You hear it all the time. YouTube serves up hundreds of millions of videos per day. Video blogs are more popular than ever. And mainstream TV, with it’s so-called reality junk food shows like Jersey Shore, and endless reruns of Jerry Springer, is becoming redundant, is often repulsive, and ultimately will be rendered obsolete within a matter of a few years.

Not so fast. TV isn’t going anywhere.

Yes, the Web has brought about a revolution in the way people consume video. Filmmakers are taking to the Internet to promote, release, and sell their feature films. Indeed, lots of people nowadays spend far more time getting their news and information from the Internet and far less time watching their 6pm local newscast.

Just 8 years ago, I can remember struggling to post videos online – the file sizes were immense, the quality was poor, and the pipe simply wasn’t big enough to handle the amount of data that video created. We’ve come far in a very short amount of time. Online video truly is a revolution, but it’s not a replacement for television. Not at all. And here’s why:

Convergence is Here

A few years ago, convergence was the big buzzword. All the major media folk were talking about how mainstream TV was going to merge with the Web and what a threat that would be to the industry. They predicted that within 2 or 3 years we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between what we were watching online and what we were watching on our 60″ plasma. Nobody would have to watch ads anymore and television as we know it would be dead on the table.

Well that hasn’t exactly happened. While it’s true you can watch YouTube videos on your big screen now, and tools like Netflix and AppleTV are bridging the gap between traditional consumption of media and Web-delivered media, there’s still a big distinction with conventional, ad-driven television, and the cable companies and media moguls like it that way.

With that said, though, there’s a different kind of convergence happening with television – and it’s one that I like a lot. You see, one of the things the media empires didn’t bank on was social media. They didn’t guess that within 5 years of their convergence debates, the floodgates of anyone, anywhere, anytime publishing would open wide.

Social TV

Television merged with social media is a whole different beast. It’s not TV online. It’s TV inline. We are still watching our favourite shows, commercials and all, and why? Because our friends are watching them too. Just look at what FourSquare was able to do with the SuperBowl. Or what the Vancouver Olympics achieved, with real-time commentary and conversation via Twitter. And look at the Oscars - same thing via multiple streams – blogs, Facebook and Twitter played a huge role in that event. The real time stream of conversation means I can watch television now with 100 million of my closest friends. It’s like a virtual bowl of popcorn, that we’re all able to dip our hands into while we gather around our respective boob tubes.

But it doesn’t even take a major network event to see the real benefits of the social channel when it comes to TV watching. Check out the cast and crew of the best sitcom on TV, The Big Bang Theory who are on Twitter. Every week, not only do we see photos of the cast rehearsing posted, but we get to sit down with the cast, crew and fans at 8pm ET every week and watch the show with them. We can follow the conversation in real time. We can laugh together, and post our favourite quotes. No longer do we have to wait to relive the episode at the water cooler tomorrow. The water cooler is online now.

And in the spirit of merging social with the show, Anthony Bourdain, beloved host of the hit travel/food show “No Reservations”, has hijacked his own Twitter account (it used to be run by his “people”) and the other night, live-tweeted the entire episode of his show in real time as it was airing. His witty and often crass sense of humour, and comical banter with other viewers, was not only wildly entertaining, it made me realize one very important point that will please every broadcaster in the world. 90% of people who PVR shows skip through the commercials. But if the host of the show is conversing with fans WHILE the show is running – people will be far more inclined to watch the show when it airs…and that includes the commercials. Can you say #winning?

This, my friends, is the future of television. It’s not going to be some hybrid mashup of laughing babies, William Shatner and Kenny from South Park. It’s going to be real people, in real time, really experiencing all that television still has to offer.

So don’t you worry, TV. You were my first love, and you will remain that way.

[photo credit: hellabella on Flickr]

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Ah, the halfway point. Classes are in full swing, students are eagerly working away on projects, and I always take a bit of time to reflect on where things are at so far.

This semester, I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time contemplating the role of social media and technology in the classroom. Here are a few things I’ve been reminded of:

Social media is not a one-size fits all solution. At the beginning of the term, I eagerly whipped up a Facebook Group for my class. I promoted it to all my students, posted some content, did all the right things. But, it just didn’t take. Only about 28 of my 75 students signed up. And I found that out of that number, only 1 or 2 seemed interested in interacting there. I posted interesting links and tried to start conversations, but since there was so little involvement, I didn’t feel confident using it as a main communications tool.

Why didn’t this work? Well, I could probably have spent more time promoting it to the class, but you know how it is when you’re a teacher. Other work and issues take priority. But really, I think that it just isn’t the right solution for this group. The dynamic isn’t there. Perhaps they are using Facebook for other things – and aren’t interested in talking about their classes there. I had assumed it would just work because I had used a Facebook Group to much success the semester before, in my Web Media class. But the nature of that course is to learn about social networks and Web 2.0 technology….so it sort of stands to reason that students would have a vested interest in interacting this way.

