What do u thk of this lede? Should u write this way in yr job? Do u thk it matters?

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them.

FYA -- For Your Amusement Biz Texts
BIB - Boss is back
ADAD - Another day, another dollar
SLAP - Sounds like a plan
DYOR - Do your own research
@TEOTD - At the end of the day
LMK - Let me know
WIU - Wrap it up
AAK - Asleep at keyboard
GJ - Good job
NFS - Not for sale
AYEC - At your earliest convenience
OOTO - Out of the office
OTL - Out to lunch

[Check out PEW/Internet & American Life's "Writing, Technology and Teens" Study]

The use of social media gains a greater foothold in teen life as they embrace the conversational nature of interactive online media.

The use of social media – from blogging to online social networking to creation of all kinds of digital material – is central to many teenagers’ lives.

Some 93% of teens use the internet, and more of them than ever are treating it as a venue for social interaction – a place where they can share creations, tell stories, and interact with others.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has found that 64% of online teens ages 12-17 have participated in one or more among a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004.

[View Pew Report]

Many teenagers avidly use social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and employ a variety of tools and techniques to manage their online identities.

Online social networks are spaces on the internet where users can create a profile and connect that profile to others to create a personal network. Social network users post content to their profiles and use tools embedded within social networking websites to contact other users.

Young adults and teenagers are among the most avid users of such websites.

Much of the media coverage surrounding young people and online social networks has focused on the personal information teens make available on these networks. Are they sharing information that will harm their future college or job prospects? Or worse, are they sharing information that puts them at risk of victimization?

A new survey and a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project examines how teens understand their privacy through several lenses: by looking at the choices that teens make to share or not to share information online, by examining what they share, by probing for the context in which they share it and by asking teens for their own assessment of their vulnerability.

[Read Report]

NEA Constituent Relations uses blogging, videocasting and social networks to manage the following work:

• Knowledge Management
  Led by NEA ALE, CR hosts 2 sets of blogs designed to manage (1) NEA UniServ Academy and (2) Western Regional Organizational Effectiveness training program. Both training events use blogging in an effort to move beyond traditional "one-shot" training practices where participants carry home their handouts in a bag or briefcase. Blogging lets participants revisit training curriculum anytime, anywhere and makes use of "syndication” enabling participants to remain both up-to-date and automatically notified whenever a change or new content is added to the training blog.

  [http://www.donblake.com/udacademy]
  [http://www.donblake.com/wroe]
  



• Organizing
  Led by passionate efforts on behalf of NEA Student Chairperson Anthony Daniels, NEA organizes groups of member and nonmember college students to take action against the skyrocketing cost of paying back college loan debt. Anthony Daniels has promoted his use and the use by others of social networking, blogging and videocasting to an audience of over 2500 social-network-based college students from across the United States.

  [http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2215127719]
  [http://www.myspace.com/collegeaffordability]
  [http://www.youtube.cmo/collegeaffordability]
  [http://www.collegeaffordabilityconcernsme.org]

Though Web statistics never paint a complete picture in terms of return on investment with regard to time spent managing these multiple mediums, they do tell us whether anyone is “listening” and how often. So, in relationship to the above mentioned social media uses, what do the numbers say about who looks at what?

Employees increasingly expect to use the internet at work for their own personal use in return for longer hours, taking work home with them and interrupting vacations. This has a number of security, productivity, bandwidth and legal ramifications that require organizations to create and implement a web usage policy that is backed up by effective web filtering tools. This paper discusses how to create a policy that balances an organization’s need for protection against an individual’s expectations.

[View: SC Magazine Report]

March 2009-- Global Faces and Networked Places A Nielsen report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint

Social Networking has been the global consumer phenomenon of 2008. Two-thirds of the world’s Internet population visit a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10% of all internet time. ‘Member Communities’ has overtaken personal Email to become the world’s fourth most popular online sector after search, portals and PC software applications.

The story is consistent across the world, ‘Member Communities’ has taken a foothold in every major market from 50% of the online population in Switzerland and Germany to 80% in Brazil. Facebook has become the largest player on the global stage, dominant in many countries, yet localised offerings have won the day in many others.

[Read report]

Analytics company iStrategyLabs has examined the demographics stats from Facebook (Facebook)’s Social Ads platform, and they’ve reached some very interesting conclusions. Facebook’s userbase, as a whole, is getting much older very fast.

Facebook's overall number of users between 18 and 24 years of age has grown only 4.8% between the fourth of January and the fourth of July of 2009. In comparison, the number of users aged 25 – 34 has grown 60.8%; the number of users aged 35 to 54 has grown 190.2%, while the number of users older than 55 years has grown a tremendous 513.7%.

A survey showing the first international demographic data on a new group
titled "digital activists": people who use digital technology as part of grassroots campaigns for social and political change.

From late mid-February to mid-April of 2009, DigiActive collected 122 responses through an open online form, followed by three rounds of qualitative and quantitative analysis by Mary Joyce and Katharine Brodock of DigiActive and Timo Zaeck of the University of Siegen.

[Source: online @http://www.digiactive.org/research/digital-activism-survey-report-2009/]

[View Survey]

[online @ Inside School Research]

A Scottish researcher is making the case that spending time on Facebook can make you smarter. Tracy Alloway of the University of Stirling told the British Research Association that Facebook brings about educational benefits because it requires users to exercise their working memory—their ability, in other words, to store and manipulate information. The same goes, she says, for video games that require planning and strategy and for Sudoku.

Alloway bases her conclusions on studies of low-achieving children between the ages of 11 and 14 who spent time on a brain-training program that involved social-networking sites, playing video games, or using other kinds of digital media. The heaviest Facebook users, she found, boosted their IQ scores by as much as 10 points over the course of the study.

Twitter, text-messaging, and YouTube are an entirely different matter, Alloway says. They seem to have no IQ-enhancing effect, and may even harm the development of working memory.

“On Twitter, you receive an endless stream of information, but it's also very succinct,” Alloway says. "You don't have to process that information.”

Angerosa Research Foundation releases study: Web 2.0: How Associations Are Tapping Social Media

[view online]

Study released by eROI shows looks at how high school and college students and recent college graduates communicate digitally.

According to a review published by the Center for Media Research:

[Excerpt from ReadWriteWeb
Written by Sarah Perez / September 28, 2009

Oh how the mighty have fallen. The one time king of social networks, MySpace, now has the honor of being the site where the less affluent members of the online population stake their claims by way of bedazzled profiles overrun with auto-playing videos and songs. Meanwhile, the upscale, financially solvent users have moved on - and by moved on, we mean to Facebook, of course. At least those are the findings of the latest social networking study done by American consumer behavior analysis firm Nielsen Claritas.

2009 Deloitte LLP Ethics & Workplace Survey
(Published Thursday, May 28, 2009)
[online@ Deloitte Web site

In 2007 Sharon Allen, Deloitte LLP’s chairman of the board, commissioned the first annual Ethics & Workplace Survey. The inaugural study looked at the relationship between career-life fit and ethical behavior at work. In 2008, the research focused on how leadership transparency translates into a more productive and ethical workforce. This year, the study addresses the reputational risk associated with the increased use of social networking.

[Download Survey]

If you're reading this blog post, chances are you're a social networker. According to a Anderson Analytics study published last summer, social networkers utilize popular Websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn in different ways depending on their age.

My generation, Generation X, 30-to-44-year-olds, and baby boomers, 44-to-65-year-olds, connected on LinkedIn more than any demographic.

Check out eMarketer's story for more information.