking about the basics here, logging in, tweeting and following.  It comes with pictures and instructions.  I hope you find this useful.  Later I will be posting a template of my Twitter strategy for you to edit and use as your own.

Download: How to use Twitter Guide

Native or web?

Thinking about creating an iPhone app?  Which way do you go?  Native or web?

I recently went to a conference  (The Big M) where my good friend Aral Balkan (@aral) talked about the benefits of native and web based apps.  For museums, mobile is something that we are only just getting involved in, despite being an old technology.  But that technology has changed massively over the past ten years, so that now we have a vast range of platforms, Operating Systems, and sites you must choose between.

The iPhone market in the UK only makes up about 5% of all phone sales, so is still only a small percentage of phone owners in the UK.  However, other operating systems, such as Android, are hard to develop for as the screens sizes and software used are different depending on the phone Android is install on.  With an iPhone you know exactly what it will look like and only have to create one app for it to work on most iPhones.

Museums Association: Social Media and Museums conference 31/03/11

Had a great day at the Museums Association conference on social media and museums.  Here is a summary of the presentations.

The Current Landscape – Mark Ellis, sounddelivery

(Link to presentation on Slide Share – http://www.slideshare.net/sounddelivery/sounddelivery-social-media-conference-310311)

Mark gave a great introduction into the current landscape of social media and gave us all something to think about when thinking about how we want to use social media.  Firstly, you need to think about who you are, and what are you trying to do, other than what platforms should you use.  Don’t think,” let’s go on Twitter”, think “Twitter is the best way to achieve our goals.”

Statistics:

• 30.1m adults accessed the internet everyday – that’s 60% of the UK population.
• 73% have internet connection at home. (According to one attendee, this is 80% in Sweden).

I am speaking at the Museums Association conference on Social Media for museums.  I will be talking about how to create a social media strategy for your venue.  Below are the slides from my presentation.

At this years Bits 2 Blogs, I ran a practical session on how to create a multimedia guide for your venue for free using online tools.  Below is the link to the presentation on Prezi.  I will be uploading some notes about the project as well as a case studies soon.

 

How to create a Multimedia Guide for your venue, for FREE! on Prezi

The purpose of this blog is to spread the news about the good work being done in cultural venues around the country and world.  So many have been working hard to create great digital projects and here is where they have a voice and promote the work they have been doing.

I will collate information about projects, disseminate information about upcoming technologies and highlight some of the work I have been involved with.

If you would like to add your own work to the blog, please get in contact and we’ll arrange a special blog post for you!

Email: socialsnowflake@gmail.com

Thank you!

Social Snowflake.