Despite the popularity and widespread adoption of social tools, there’s little agreement when it comes to matters of our individual terms of use. Without a collective social contract for social media, many of us are left wondering: How do I define my own social policy? Until now, corporate social media developers are defining those policies for us. Some of us feel it’s time we defined social media according to our our own terms.
“Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats.”
I was inspired to extend this idea to speak to the more elusive question of social granularity. For example, to define my own policies around connecting, professionalism and signal to noise. The need to define these things along more personal terms was the basis for developing my own policy for social networking and media.
The following is a template based on my own personal Social Media Policy (SMP) for you to hack and remix. As ever, the content, tone and format is entirely up to you.
This weekend, I spent some more time exploring the content at YLive and Seesmic. While YLive allows for the immediacy of live streaming, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of noise to signal. Seesmic, on the other is rich in maturity, civility and kindness - all qualities that build trust and community (though this could change when alpha goes more public). I could write more about the pros and cons of each but what interests me more is this: what makes for a meaningful broadcast?
I spent a bit of time meditating on this and have come up with a few strategies of my own. Read on …
Recorded in 2005, Howard Rheingold talks about the critical importance of collaboration, participatory media and collective action in shaping a better and more effective world. Great historical examples of human interdependence, cooperation, helping and other civilised behaviours that helped humans to thrive and survive through adversity - all alternatives to more destructive models that have obscured reason, ethics and the simple logic of alternatives. See a complete screencast (animated visuals with voice over) here.
I suggest we honour this talk - and items like it - with the following delicious tag: “newway”
Howard has been a formative figure in my thinking about the relationship between community and reciprocity - and how all of us can contribute to the world in unique and positive ways (if only we choose to).
I used to think standards were for squares. Especially when it came to the wild web. That was back in early days of my online life, before I knew about Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig and Open Source. At that time, I didn’t realise that (democratic and fair) freedom of expression was not incompatible with (democractic and fair) standards of use. And, like many people, I didn’t regard myself as a stakeholder or participant in the development of those standards.
And then I realised there were a whole lot of people who did believe they had a stake in how their information was distributed. Ordinary citizens and professional content producers alike were taking part in a user revolution that defied the top down models of the past. And everywhere I looked, the early adopters were having important conversations about what they would and would not accept. That was 2003 when social networking services were starting to emerge as the_next_big_thing and open source models of thinking and creating were starting to take hold.
A message to the late majority: Define and demand your rights
"internet triumphalists, like me, argue that the internet opens up creativity past one-size-fits-all mass measurements and priestly definitions and lets us not only find what we like but find people who like what we do."
"I will stay away from the opening ceremony, because I believe the freedom of choice is the basis of fair competition. It is the right I cherish most."
"I find it rather a lack of professionality, or better yet a lack of appreciation for what makes published information valuable that often limits the opportunities and potential of many otherwise talented bloggers and web publishers."
Lovers of apathy and irony, hipsters are connected through a global network of blogs and shops that push forth a global vision of fashion-informed aesthetics
"In short and simple terms, we would be plunged into a depression that would make the Great Depression of the 1930s in which I spent my childhood look like boom times," said William R. Polk, former professor of history at the University of Chicago"
"Schools are being required to take on more and more of the responsibilities that rightly belong to parents; and to provide more of the stability in children's lives which should be provided by families. There is also the perception that, in general, the skills of parents are declining as one generation succeeds another."
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