Saw a great feature in Facebook today that changes the native language to English Pirate. Made me really laugh and it is easy to do … 1) Scroll to the bottom of your Facebook page. 2) On the bottom left corner, click English: US. 3) When the language selection appears, click English: Pirate. 4) watch what happens. Nice when there are still things that can make me laugh.

I read an interesting post by danah boyd this morning titled, “Twitter is for friends; Facebook is for everybody” that lays out an interesting teen use case for Twitter in light of Facebook’s continued growth and popularity. We’ve known for some time that the age demographic on Twitter is skewed much more towards my place on the spectrum than say college kids or teens. We also know that more and more high school (and middle school) kids are adopting either Facebook or MySpace as a place to connect and socialize with friends. It is in that point that danah makes a really...

I had a crazy day yesterday … not that I am complaining, as I spent it with smart people near or at the top of the decision making chain here at PSU. I spent all morning and into the afternoon talking to a couple of groups about social media, social networks, and their potential for impact on students. I was asked over and over again how we as administrators and as an Institution should take advantage of Facebook (and blogs and twitter, and …). The rooms were filled with people of varying levels of comfort with social media sites so you could almost draw a line down the middle between...

Just a quick post to say that I can honestly say I didn’t see this one coming … my wife is on FB and invited me to one of those “rate the movies you like and compare it with your friends” applications — I think it is Flixster to be exact. Well, so I rated all the movies in the list as honestly as I could and guess what? Flixster actually listed my wife and I as “Soul Mates.” If you don’t believe it, you can check the image below as proof. The really funny thing is that as I checked every other single female I am friends with on FB that also...

I have only been following the rumors related to FaceBook’s newest jump as an outsider — the FaceBook Platform. Twice in the same day I am linking to GigOm … this time a very well composed post explaining the new deal. From what I am making of it all, the FB will allow partners (whatever that means) to write specific apps that live on top of the FB. In other words, the FB could be looked at like an OS and these new apps can rest on its foundation. I am guessing this will let normal people (at some point) tap the power of the FB’s data (and user profiles) to create new...

What is more powerful than a massive location aware social network? Why, its the FaceBook Marketplace. Looks like everyone’s favorite campus hang out spot is getting into the clasified ads business — for free. Don’t be fooled, there is a business model in there. If you jump over to the NY Times you can read all the details in the piece, Facebook to Offer Free Classifieds. From the article … Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is calling the new service Marketplace and plans to introduce it on Friday. It will allow users to create classified listings in four categories:...

I have been amazed at how the Social Web has stepped up in the face of the VA Tech tragedy. The major news sources were the first to the scene, but with content mostly contributed by i-Reporters … shortly there after, youtube was flooded with videos showing different views of what what had unfolded and tributes to victims. If you spend some time at Flickr you can see first hand what was going on during and after the events on Monday. These sites gave us all a view that we would never had gotten prior to current user-generated scene we are all living in and was certainly the fastest way...

As we race towards the release of our Penn State Blog pilot I am bumping my head into the same question over and over again — will our students care? This isn’t really something I am being asked by people in general, this is one of those nagging questions that one of the various voices in my head is repeating. We all know that students do live fairly digital lives and the fact of the matter is that they are doing it more and more — especially when it comes to participation in social sites. Not sure if you’ve heard of MySpace, Facebook, or YouTube but PSU students have....