Our pre-conference session will focus on social media and its uses in higher education. If you are using social media – at all – in any way – and are faculty, staff, or a student at a higher education institution – we want to hear from you! It’ll be easy, we promise! You don’t even have to study!

Here’s what we’d like you to do:
1. Make a short (less than three minute) video telling us why and how you use social media
2. Upload your video to YouTube and tag it with #edusocmedia
3. Give us a heads-up on twitter so you can be part of our conversation at EDUCAUSE! (@micala and @tjoosten)

See. Told you. Easy.

Please spread the word, we’d love to show as many different perspectives as possible and create a conversation that starts now and carries through to our pre-conference session at EDUCAUSE where the use of the #edusocmedia hashtag will allow all of you to participate in the session as well.

So get out there, spread the word, fire up those cameras, and let’s hear your story! Deadline for videos is September 7, 2010.

I think I disagree.

I think it’s about the audience and what they expect from you. I think you can be just as open and authentic as an organization as you can if you are tweeting as an individual.

Let’s look at some examples.

1. @Gowalla – This account has over 20,000 followers and is still very ‘real’ and authentic and … here’s the key I think…. *valuable*. Gowalla is providing updates about their service to people that expect to hear about the service. People follow Gowalla because they expect to see tweets related to that service, not chit-chat conversation. Now, on a more personal level, there’s @jw, the co-founder and CEO of Gowalla who tweets personal things, conversations, AND information about Gowalla itself. I follow both of these accounts because I find them both valuable.

2. @Foursquare -  This account has over 98,000 followers and again – has tweets related to their service. I follow @foursquare because I get information about this service and they tweet what I expect them to tweet. It’s truth in advertising. Having a logo there and tweeting as the company doesn’t make me trust them any less – in fact, I think I trust it more.

3. @Twitter – This account has….. over three MILLION followers. As a company. With a logo. Tweeting relevant information – as their followers expect.

4. @OhioState - A higher ed account. Using a logo, tweeting as the university and the brand, with over 4,700 followers. It’s official and it makes me trust those tweets more. If Ohio State replaced their logo with a person’s face would I trust that more or less? I think I’d trust it less.

I could go on.

I think that as people who are passionate about social media, who use it on a daily basis, and who *know* the benefits of these interactions, we need to be a little less sweeping in our generalizations and put down our pitchforks for just a few minutes while we actually stop… and think.  I thought for quite a while about this, going back and forth about the benefits of separate accounts vs. the benefits of just one account. I asked myself why I follow official twitter accounts, and whether or not I’d feel more or less connected to those accounts if a photo of a person replaced their logo. I thought about why I follow *anyone* on twitter, and what it is that makes following them valuable for me.

I don’t think we can immediately dismiss the value of “logo tweets” because it’s not that simple. The beauty of twitter is that the entire service is opt-in. You choose who to follow, you decide what you want to see (this reminds me a quote from Pretty Woman that I know some of you will enjoy – “I say WHO, I say WHEN, I say….. WHO!!” – ok, back to our topic…) – twitter is *exactly* like that. You choose, you decide, you know what you find valuable and why.

If I’m following a company or organization because I expect to see tweets specifically related to that organization and then they start filling my twitter stream with comments about going to lunch, or what kind of morning they had – I am immediately turned off because I’m not getting what I expect to get.

I think what this boils down to is that it’s GOOD to have a personal connection to a business, organization, brand…. or school. It’s great to feel like you know a “real” person working there. It’s cool to feel like you know the inside scoop and the real story. I completely get that, and I support that 100%. I think many companies are doing that well, sometimes in conjunction with their logo/branded accounts and I think it works.

I have recently started a new position with the Penn State School of Theatre where I’ll be working exclusively with prospective students, and managing their social media presence including Facebook and twitter. We do have an official “logo” twitter account (@psutheatre), but I also have a personal twitter account (@callbackgirl) related to my position in the school and I will be managing both of those accounts. Both accounts reference the other, allowing people to choose if they want to follow the other account but at the same time being as authentic as possible about what you can expect if you follow that account. If someone follows me as @micala then they likely expect to hear things related to my personal life, social media, Second Life, or other completely random things that happen. If I started tweeting things related to the School of Theatre on that account, I don’t think that people would unfollow, but I think it’s rude to expect that anyone interested in theatre would be ok to be subjected to all the other random nonsense I chat about all day long. I don’t *like* separate accounts. My world would be perfect if I could just manage one twitter account and say absolutely everything I want to say right there and have people shower me with glitter and dance around like pixies – but it doesn’t work that way.

It’s not about us.