It’s not that I won’t try Facebook again. It has been a useful way for students to contact me and I don’t mind keeping that aspect going. I also have another college event-based project kicking off soon (which I’ll talk about in a few weeks) that is going to make extensive use of a Facebook group. I’ll be eager to share my learnings from that experience.

But remember, just because a tool is popular doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right fit. Don’t force it. Just ensure you’ve found other ways to connect with your students and all will be fine.

Every year, students are more social media savvy. I have been teaching my video production course for 3 years, and I can tell you that, 3 years ago, things were very different in the classroom. In 2007, less than 10 people in my class of nearly 80 raised their hands when I asked who was involved in social networks. Today, almost everyone is on Facebook and about half my group use Twitter. Nearly everyone has either watched or uploaded video to YouTube. My students seem much more aware of the power of social media to connect and share information than they did a few years ago, and I think there are two reasons for this. First, social media is much more in the mainstream now than it was back then. There are simply more people using it. Second, every year, many of my first-year students are getting closer and closer to being part of the digital native generation. This online communication stuff comes naturally to them, because they’ve never really known anything different. In just 4 years from now, our entry-level students will never have known life without the World Wide Web. That is remarkable. How does this change the way us 30-and-40-and-50 somethings teach students born in the mid-1990′s about technology? More on that in a later post, but it’s an interesting question.

Suffice it to say that today’s students are more comfortable and know more about technology than we do, and that’s becoming more true all the time. We are going to have to find ways to adapt to that.

What is working. I’ve had some successes with technology this semester. I’ve made myself available to my students on Facebook, Skype, and Twitter. Though I have far from a 100% adoption rate, I do get messages and questions from students through all these tools. It works for me because it integrates well with my day. I’m not always having to login to the school email (a 3 step process in my world) to check messages. The students come to me on social tools if they need something, because they know they can find me there. I’m able to get back to them within the natural ebb and flow of my work day. Not only that, but I find that the students I am connecting with online outside of class tend to be more engaged in class. They are getting the clarifications they need to thoroughly understand the material, and even bringing that understanding back to their classmates, which is great. I’m also able to flag certain issues and share the solutions to the class in what I feel is a more timely and efficient way (i.e. I can deal with an issue by sending an announcement to all and don’t have to wait till the next class).

All in all, it’s been a great term so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what clever and creative video projects my students come up with over the rest of the term.

And you? What’s been your experience with technology and teaching so far this semester? What’s working? What isn’t? Please share your stories in the comments!

[photo credit: jisc_infonet on Flickr]

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Molly Murphy

My, my, but we’re a serious bunch.

This post is inspired by a YouTube video that my Twitter buddy Geoff Livingston posted recently. The video is called “20 Silly Twitter Remarks” and if you want a good chuckle, take 3 minutes and watch it. As I was watching, two thoughts occurred to me. First, for someone who isn’t on Twitter, these comments would probably seem even more absurd. Second, for the people who said those things (no attribution was given, but a few were recognizable to me), one of two things will happen. Either they’ll laugh right along with everyone else, or they’ll freak out, and get all hot under the collar about the fact that someone’s poking fun at them. I hope it’s the former, I really do. But past history of posts such as this dictates that someone is bound to get their knickers in a twist. I hope I’m wrong. Kudos to Geoff for being so darn funny and entertaining on camera. I hope he does many more like this.

Business on the Sides, Party at the Back. Ahhh, the mullet - signature hairstyle of the average dude in the 70s and 80s. You had one. C’mon. Admit it. (I may have even had one for a while, but let’s not go there!) My theory as to why the mullet became popular was because it was deemed “acceptable” in the workplace. Companies didn’t want any long-haired hippies wandering around, so men started to chop the front of their hair short, to look more professional, but they left the back long to show that they still had a less serious, wild streak.

The ability to genuinely laugh at oneself is charming, endearing, and sexy. But I think that often, especially in the online world, we’re trying SO HARD to exude a certain type of “personal brand”, that we forget that it’s okay to be silly once in a while. It’s okay to poke fun at ourselves, and even sometimes at those we respect (as long as it’s not hurtful). Remember when you were a kid, and that girl or boy on the playground would tease you incessantly? You’d go home and cry to your Mom about it, and she’d say “Oh, that means he/she likes you!”. Most of the time, that’s true. If someone teases you, it’s often a show of respect and admiration. Take it as a compliment. Of course, then tease them right back, to show that you love them too!

So, sometimes, be a little less business, and a little more party. You’ll probably make some new friends, and for sure, you’ll have a lot more fun.

