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2/12/09

On my way to 2009 the year 2008 happened


When I did the video "
Online Social Networking Revolution: Thinking Ahead" a year ago I was certain on my premise but certainly could not realize how prescient I was on the topic. A funny thing happened on the way to doing the things I talked about at the end of the video, real life events that required full attention, therefore until recently a lot of online action was delayed. This website blog is a big piece of my work now with blogging, vlogging and online social networking and the beginning of where I was heading back then.

I do have something more to say in a vlog as a follow up to this video and I'm preparing to do that. Personally I'm seeing a lot of late forties to early sixties boomers completing those online forms to all kinds of social networking sites they never completed years ago. From Facebook to Reunion.com to beliefnet.com to Twitter to CNN, you get the idea...this is worth commenting on.

These folks have the time now after unexpected unemployment, forced retirement, part time and/or underemployment and the damage the economic crisis has caused. There is a wave, a flock if you will, coming onto online social networks of the next adopters. They no longer give me that look about "being on the internet" that they used to since now they're on the internet a lot more. Now they ask questions.

It is why I started using Twitter and still like my YouTube social networking community that I know, with Skype and Stickam as tools to bridge them together among other tools. What will be dropped and what will be added is dependent on the economy, access, ease of use, value, privacy. Pretty tough criteria really that I think all social networking sites are going to have to contend with, along with a business model that at a minimum breaks even on the bottom line. It is interesting contrasting my much more tech savvy online community friends that use more current applications, with some of my lifelong offline friends that I'm still chatting with on good old MSN Messenger and certainly not with a headset or webcam. They're getting there with rapidity though, they just left tech savvy workplaces, Skype is in their lexicon.

To its peril, while searching in vain it's soulless corporate being, YouTube sacrificed it's unintended thriving online social networking community, to blundering Google corporate handlers trying to make a huge profit by all kinds of deals with content providers. Guess what? YouTube still don't make no money. The very thing, online social networking, that was exploding and YouTube by natural consequence had, they squandered while the bubble was expanding. The online social community still exists on YouTube but it is not what it was or what it could have been or possibly might still be. It remains to be seen what happens since I don't believe that story is close to ending.

I learned a lot from the very early days of the internet and even more about online social behavior in the 90s as the web reached the masses. It remains to be seen which technologies, software and sites that I use as the interweb unfolds and online social networking increases to even more of the masses by the ubiquitous connectivity across devices from the pc to smartphones and operates in the "cloud."

tbc...


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of course all bets are off if we have a catastrophic technological breakdown. I mean really...who knows what's next?
at least I weigh 60 lbs less than a year ago!