If I’m following a twitter account with a logo, I’m doing so because I expect to get “official” or “professional” tweets related to their organization. Personal photos immediately make me expect that I’ll get personal tweets and more conversation. Both of these are great, and I don’t think one is more valuable than the other, it’s just about expectations.

We need to remember that when people follow us on twitter, they’re giving us the most valuable gift we have these days…. their time. If we value their time, we’ll share content they expect, provide relevant information, and at the same time… invite them into our community to become part of the conversation – no matter what our twitter icon looks like.

I watched the little video and for the most part – I thought it was pretty good. Here are their tips in a nutshell:
1. Be careful what you put online – it never goes away, ever!
2. You never know who’s gonna see it!
3. Just because it’s online, doesn’t mean it’s true!
4. Not everyone is who they say they are!
5. If you wouldn’t do it in person, you shouldn’t do it online!

I’m all good on the tips up to this point, but after that last one, it gets a little iffy…
1. Get off the computer
2. Put down the phone
3. Nothing beats spending time with REAL friends!

That last one irked me a little. Seriously Disney? “Real” friends”? I mean, I see what you’re trying to do here, but could you not have phrased that better?

Anyway, in the light of the recent Facebook commotion, it’s kind of interesting to think about these little rules and how they may apply to all that’s going on there.

When it first happened, I was in complete shock. I didn’t know whether to cry or completely flip out. I was in shock and the only thing I wanted to do was the one thing I couldn’t do  – tweet about what had just happened.  I updated my Facebook page, and started using another account that I’d created previously (the one I was actually *trying* to delete) and started over from scratch. I had no followers and one tweet, and so it began. I went to bed on Sunday night feeling sad, lonely, and angry at myself for not paying closer attention to what I was doing.

On Monday morning I started thinking about how I felt and I realized that the only other time in my life that I felt this way was years ago in Second Life when I’d worked and worked to create a coffee shop where people could meet and be social and I ended up accidentally deleting the entire place with one wrong click of the mouse. I was devastated then and couldn’t comprehend what had happened. It felt just like that.

Then I started to remember something else… it was that moment, that accidental deletion, that made me build a better coffee shop. It made me work harder and I learned more. I made a better space, became more adept and skilled at building, and started working with other people to make new vibrant spaces.  This could be just like that.

Even though my new twitter account has a name that sounds slightly like a potential spammer, friends found me, and new people started to follow. Support requests had been submitted to twitter in the hopes of restoring my account, but with every minute that passed, I cared less and less about having it restored. I was energized, free, and in a position to start over and make this identity whatever I wanted it to be. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was/is to feel that way.

I think that sometimes we get so caught up in our ‘persona’ and what people expect from us that we stop being ourselves or stop remembering who we want to be. I think when you’re always talking with the same group of people in the same space about the same topics, things start to get beaten to death and nothing new ever happens. Starting over with a new identity – perhaps one that’s even more true to yourself than the original identity – is exhilarating. No expectations, no promises, no responsibilities. Free to be whatever you want to be – and that includes… yourself.

I had another twitter account that I ended up never using and it was linked through a badge on a blog. I was editing the blog and wanted to delete the badge and that account. I clicked through and deleted the account, but since I was already logged in as my @micala account, I ended up deleting @micala and not the one I truly meant to delete.

I must say that when I realized it, I couldn’t breathe. I could not believe that I had done that. I felt lost. I wanted to tweet about it – but couldn’t!

In thinking about how I feel right now, I don’t feel bad losing the tweets because I honestly never cared about that. I view twitter as sort of an ongoing chatroom – but my name and the credibility that I felt I’d built up after using twitter for several years, is now gone and that bothers me.

I’m crossing my fingers that someone at twitter can help me, but if not, then I’m starting anew. Not by choice, but by necessity. I’m trying to look at the positives – sometimes a fresh start is a wonderful thing…… right?

When @NikkiMK started the #fakeheweb hashtag last year I thought it was brilliant. There are so many amazing conferences that happen for higher education that it’s basically impossible for anyone to attend all of them,  so for those that couldn’t make it, the #fakeheweb tag allowed a whole new community to develop around people that could *NOT* attend the conference for one reason or another. It was fun, creative, and brought together a group of people that might not have ever spoken and were likely feeling somewhat left out because they couldn’t attend the conference. Instead of moping around about not being able to attend, #fakeheweb brought people together. It built a new community.

