Comments (5)

By Dan Pontefract, 05/29/2010 11:01 AM

Regular readers know that I’m passionate about three key areas: leadership; learning & enterprise 2.0.

As a lifelong educator, married to one as well, and possessing a young brood already immersed in a 2.0 world, we strongly believe in raising our children to be collaborative, transparent, honest and innovative.

But, alas, I’ve recently developed petulance for one of the world’s finest creations … Facebook.

Mr. Mark Zuckerberg has arguably founded one of the most collaborative and people connecting applications in recent history. According to CheckFacebook.com there are well over 450 million registered users worldwide. According to Google, Facebook now occupies the #1 visited website with 540 million unique visits in April, 2010 (after removing Google itself from the research).

Aside from the recent Facebook privacy flak, there is not a burning platform for Mr. Zuckerberg, Ms. Lori Goler (VP of Human Resources and Recruiting) and Mr. Elliot Schrage (VP of Global Communications, Marketing and Public Policy) to deal with, there is a raging inferno.

Bullying and Facebook.

It needs to be addressed … by Facebook.

With such a commanding head start as the platform in which people are sharing, collaborating and connecting, it is appalling (given countless examples) that Facebook does not take the stance to ensure its users (particularly those in the 10-18 year old range) are more educated and aware of cyber-bullying.

Recent examples involving Facebook & bullying, from 3 different countries include, but are not limited to:

• Facebook Bullying Case Goes to Court – Nova Scotia, Canada – May 25, 2010
• ‘Facebook Bully Probe’ After Death – Birmingham, UK – May 22, 2010
• Mom Has Strong Words About School Bullying – Florida, USA – May 26, 2010

A review of Facebook Principles makes no mention, whatsoever, of ethics or social expectations but it does state:

Achieving these principles should be constrained only by limitations of law, technology, and evolving social norms.

What, may I ask, is ‘evolving social norms’ and how can something that is evolving be the definition of your Facebook Principles?

There is, however, a “Defined Statement of Rights & Responsibilities” for which I applaud Section 3 (Safety) Subsection 6:

You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.

Frankly, both the Facebook Principles and Defined Statement of Rights & Responsibilities do not fit the task at hand. More must be done by Facebook to help the 10-18 year old age bracket be aware of the dire consequences of bullying, particularly cyber-bullying and particularly due to the fact Facebook has, more or less, become the de facto place for these assaults to occur.

Mark, Lori, Elliot … I implore you to get in front of this inferno. Do not leave it solely to local school boards, local governments or community/N-F-P organizations to fight the blaze.

Our kids do not yet possess the cognitive ability to distinguish social 2.0 norms in a 2.0 world; they need guidance, assistance, best practice and collaborative education to do so. Proven by Leslie Sabbagh with her piece entitled The Teen Brain, Hard at Work; (August/September 2006; Scientific American Mind), the prefrontal cortex is one of the last areas of the brain to mature. Thus, an immature prefrontal cortex is thought to be the explanation for why adolescents show poor judgment, an inability to think before they act, and as a consequence, bad decisions being made.

This phenomenon is all the more exacerbated in the Facebook era. This is why cyber-bullying on Facebook is occurring; we need to rethink the plan.

Steps to take, if I were Mark, Lori and Elliot:

• Lead: get in front of this issue and begin leading – make it a part of the Facebook DNA
• Educate: you not only have a collaborative platform, you have a learning platform. Begin educating your users specifically related to Facebook bullying, consequences, etc.
• Collaborate: work with your millions of 10-18 year old users on the right strategies to implement

In the meantime, and until proven otherwise, my 7, 4 and 3 year old won’t be setting foot on the Facebook platform.

But Mark, Lori and Elliot, I offer my hand in assistance.

Comments (1)

By Dan Pontefract, 11/15/2009 9:40 AM

Seeing as it’s been almost 3 years since I’ve been with the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (at various entry dates) I thought it would be interesting to analyze my own personal / professional network to understand if any trends might be occurring. Secondly, I’m using this analysis as a basis to personally reflect on the importance of such tools being made available inside an organization to facilitate a ‘culture of collaboration’.

First, to the data.

If you take a look at the following pie graph (click for larger view), you first need to make note of some context points:

• Total number of network connections between Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is ~1650
• Duplicate or triplicate entries have been reflected, and thus used to collapse the N value
• Immediate family members were removed
• Mutual Twitter entries (both sides following one another) were also reflected, and used to collapse the N value
• No entries from Outlook/Blackberry contacts, Ning, Yammer or other online networks were utilized
• Individuals not a part of any online tool (neighbours, friends, colleagues not in the systems) were not reflected
• Irrelevant Twitter entries (orgs, companies, groups following me or associations that I follow) were also removed. Only industry relevant individuals were kept in the Twitter category
• Thus, total N value equals roughly 1300

Alright, what have I observed?

• Those that I’ve become more chummy with in ‘work circles’ (whether internal or external) seem to be found in both LinkedIn and Facebook
• There is a very discrete line between Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn connections
• Disappointed that only 1% of my total collapsed connections are found in all three categories
• Interesting that 16% of all connections are found in combinations of 2 or all 3 tools – will this grow in the future?
• With cross posting of ‘tweets’ now available on LinkedIn, will this be detrimental or positive in terms of the quality of my connections (as well as pure number)
• Twitter and LinkedIn seem more aligned for me professionally – Facebook is perhaps the odd ball
• New ‘industry’ or ‘circle of influence’ connections seem to start at Twitter versus LinkedIn
• I have only 1 individual on both Facebook & Twitter & not LinkedIn - do you know who you are?

Implications for the Org?

I think it’s fair to say that the sample size of ~1300 is stastically significant for purposes of juxtaposing against the organization of tomorrow.

Facebook is a place where I can share knowledge, photos, videos, a bit of lifecasting, documents and even engage in live chats, etc. This is social learning at its best from a personal perspective but throw this into the mix in the org, and you have something very powerful that’s brewing and only going to taste like a fabulous English Ale in the future if implemented and deployed properly.

LinkedIn is much better at the ‘who am I’, and ‘how can I help’ aspects of social networking … as well as the obvious network contact control mechanism. This too is something critically required in an organization through both hierarchical team structures as well as heterarchical/wirearchical teams or communities that come and go through the natural evolution of projects, ideas, and actions in the org.

Twitter (albeit relatively new versus the other two) provides a much deeper way of sharing concise pieces of knowledge, links, ideas, comments and ‘what am I up to’ that is important to have in the organization as society moves away from the physical water cooler, to the virtual water ’schooler’.

Mix in the standard practice of wikis, blogs, federated search (including formal learning assets via a hidden LMS somewhere) and voila … you have the Social Net-Work-Life Balance an organization needs to drive a ‘culture of engagement’.

In summary, we need tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter in the organization (not these ones specifically), but ideally (and somehow) federated with the other tools already in place, or being thought about for the future. Culturally, this is the right thing to do for tomorrow’s workforce.

Thoughts on either my data points, or the latter org points?