Facebook as Newsrooms and Support Centre

WHILE CHATTING WITH social entrepreneurs in Dublin, I tested the water concerning the vitality of Facebook as a connector node. I was surprised to discover that fewer than 30% of the people I asked were able to point to the community facilitator that Facebook is proving to be for me. Putting an event onto Facebook gets me more traction among my third level colleagues than any other mechanism. Using Facebook chat gives me more client-facing minutes than telephone conference calls or SMS text tag. Coalescing around themeatic content by creating groups, photosets or video collections just happens naturally. As Dominic McKenna writes in a comment to my blog, "Facebook has taken a whole new meaning for me since joining the Creative Multimedia Course in Tipperary Institute." He cites the connections he has discovered with upperclassmen and graduates. And he's noticed something I've never been able to orchestrate before. "If I'm not sure of an assignment, I can always pick someone's brain on Facebook and it's a great way to show my work and get some feedback on it." This feature alone distributes my teaching load and makes Facebook a welcome adjunct to my teaching resources.

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Sent mail2blog from the upper saloon of the 67 winding towards Pearse Street, Dublin, Ireland.

That's a screenshot of my Facebook connections, scraped in late 2007.

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