Saturday 12 December 2009

The "Me Me Me" Factor!

For the past few days, I have been unavoidably absent from my blog and twitter. I did a catch-up earlier today by looking at my twitter stream and I uncovered the dying embers of several strands of a heated and fascinating debate involving the role of social MEdia in our lives. In particular, the role of twitter. Wow! I thought to myself. How could I possibly have missed all this in a nanosecond? In a few minutes of surfing and then delving deeper and deeper into the very heart of the tweets and links to blogs, this is what I uncovered. What struck me included the following observations:

  • the role of twitter as a very powerful influential tool
  • a power struggle emerging between digital natives and digital immigrants
  • a heated debate about "twitiquette"
  • the merits of retweeting thank you
  • the unknown fast-flowing direction that twitter is taking
  • the role of "give and take" within twitter
  • the fast evolving twists and turns of real-time debating
  • the concerns expressed about the public "web"persona versus the "private" persona
  • a public arena which was almost like a lion's den!
  • the knowledge that what is said online should be carefully reflected upon
I tamely chose not to enter something which was too hot to handle at this time of the day.

The Twitter Whale
How do you feel when you see the image above? Do you just say "Oh well, no problem! I'll try again later" or do you get a sinking feeling that you are missing out on the party?
I'd be interested to hear your views.

5 comments:

Valentina said...

Great summary Janet, seems that you've been able to catch up and overtake ;-) Useful to have this list and be able to rethink the past few days of twitter & blog buzz.
I think the debates and discussion on the the private/public persona relating to the issues of digital footprints have been eye-opening. I choose opening as an adjective because I think we'd need workshops or an EVO session on this, i.e. more depth and more reflections. A huge mine field.
Thanks for the recap, very useful!

Janet Bianchini said...

Hi Valentina

Thank you so much for reading through my quick recap of what I'd missed while I was "off line" for a relatively short time. Indeed, I was on a 30-hour car journey from Italy to Uk at the time!

I agree with you that this is a huge subject and one which needs a lot of reflection.

I attended a 6-week EVO Digifolios and Personal Learning Spaces workshop in January this year and it was very thought-provoking.

Janet Bianchini said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nicole said...

hi Janet Nicole just wanted to let you know that my movie is ready to watch!!

Unknown said...

Haha, when I see the whale pic, I just hit refresh - hasn't been a problem for me yet.