This Sunday, I’m heading to Boston for ACPA 2010. I’ve never attended the ACPA conference, but I was lucky enough to be accepted to present there with some amazing women from Texas Women’s University and I’m looking forward to meeting all of them and being part of ACPA. The other evening I mentioned on twitter that I was feeling a little overwhelmed with the magnitude of ACPA (having never been there before) and asked if anyone had advice. My question was retweeted by @reyjunco with the hashtag of #sachat. I’ve seen some #sachat sessions taking place on twitter but have never really participated in those sessions because for some reason (and I honestly couldn’t tell you what that reason was because I have no idea) I didn’t feel like I should be part of that community. After receiving many responses from people in the #sachat community I realized immediately what a fantastic group of people they are, and what a great resource that group is. I’m happy to say that I have now decided that I have every right to be part of that group and look forward to participating. Back to our story…

Last night, several members of the #sachat community started a movement to create a #fakeacpa10 hashtag for those people that couldn’t attend ACPA 2010 next week. Some of the posts I’ve seen so far with this hashtag are incredibly funny and creative. What we’re seeing, once again, is the development of a new community within an already established group based on an event they will *not* be attending.  I will be attending in-person, but I love that through the use of both the #acpa10 and the #fakeacpa10 hashtags, we can *all* participate and have fun doing so. It’s almost as though we’re making a new game out of conference attendance. The “#fake” tag becomes the unconference of conferences and as we all know, the unconference part is usually the most fun.

I, for one, am already thinking about ways to incorporate both tags into my tweets from the event because I think that by using both we’re connecting both groups and making this fun for everyone. I think sometimes we get so caught up in self-promotion, crafting our image, and talking about frou-frou stuff that we forget to have fun. This is fun and I’m looking forward to being part of it.

I have started to feel differently about this.

Twitter is absolutely still a place where I get a lot of information and I do still consider it to be a huge source of personal professional development. That being said, the conversation is the important part to me – not the retweeting of information that I can get in my RSS reader. If I’m following you on twitter, it’s because I like you. I like learning about you, I like seeing those personal insights. I love knowing the little, mundane things about you. It’s a personal connection and it’s what puts the ’social’ in social media.

It seems to me (and granted, this might just be the people I’m following) that more and more people on twitter spend more time now just retweeting things from Wired or Mashable or whateverothertechblog here and not actually creating conversation or sharing anything personal. Keep in mind that if I’m following people on twitter that are working with social media, I’m likely already subscribed to blogs like Mashable, Wired, TechCrunch, etc. A few months or a year ago, I would have just set up an RSS twitter feed for someone that constantly posted links because although they didn’t use twitter to converse, I still wanted to get the information but now, I’m already *getting* the information that they’re putting out there.

I think that most of us have a lot going on in our lives and more and more to keep up with every day. If someone or something isn’t making my life easier or my job easier, then it’s really worth considering if I need that thing at all. Right now, I don’t need an echo of information or more noise in my stream so I’m rethinking connections.

We’ll just skip right over that obligatory line about, “Hey wow it’s been a while since I blogged”, because actually… it hasn’t. Has it been a while since I blogged *here*? Absolutely, and this is the reason for this post.

I’ve seen a lot of discussions about a separation between online identities and the division between personal and professional profiles on various networks. I’ve seen friends create new profiles and make that separation intensely evident. I am of the opinion that creating separate profiles goes against everything that I believe in, but … faced with some situations and some pressure, even I created some divisions, and I regret it. And so, we shall fix it.

At some point in the past I blogged that “The Social Networking Girl” would be where I talk about things related to work, and this site would be for everything else. Well – forget that. It doesn’t work and we’re not doing it. As of this post – this site – “The Social Networking Girl” – is closed. Enough with the separation.

What I’ve found is that when I create different profiles for different ‘identities’ – I never post to the professional accounts. I never log in, I don’t keep track of them, and I end up feeling that anything I post there is for show, or because I feel like I have to. That’s not real, that’s not fun, and frankly – that’s not cool. So, we’re done with that.

Social networking, social media, and community is all about learning who we are, and who everyone else is. If all you do is post links and present a false front, then how much am I really learning about you or connecting with you? I’ll tell you how much – not at all. I can get those links from feeds, and I can do without the fakity fake stuff, thanks.

If we create professional accounts because we’re afraid of offending people or feel that some of what we might show or say is inappropriate for certain audiences – I get that. I don’t agree with it, but I get it. I understand why some people would feel more comfortable with that and feel that it’s “safer”. I can’t do it and feel good about it, but if you need to do it – then do it and rock it.

I want to know about the little things. I *want* to know what you had for breakfast. I want to see photos of your kids, your pets, and your drinkies. I want to know what movies you like, and what the weather’s like where you live. I want to know what pisses you off, and what makes you feel all smooshy inside. I want to know *YOU* and we cannot know each other unless we’re all being real.

Let’s be real.