I want to share some of my personal reflections on the earthquakes happening in Italy in the past seven days. Now, it’s been a week since a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck in Abruzzo, at 3.32AM (01.32 GMT, EDT Sunday) killing over 270 people and causing severe damages to several cities. Especially the city of L’Aquila because there was the epicenter (96km northeast of Rome) of the “terremoto” (Italian for the earthquake).

Since I was immediately awaken, first thing was grabbing the mobile and twittering about this (which is not so smart to do if you’re in the middle of strong shakes, but…), and then I’ve realized that only few of us (read 6, and later 7 people) in the Italy were twittering about this live. It was interesting that the social media in this case was faster than national TV and radio stations. Usually, international media houses, e.g. CNN , are 15-20 min behind the social web and networks, while Italian national stations needed more time, let’s say an hour, hour and a half.

You have to understand this from two reasons (not necessarily in this order): 1. life philosophy in Italy (so far as I got it)  is “piano, piano…”, which means “as slow as possible…” – implemented in every aspect of (Italian) life, and 2. political reasons and the premier’s ownership of all National TV channels (and other relevant media). Sounds familiar? Well…You probably heard the controversial story of a scientist in L’Aquila,  seismologist Gioacchino Giuliani claiming that thanks to his research he had foreseen the disaster four days before it have happened but he had been ignored by Civil Protection. Nothing that we’ve never seen before regarding the government and the media and freedom.

Anyways, I was sending tweets from Rome as I was checking if any media online reported about the earthquake, but the fact was that the very few of us awakened by the quake used Twitter to spread the news before any news agencies. In the next few hours Twitter was the only source available to Italian people to share news and information as well as the contact medium for their friends and family in L’Aquila. The next morning and day(s), Twitter, beside other social networks (especially Facebook) was the major information tool to keep updated with the events in the region and spreading the news world wide, because there were aftershocks and minor tremors (still present). After the major quake, Facebook and Friendfeed were the most active social networks with a role of the spreading the current situation, announcing appeals for help, ways on how to make donations, keeping in touch.

Current situation in the Italian twittersphere cannot be compared with the massivness and the noise that happened in Moldova recently, because as micro-blogging tool it presents among Internet users something new. IMHO, it is the matter of time when this social media tool, that’s being mostly used by the academics and IT/social media professionals, will be spread amongst Italian population, the active Internet users of the other social networks.

Five days ago I experienced really nice act of kindness by Twitterer on my followers/following list. Five minutes or so before leaving my working station I twittered about free hugs, to test the power of Facebook and Twitter in foreign city and country as well as the radius of my digital visibility here in Italy.

A minute later I got direct message from a Twitterer residing in Rome, Apple fan and one of rare Romans who is using Twitter in tech,  saying he’s coming in 15 min to meet me in front of my building. Very spontaneously this nice person arrived immediately via moped in front of my working place to give me a hug, and Moleskine notebook -City Rome. Those who are following me on Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and where not – can notice that I dig Moleskine notebooks.  Thanks to Twitter, I’ve instantly met a person with whom I was sending replies and exchanged thoughts on technology and life in Rome the same day. Moleskine notebook was really nice gesture and welcoming gift, and I am very grateful to all people who are interacting with me, and picking up things I say or write.

The power of social web implies also analogue communication performances influenced by the online presence and ID management of the persona. This act of kindness du jour and the whole week I am memorizing fondly as one of the  advantages of the usage of web 2.0 services. I’m very thankful that I can gradually, here and there, meet my invisible audience.

In the last three weeks my Twitter account is flooded with followers who are marketing agencies, web sites offering super effective strategy for you and your company, that can teach you make money from nothing and easy-fix tips and tricks. If you go to their profiles and web sites, you can find a single page with entire presentation and tons of blinking Web 1.0 ads, free newsletters, trials, twittenars, promotion talks on the ground, boat and airplane (?!$%^&), while the others just inject the buzz single update “how to earn $500 in few minutes”.  Some people on my surprise get hooked by following those accounts with so called auto- robots.

In the last few days I am carefully following what’s going on in my twitter stream and boy, oh boy – I am thinking to reduce the noise. Give Twitter in a hands of people who perceive it as an outlet in personal, professional life, with offending words, abusive comments – things can get out of control. Even for people in IT business.

This kind of communication performances with pushing nature of information, denotes (oh it is!)  the society in crisis (who mentioned global economy?). I am wondering  in which direction social media in the networked world is really going? Now, I’m starting to believe that you are who you are following. Twitter is digital, modern Greek agora but with democratic misinterpretation.