Nobody Cares What You’re Having For Lunch. Or do they? I had conversation with a colleague the other day about Twitter. He is still working on figuring Twitter out, understanding how it fits into his day-to-day life, and how it can benefit his business. He told me that he had some reservations about being too “personal” in the social space, but at the same time he wanted to ensure he wasn’t just being that guy pushing his links out and not interacting. He was a bit stumped as to what he was supposed to be talking about. I said “Tell ‘em what you had for lunch!” Naturally, he looked at me like I had three heads.

Lots of “social media experts” will tell you that you shouldn’t talk about what you had for lunch on Twitter, because nobody cares. You shouldn’t post pictures of your cats – you’ll look like that crazy cat lady. And you shouldn’t goof off – people will think you’re not working hard enough.

I guess I’m doing it wrong.

I tell people what I have for lunch. Not every day, but often. What’s that gotten me? Ideas for recipes, which is great because I love to cook. Connections and friendships with talented foodies from all over, like my friends Don and Jenn from FoodiePrints, which is great because I love to talk about food. And, I’m doing Weight Watchers, so it’s tapped me into a very supportive Twitter community and we’re helping each other meet our weight loss goals. All this, from telling people what I had for lunch.

I post pictures of my cats. Not every day, but often. What’s that gotten me? Well, I don’t have human children, so my pets are my kids. They are one of the most important parts of my life, just like your kids are. When they do something cute or funny, I want to share that with my friends, just like you want to share memories of your human kids. Lots of people seem to enjoy my pictures, and we have many fun conversations about it. My pet pictures have connected me to people who are now my clients. So I suppose I should thank my cats for being so darn cute, eh?

I goof off. One day, a couple of months back, I was taking a break from work (yes, I do that occasionally), and I was poking around on Twitter. I realized that I had 4997 followers. Now, before you start talking to me about how follower numbers aren’t important, blah dee blah – this is about FUN. I thought it would be fun to offer a special surprise for my 5000th follower, so I suggested that maybe I’d write a song. The campaign started, and while I waited for my 5000th follower to show up, I wrote this. When @MCouto finally did come along, I posted the song. People got a good laugh. Then I went on with my day. What did this get me? Well, a new buddy in @MCouto, A.K.A “Follower 5000″. And I’ve met others because I follow him. The pay off? Purely social. But purely fun.

Social media is not all business, all the time. It’s okay to use the forum to just have some fun. Share some snippets of your life, even if it’s the view out the window of the coffee shop, or off the end of the dock at your cottage. Goof off sometimes, tease the people you love a bit, or just send a hug to a friend having a bad day. You want to enhance your personal brand? Don’t try to “be” a persona. Just be you – the same you that you’d be if I was meeting you in person.

How are you going to have a little more fun online?

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I’ve spoken before about the social media “bubble”. You know, this warm and cozy place where all us Twitter-loving, high tech super early adopting thirty and forty somethings spend a good chunk of our lives. We have our own gurus, our special buzzwords, and our own geek-a-paloooza assortment of Dungeons and Dragons inside jokes and bad 80′s references written on t-shirts. Even though we pride ourselves on “openness” and “transparency”, you have to admit, it’s kind of a secret club. Oh sure, anyone can join, but they have to know the secret password (it’s “social media d-bag”).

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

You see, the whole POINT of social media is to create online communities of people with common interests. It just so happens that the common interest many of us have happens to be social media.

We sit inside the bubble, but it’s only one of thousands of bubbles. It just so happens that what goes on inside our bubble isn’t dog breeding, or photography, or banjo playing..it’s social media. And ironically, we’re using the very tools and strategies we love, to talk about the tools and strategies we love.

To an outsider, that must look pretty weird, eh?

There are a lot of people outside the bubble looking at us sort of cock-eyed, I think. They wonder why we yammer on all day about ROI, community building, and measuring sentiment. They visit our blogs to try to understand more, but the backstory isn’t there. It’s on 15 other web sites we’ve linked to, and if they haven’t been head-down reading Mashable and Gizmodo for the past three days, then the point is lost on them. Back to dog breeding, then.

The thing is, do the people outside the bubble care? Not as much as we think (and maybe hope) they do.

While we sit around discussing the merits of having a Fan Page on Facebook, they are probably opening up their flower shop for the day. While we have blogchats and webinars, they are building a house. While we debate iPads and Androids, they are creating policies for health care reform. See what I mean?

We live this stuff, because for many of us, it’s part of our job. My clients come to me because I know a lot about video, web design, and online marketing/social media/whatever you call it. They pay me to help them understand this stuff, just like I’d pay a contractor to build me a new fence when I need one.

