social networking

All right, it lacks the gravity of April Fools Day or even Earth Hour.

But today has been proclaimed "Good People Day" by web wine celebrity, social media cheerleader and video blogger extraordinaire Gary Vaynerchuk.

Nothing can do justice to the idea better than his vividly exuberant video proclamation found on the page linked above. But the basic idea is to blog, Twitter, IM, wiki-post, videoblog, podcast or use some other form of social communcation to celebrate good people using the social web for good things--to help others, be kind to strangers, support worthy causes, perform public service, etc.more

Facebook has its share of problems -- its privacy features often have proven less than robust and its policies on censorship and sharing information with a third party have been ambiguous. But give Facebook credit: it's been remarkably good at listening to its users and making changes on the fly, especially when it screws up. That's one of the main reasons Facebook has 64 million users and counting worldwide, despite MySpace and dozens of smaller rivals.

Along the way, Facebook has made some downright bonehead moves. Two years ago, it launched a "news feed" that sent updates on a users activities to other people in the network. When thousands protested, Facebook quickly altered the news feed and apologized. Last year, Facebook introduced Beacon, a system designed to alert friends about a user's activities on other sites, such as purchases made on Amazon. That resulted in another storm of protest, followed by another apology and a major overhaul of the feature.more

A few weeks ago, Katie Couric asked the presidential candidates what one book (other than the Bible) they would take with them to the White House. Intriguingly, both Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guiliani named the Federalist Papers.

Couric's question led the Bill Moyers Journal to ask their blog readers what book they would recommend as required presidential reading; viewer recommendations include Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, and Kim Michaels's The Art of Non-War.

See the whole list and add your recommendation, then find out what book Bill Moyers recommends and why in his video response. more

J.D. Lasica, president of Social Media Group, blogged about an idea for Twitter (the popular micro-blogging service) posses yesterday on MediaShift's Idea Lab: reporters could use Twitter to begin a "mobile dialogue" with a few dozen interested readers as they researched and prepared articles.more

Welcome to Inside PBS.

This blog is part of a new site called PBS Engage, part of a larger effort to bring you closer to PBS and our first step into the world of online social media and community. In coming months, the site will be shaped by your voices.

Who you are is a big part of what PBS Engage will become so we set out to see what we could learn from current research. Recent statistics (Nielsen @ Plan Spring 2007) show that average PBS.org users are informed, watching political TV programs, reading newsweeklies and watching educational TV programs more than the average U.S. Web user. You are advocates, participating in environmental groups, influencing public policy and governments, writing or calling any politicians, and publishing articles and papers. You are influencers. PBS.org users provide more frequent advice on Web sites, have visited chat rooms with public officials and have provided advice in areas such as politics, current events, and parenting.

We want to know more! And we want to know what you want to see this site become.more