Make Facebook, not war...

Make Facebook, Not War…

The other night I attended the middle school PTA meeting. The new “technology library aide” was speaking (I didn’t know we had a technology library aide!). She wanted to educate us about something our children knew far more about than we did: Social media. She paused at the beginning to show us a short YouTube video entitled “Social Media Revolution.”

I’d already seen this video, and while I think it overstates its case at points, the trends it describes are very real. Burness Communications is currently working with many of the tools the video highlights to build targeted communities and distribute information for our clients. So instead of watching the screen, I watched parents’ faces. They were stunned and surprised as each new slide appeared. At the end they exclaimed, what’s a Wiki? What’s Digg, Flickr, Bebo? One parent said, “My son doesn’t know about all this!” The librarian disagreed.

The new “social media revolution” seems to have hit parents in the same way that the “sexual revolution” hit parents in the 60s and 70s—we don’t always understand it. I guess parents are often one step behind their kids. But somehow with new and social media it seems we’re often light years behind! Regardless, it is here to stay. And whether you are a reluctant parent – or a skeptical nonprofit! – the bottom line is that knowledge is power.

In our work, we need to keep pace with these changes. How – and if – we choose to engage online for a project is always the crucial question. But it can’t be answered without first knowing the rules of the game.