Online activities reinforce offline social connections

How did I miss this one? In 2008, StatsCan published a very useful paper on How Canadians’ Use of the Internet Affects Social Life and Civic Participation. It speaks directly to the questions about the Internet’s impact on social capital that have been a...

Group identity and the psychology of social media

What motivates people to contribute content to user-driven web sites? A blog post on the Psychology Behind Social Media does a nice job summing up the major factors? I was particularly interested that it noted the desire for group identity: One of the main reasons...

The meaning of engagement

A great description of meaningful engagement from Chris Jones: True engagement requires more time and energy and active listening skills, but the resulting flow of information brings rich rewards. Insights begin to accumulate and multiply. Ideas get validated and...

On the limitations of dotcom culture

Graham Hatch’s blog post about privacy issues at Google and Facebook includes some interesting musings on the dotcom world: I’ve long had a sense that there is an assumption in the dotcom world which deems that because they are inventing the future they don’t...

Still social after all these years

Ron Burnett has an interesting blog post on whether Twitter (and other social media) are really social. Ron is the President of Emily Carr University, where I run the Social + Interactive Media Centre. The crux of his argument is that Twitter is not as conversational...

Even in a virtual world, where you live still matters

One of the fantasies that comes from living online is that it doesn’t matter where you are based if you’re hooked into the net. But in the process of disentangling my online address book — arguably essential to living life online — I came...

The message of usability

Completing an online form that reminds me that when you’re the one GIVING the money out, there’s no pressure to create good user experience. I celebrated Valentine’s Day the traditional way this year: filling out a really terrible online form for a...

Nonprofit technology starter pack

This is the third part of a 3-part post. The first part covers collaboration on nonprofit technology, and the second part lists 9 questions to ask before starting a nonprofit technology project. Whether you’re getting started in nonprofit technology, or...