So, still craving for more followers? Here are three simple tips:

1. Be as massive as you can be: tweet and spam your friends, contacts with chat-alike tweets, blip.fm’s, retweets like: “how to ..”, “guide to…”, “grow your follower numbers to over 10,000 in a week..”, ‘follow me and win a prize…”, etc.

2. Don’t forget to mention Britney Spears in your tweets and some mainstream media buzzwords such as ‘marketing’, strategy’,  ‘solution’, ‘guru”, etc.

3. If you are female -upload attractive profile photo, if you are male – wear a moustache or left-eye-wink

Even if you are decent Twitterer with the respect for the people you are following and not that involved in twitterati’s fuzz, don’t be misleaded that Twitter’s curse won’t get you down: “Let the massive marketing twitter accounts that offer strategies follow you till the rest of your (digital) life!

…but I’d really like to receive Twitter updates on my mobile device as it was from year and a half ago when I could get sms directly to my mobile inbox: no browser, no applications, just plain and simple receiving text messages from the people I followed and sending directly from my mobile operator. I really miss Twitter with sms for a long time:

Sending updates to Twitter while you’re away from your computer makes things much more interesting. It’s all done through text messages (aka “SMS”), which you probably use all the time anyway, so there’s not much to learn.Twitter doesn’t charge anything for this, but be sure to know what your text plan looks like with your wireless carrier. If you use your mobile in Canada, The United States, or India you can also receive updates via SMS. You can text “OFF” to stop receiving and “ON” to start again.

Now the only information I have got when I tried to update with new mobile number was:

I am not Twitter addict but I’d really like to receive sms’s on my mobile device: is there a way for some European countries to make this come true? Through other services, e.g. Jaiku? What is your experience?

http://www.gapingvoid.com

Recently, I’ve read in media  the results of the survey by “xy” marketing agency (don’t want to advertise them here) who did research of the usage of Facebook in Serbia. This is my response and strong argument against  superficial output without research corpus statements of the author, agency, and unverified data published. I loathe these strong unverified allegations that appear officially. What it was about?

All Serbian media published the ‘results’ of commercial marketing agency’s survey about the popularity of the “sites for youth” in Serbia and they came to conclusion that the most popular are Facebook and My Space.  Beyond this general data, there are other things here I want to share with you, those they have ‘found out’. According to them, their target group was youth, age 18-25:  30%  of the examined population use everyday Internet and 61% of them have Facebook profile, and 37% have profile on My Space.

“They [youth] see Facebook as serious web site which enables them to communicate with people who live far away, to find soul-mates, and to have fun there. They are also emphasizing that those who don’t have Facebook profile – are ‘out’ ” (translated from Serbian, they are not cool, my remark).

Furthermore, the author of this research says that young people are noticing lot of fake profiles and (re)presentations, and Facebook is the reason they communicate less face to face, and therefore conclusion: they have negative Facebook opinion, privacy issues,  and connotation including the Facebook addiction. These three sentences on Facebook was everything we got from ‘research of marketing agency. Yuck!

Now I have to say something and respond to this kind lump of smattering, no survey corpus, non reliable conclusions.

First, this kind of surveys are ‘ordered’ from marketers or agency for certain [non - academic] purposes not to mention that companies of this kind try to demand and fence their users in certain boxes and or pre-ordered groups. Why? There is huge list of e-market interests in Serbia for future (re)shaping their users and making fertile e-ground for new ‘projects’ and investments.

Second, on this survey’s ‘results’ published in all Serbian media:  this unverified data should be kept under huge question mark and reserve from several reasons. There is no corpus of the research – no numbers of people included in this survey: what Serbian networks? Is it University network? High School network (there are no high school networks created on Facebook in Serbia, in general, dear agency)? No-network search of the users? All Serbia network? Methodology? Data? Charts?

For your information, including today: there are 143,891 people in Serbia network, and further – there are 1,619 people in the University of Belgrade network. Does this mean that the author and the agency did survey on  10,000 people? Or maybe 1000? We will never find out that. Did they send their questionnaires to classmates from high school, university, colleagues, ex housemates, lost friends so they have qualitative kind of output? There is nothing in this survey  that would show or notify us about indications regarding research (where is summarized corpus with quantitative and qualitative data?).

