How the Generations use social media

How do various generations use social media and what’s the impact of their understanding and usage in the workplace?  Here’s one perspective from Cisco’s Ayelet Baron in  this  interesting post  from a few months ago.   I’m guessing it was written from a millennial’s perspective, so I thought I’d add my boomer thoughts to it, because as Ayelet points out, different generations have different perspectives.

First, I think that our definition of what a generation is has changed over the past few years – it used to be the time between having children and then the children having children -  about twenty-five to thirty  years.  Now generations seems to refer  to groups of people  born in the same decade who share similar perceived “cultural” experiences such as Generation X born in the 70′s, Gen Y for the 80′s and millennial or Gen I (for Internet) for the newest group born around the arrival of the Internet. I think this cultural generations  concept was created by the media as  a convenient way to lump groups of people together as generalizations, and it has caught on widely now and become part of our social conversation.

One point of disagreement I have with the premise of the blog is that  this is the first time in history that five generations have worked together in the same workplace.  This  is a misconception,  if you think about farmers, family businesses, manufacturing where multiple generations have worked together on the same factory floor, coal miners etc., working together has until recently been the norm and not the exception.

Where I do agree with this blog though is in the different approaches different age groups take towards social media.  I think it is true that the boomer crowd see social media as tools and that younger people see it as an extension of themselves.  For boomers, social media is a radical departure from the way we’ve always worked, and it can be perceived as  frivolous and trivial if  used to discuss  lunch or the best caffee latte or dangerous if used the wrong way.

I do  take exception to the notion that boomers are all about propriety and living offline  though-propriety implies acceptance of  convention which I don’t think describes the children of the 60′s  well.  I think us old folks do have a measure of respect for those around us and tend not to want to offend, probably because our  livelihoods, families and mortgages were dependent on maintaining good relationships with employers who had some degree of authority over us.  With the increase of independent mobile workers who have sought after skills and knowledge, the more formal relationship is diminishing and that is a good thing.

I  agree that the tools that used to be provided exclusively by employers are now open to everyone and it is great to be able to take advantage of  so many alternatives instead of being tied down to whatever one’s employer mandated.  Of course, this also feeds into the independence and mobility of workers which is a huge advantage for the younger crowd.   I also agree that sometimes older people can get caught up in process and bureaucracy too easily  and it sometimes is difficult to communicate the immense opportunity that social media offers to them.

The one big difference I see between the generations is the naturalness of being online for younger people.  Everything flows from their Facebook page from relationships, to travel plans to career searches.  I find that the adoption of the online world and social media in the older crowd is very uneven.  Some people have really taken to it, others haven’t even considered it.  It still has that frivolous feeling to lots of people, despite evidence to the contrary, but to be fair,  I do hear that from all sorts of people, not just us aging boomers.

So I guess I basically agree with most of the points in the blog – I just hate being lumped together and generalized about just because of my age.    I am fortunate to be surrounded by younger people most of the time, so maybe I’ve just gotten interested in the online world by osmosis and am not a good representative of my age group.  But,  if there is one thing that age has taught me, it’s to not make assumptions based on generalities.  So what’s your experience – do you think the cultural generations stereotypes fit or should we forget them and just deal with people as we find them?

Building an Engaged Community

I attended an interesting presentation last week  by ITAC (information Technology Association of Canada) regarding  Building Community at the Globe & Mail hosted by Angus Frame, VP of Digital Media at the Globe & Mail and Jen Evans, Founder and Chief Strategist of Sequentia.    It was a fascinating case study describing how the Globe & Mail transitioned its online edition from a completely open forum  into an open forum that incorporates content and commenting from a select group of customers .  These customers, part of the Globe’s  Catalyst online community, collaborate with authors on upcoming articles and are given priority in  commenting on content.   As the communty had knowledge about the articles in advance, they were able to provide an increased level of relevance to the comments they added to the site, increasing value for regular readers as well.

By creating this special community,  the Globe elevated both its content and public commentary, creating an improved experience overall and  making its online site  more attractive  for potential advertisers as well – a “win-win” for all parties.

Some of the conclusions from developing the community include:

1. The best community is a willing community – one that wants to actively participate to build or be part of an exclusive group or shared purpose
2. Community members need an opportunity to provide feedback or input or they will stop participating
3. Providing themes or topics helps the community focus reducing the random posts and commenting

How have you grown an online “closed”  community?  What were the tactics you used?