Social Media
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I have believed passionately in the power of social media for almost 30 years. I discovered the online world in its infancy. The online community contained only a tiny fraction of the numbers of people who are involved today, but all the main components of what makes social media work were there. Eventually I saw more people get involved, and I saw the Internet merge the networks. I was enthralled; I wanted to study the culture that was springing up, the new ways that people were making contact and sharing information via emerging technology.
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Soon after, I found a job at WGBH, which partnered with the PRODIGY service. I became a community manager, leading a team who monitored PRODIGY's bulletin boards and acting as the online face of the service to members who posted there. Teaching people to find information and meet others online delighted me. Upper management considered the bulletin boards trivial; I tried to convince them to understand and value the personal connections that gave the service meaning and brought users back daily.
After PRODIGY, I moved to working for Delphi Internet Services. At Delphi, I answered all the company's user support email. Again I used what I knew about how to function in the online social world to bring more and more new people into it, as well as using my technical knowledge to help remove their barriers. Eventually I moved into a role as editorial assistant for the service's bulletin board content, and I pioneered real-time user education by designing and presenting instructional sessions delivered via chat.
I loved doing social media work more than anything else and kept looking for opportunities to resume that career, but it has taken some time for the rest of the world to catch up to understanding social media and how to use it. No matter what I was doing for a living, however, the online world remained the pulse of my life. I stayed current on new concepts and ongoing debates that arose from widespread access to information technologies, such as intellectual property, personal privacy and transparency, the digital divide, and information security. I watched what had been a small world explode and cover the planet with infinite connections joining people together and melding their knowledge. I’ve never stopped believing that the Internet is humanity’s greatest achievement.
After PRODIGY, I moved to working for Delphi Internet Services. At Delphi, I answered all the company's user support email. Again I used what I knew about how to function in the online social world to bring more and more new people into it, as well as using my technical knowledge to help remove their barriers. Eventually I moved into a role as editorial assistant for the service's bulletin board content, and I pioneered real-time user education by designing and presenting instructional sessions delivered via chat.
I loved doing social media work more than anything else and kept looking for opportunities to resume that career, but it has taken some time for the rest of the world to catch up to understanding social media and how to use it. No matter what I was doing for a living, however, the online world remained the pulse of my life. I stayed current on new concepts and ongoing debates that arose from widespread access to information technologies, such as intellectual property, personal privacy and transparency, the digital divide, and information security. I watched what had been a small world explode and cover the planet with infinite connections joining people together and melding their knowledge. I’ve never stopped believing that the Internet is humanity’s greatest achievement.
The desire to finally study the information world the way I had wanted to so many years ago led me to the University of Washington Information School. Among many other courses, I have worked on catching up academically with social media's progress.
I studied the information behavior of social media, as in this study I conducted about news item sharing behavior. I learned about new trends in social media use, as well as new services and outlets for social media. I worked on a team that devised a comprehensive strategy for a social media campaign called End Hunger Western Washington. I also did in-depth studies of social media trends such as crowdsourcing, and new applications of social media facilitated by technological tools like RFID.
I studied the information behavior of social media, as in this study I conducted about news item sharing behavior. I learned about new trends in social media use, as well as new services and outlets for social media. I worked on a team that devised a comprehensive strategy for a social media campaign called End Hunger Western Washington. I also did in-depth studies of social media trends such as crowdsourcing, and new applications of social media facilitated by technological tools like RFID.
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