As above mentioned privacy issues: they are talking about privacy issues but they didn’t mention the most important fact that those teens and youth are exposing their FB profiles to the public along with their photos from parties, open for public. I got feedback data (youngsters) in Serbia network, as i was noticing and reporting to some of them that their profiles can be seen to everyone (along with photos).  From my direct talk with them, they didn’t know that their profile is exposed (not literate enough to find and adjust privacy settings) and this is the most often case with the group of undergrads who simply was not familiar with privacy mechanisms.  They were in shock (“oh my god!” reactions, and “I thought it was ‘friend only”) “,  which indicated that this small sample of youth in Serbia are self-aware that Facebook is network !read Network! for gathering with friends with whom they know from real life and re-establish connections (already existing) with, primarily, high school mates, university colleagues, etc.  They don’t care about strangers  or unknown people pending on ‘friend requests’ list. Of course there will be ‘collectors’ of strangers and friends for such purposes (we have them in everyday life), but finding soul-mates? I’m afraid , dear agency, that Serbian youth are gathered around Facebook for different reasons but finding soul-mates. They are soul-mating on other places.

“Conclusion there is negative Facebook connotation including the Facebook addiction” is hideous and contradictory if we have in mind above numbers (61% have Facebook profile and is the most popular site). If Facebook is such a bad and negative social network site, then why would many thousands of Serbian population get connected, socializing  with their friends, colleagues, classmates and communicate with them on daily basis? They are on Facebook to hang out with their friends and classmates in pre-existed relationships from real life, or re-connecting with those they’ve lost contact with, or connecting with their allies they never met face to face. There is huge University of Belgrade community on Facebook who talk about upcoming exams on the boards, exchange information, how-where-to find that book for exam, info on conferences, projects, etc.

Few years back, when I was doing research for my Master thesis – the existing surveys of Telecom (national telecommunication company) or CePIT(center for the research in Information-communication technologies) , have got not only explained methodology and all important basic data from their research, but also they’ve created user-friendly charts as you’d read at any e-journal, magazine out there. Open accessed and published to all media.

Said that, I am strongly arguing against this kind of public superficial announcements in media with suspicious outputs as millions of people in Serbia are reading them and (probably) taking them for granted, without having in mind the facts (Serbia network on Facebook as well as the other networks -university, work, region), social-technological context, survey corpus, criteria, purpose.  Question everything, question me!

On socio-ethno-anthro context of “you are  noone if you are not on Facebook” in Serbia,  I will write in the upcoming texts.

This is the name of the presentation on Saturday, October 4, 2008, in O3one Gallery in Belgrade as the part of regular program of  B-LINK festival of New Communications. It was created two years ago as a rare example of an initiative to show and adequately promote creative and innovative tendencies within web environment, primarily in domains of experimental art, web design and now researching new technologies and the impact they have on society.

Social Me section brings ID/Entity where I’ll be presenting with my co-author, visual artist and lecturer Aleksandar Macasev, educational content on Identities (personal, social, national, virtual) using different forms:  video, micro-video forms, blog, live casting.  Co-authored blog – “Me Virtual You” – will be opened for the public after the talk and presentation. We will not be physically present: Aleksandar will tune in from New York (where he works and lives) and I will be at the other geo-spot on BlogOpen meeting giving a talk. This is great opportunity to test communication performances in virtual space with attendeees and partcipants in physical space (gallery) while we are on different geo-places. You are welcomed to come and see what’s in there.

As we moved to new URL, with new layout and RSS feed, I want to announce upcoming events for the next 2 weeks very briefly, as a trailer, more info’s in the days to come. I will talk at the 7th International Science conference at University of Belgrade about open access, digital literacy and e-resources in Web 2.0 world. This year academics  will gather to discuss following topics: electronic libraries in all its aspects, digital repositories, e-services, online databases, the usage of web 2.0 technologies, open access, digital literacy, SNS,  and ipso facto their larger positive impact on the scientific and pedagogical work in Serbia.  I’ll write more about this next week, but some valuable information of the programe is here.

You know that every year (now would be for the third time) in October is festival of new communications called B-LINK. The topic of 2008 B-LINK will be “Virtual me”. You will find out soon what is going on there. I am working on presentation with my co-author Aleksandar on different aspects of [our work] ID/Entity. I expect official program soon.

BlogOpen (4-5th of October) is South East, a regional friendly and professional meeting of bloggers which has, since last fall, been on the calendar of regular annual meetings of all the participants in blogosphere: authors, readers, IT workers and mainstream media. I will write more about BlogOpen and programme very soon, as I am listed as one of the speakers.

Since Blink and BlogOpen are happening on the same day, I was wondering how to be present at two conferences same day, same time, different geo-spots, on both i’m having gigs?! Astral projections and cloning are not the option so I’ve decided since the ‘Virtual me’ event is dealing with digital identities in this space, I will use available social media techs and appear virtually, as for those who are coming to BlogOpen – I will be present in my physical entity.

Stay tuned…