There is one problem I have with the bubble, though. Some people are treating it like Fort Knox. They are doing this because they think that by keeping the walls high and inaccessible and staying inside of them, they get to have easier access to the money. And they figure, if they can keep their clients in the dark long enough, about “mysterious” things like Search Engine Optimization, RSS and WordPress, then they can milk more cash out of the wallets of the unsuspecting neophytes. It’s shameful behaviour and it needs to stop.

As my friend Kneale would say, social media ain’t rocket surgery. Yes, it’s a new way of communicating. Indeed, there’s a sea of information to wade through. There are myriad tools and new things to learn. But ultimately, the whole point of social media tools is that the tools are supposed to be easy to use. And they are. Just ask my Mom. She teaches me stuff about Facebook.

If you want to really help your clients, don’t try to convince them that this stuff is complicated. It’s not. Your clients shouldn’t be hiring you to teach them how to use LinkedIN. Nobody needs a $1000 weekend retreat to learn how to tweet. Social media consultants are a passing fancy. Your clients need your expertise in how to use all media to more effectively tell their stories. That’s it.

As for us bubble-dwellers, the best way for us to understand more what our clients need is to step out of the bubble once in a while. There are a lot of cool people doing a lot of neat stuff online, and many of them don’t even know that what they are doing is “social media”. They are just doing it. Social Media isn’t an industry. Social media are a way of communicating.

The bubble is a valuable place for us. It’s where we hone our craft, learn from each other, and geek out. That’s a good thing, my friends. But remember, there’s a whole other world out there. We should try to be part of that one once in a while, too.

[photo credit: Jeff Kubina on Flickr]

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It’s not you…it’s me.

In 2007, I was introduced to social media at Podcamp Toronto. I happened upon a group of amazing people, many of whom I’m happy to call good friends today. What they were doing that weekend was remarkable. They were figuring out new ways to communicate, collaborate, do business, and build communities. They were exploring and creating and sharing in ways that 90% of the rest of the world didn’t even have an inkling of yet. But above all, they were there with open arms, willing to welcome media oldtimers like myself into the community without judgement. (Literally with open arms – I don’t think I’ve ever been hugged so much in my life as I was that weekend!). They let me ask silly questions. They didn’t laugh at my first blog post. They didn’t mock me when I asked what a DM was on Twitter. They led me through uncharted territory, and changed the way I do business and connect. To those people (they know who they are), I am forever grateful.

But I think my love affair with social media is over.

It was passionate, steamy, obsessive, blissful, and heart wrenching. There were the highest of highs, the lowest of lows, and everywhere in between. I’ve been moved to tears, laughed my butt off, and had thoughts provoked in ways I never imagined possible. But the time has come. I’ve got to end it.

Now before you go getting all in a tizzy…I’m not going anywhere. We can still be friends. The best of friends, in fact.

But here’s the reason I can’t be with social media anymore in the same way. Frankly, I’m ready to move on. I’m not saying I know everything – quite the contrary – there’s still so much more to learn!  The problem is, we are stuck. We, the ground-breaking, cutting edge super early adopters, the ones who were part of the first 1000 people on Twitter, are still having the same conversations.We’re still talking about how to use Twitter more effectively, how to get more readers on our blogs, how to maximize ROI from social media. We’re still talking about how to convince our boss to use social media. I’ve read and written more on those topics in the past 3 years…I could fill an encyclopedia.

Do we still need to be educating people, helping businesses, and figuring out ways to use new media? Of course we do. It’s here. It’s happening now. We need to keep doing it because that’s what we know. We’re good at it. But we also need to be looking ahead. We need to stop twittering about Twitter, and look down the pipe at what things like Semantic technology and linked data are going to mean to us and our clients in 2 years. We need to look at what video is going to be doing in a few years and how the way we consume mass media and new media are going to merge and change. We need to look at the new technology that companies are developing and really understand how that’s going to impact us. And above all, we need to know where the opportunities will be.

We don’t need to be looking at the “big thing” that is social media anymore. We get it. We have our arsenal, we know how to build effective strategies, and mould them and shape them into successful, measurable action plans for our clients. We’re out there, we’re doing it, and we’re making it work.

But the real danger is, if we don’t start to look beyond the current state of social media, then in a couple of years when it all changes, we’re going to be right in the same place we were in 2008 – trying to navigate new terrain without really knowing what direction to go.

So, social media…it’s been fun. I’m taking away from this passionate affair a new way of communicating, building relationships and doing business. I’m also taking away some really awesome new friends (yes, social media, I get to keep the friends in this break up).  I’m passing what I’ve learned from you on to my clients, and helping them to be more successful. But I need to be somewhere else now. I need to be out there…understanding what’s coming next so that I can be ready when it gets here. It’s been fun. I’ll always love you. xoxo

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