I was lucky enough to attend a recent ‘Pass Out’ ceremony from one of the Beacon Courses at Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service. A group of young people who had successfully completed a training course about Fire Safety and Prevention ‘graduated’ one afternoon in July! The display included demonstrations of skills learnt on the course including how to put out fires. To the amateur eye they looked pretty serious - as you can see from some of the images on Flickr. For anyone attending the event was very impressive, but when you learn that was course number 68, and that at any one time several courses are in operation, well that really is impressive.
Published by Katie Lips July 7th, 2007
in Social Media.
Another BBC article recently highlights ‘user promiscuity’ in social sites.
“MySpace is running out of breath, while Bebo and Facebook are fast catching up. That’s the message from the latest figures on social networking in Britain. MySpace has long been the leading site for young networkers who want to run their social lives online. But research firm Nielsen/NetRatings says May saw a drop in UK traffic to MySpace, while Bebo and Facebook continued to attract new users. “
Facebook it seems is more compelling for its community who spend longer, and ‘do more’ on the site. As more and more projects, organisations and brands aim to connect with the social software generation, it will be important to keep up with the social software fashion trends; who’s doing what online and where?
Published by Katie Lips July 6th, 2007
in Social Media and Social Inclusion.
The BBC recently published an article on Social sites (MySpace and Facebook) and class divide. The article is based on recent research by US PhD student Danah Boyd from the School of Information Sciences at UC Berkeley. The research highlights that Facebook users are more likely to come from wealthier homes then MySpace users. The research is based on interviews with American teenagers, but are things so clear cut here? As part of the OurOpenSpace project we will be ensuring our work is accessible to as many young people as possible; regardless if family income or education; but the research raises important points when deciding which social network to work with if you intend to reach a specific group of people. Social networking sites all have a clear focus, in my opinion MySpace is more music oriented so anyone more focussed on entertainment will flock there rather than the slightly more serious looking Facebook. Similarly, people go where their friends are; which might not be a natural choice if their friends weren’t already in one or the other social site. We’ll be keeping close tabs on this topic in relation to social media and social inclusion projects.
Image: BBC
