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    • Connecting with Emily Liebert: Author of 'Facebook Fairytales'
      by Matt Hicks on Monday, April 5, 2010 at 11:21am
      At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people—from experts and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook blog in our "Connecting with..." series.

      New York-based writer Emily Liebert released her debut book last week, Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit," a collection of 25 inspirational stories made possible through people's Facebook connections. I recently talked with Emily about the book and the stories of triumphs and... struggles that most struck a nerve with her. In future blog posts, we'll be sharing excerpts of the fairytales.


      What inspired "Facebook Fairytales" and the writing of this book?


      My inspiration was my fascination with Facebook and how it's revolutionizing modern society. I joined in the summer of 2008, and at first my intentions were purely voyeuristic. I was one of those people who read other people's posts but never updated my own status. Eventually, like the hundreds of millions of other users, I got sucked in, and I really started thinking about the cultural impact of social networking, specifically Facebook.

      It occurred to me that there had to be some amazing stories evolving from these hundreds of millions of connections. I decided that someone needed to write a book sharing these stories and who better than me?


      As you were investigating the idea for the book, did you run across any specific story that provided the "aha" kind of moment that this was really a great idea and something that could be done?


      Liebert
      Initially, when I started looking for stories, I posted a query to my Facebook Wall detailing my idea for the book, and I asked my friends to repost the query. I thought, "Wouldn't it be fitting if I could find all the stories through my own Facebook connections?" And I probably could have. But they wouldn't have been the 25 absolute best or most diverse stories. I did find a couple this way, and they were quite good, but they didn't provide that "aha" moment.

      So I decided to reach out to Facebook's press department to see if users had shared stories with them. They had. Thousands, in fact. Facebook immediately passed along the story of a young mother in Scarsdale, N.Y., Beth, who'd received a kidney from a young mother in Tallahassee, Fla., Cathy, via a mutual friend's status update. Cathy absolutely saved Beth's life even though they were complete strangers, living over 1,000 miles away. And I thought, wow, that's one of those goose bump stories. It was amazing to think that something as simple as a Facebook status update could have a hand in saving someone's life. That's when I started digging some more.

      Through my own online research, along with significant support from Facebook, I was able to find the 25 miraculous stories that made it into the book. Though it was really the kidney donor story and a great romantic story that initially launched the concept.


      Which one was the romantic story?


      The romantic story is called "Summer Love." It follows Roni Tropper and Allen Applbaum, who'd originally met at summer camp when they were teenagers. They'd briefly reconnected in college, but hadn't stayed in touch after that. Years later, they reconnected again on Facebook and now they're getting married.

      What I love about their story is that it's complex. They weathered a lot of ups and downs to be together. Many times, despite the fact that fate seemed to be pushing them together, it seemed that their relationship might not work out. Had it not been for Facebook, it probably wouldn't have.


      Did you find as you were doing the research to discover these stories that any specific themes were emerging?


      I know this sounds simple, but I believe the common theme is happiness. The book features personal triumphs, business feats, and political coups—generally speaking—modern-day miracles. And, in one way or another, Facebook is responsible for infusing happiness into these situations when other prospects seemed dim.
      One way or another, Facebook is responsible for infusing happiness into these situations when other prospects seemed dim.

      The elaborate domino effect of social networking continues to intrigue and inspire me. In today's society, it feels like everyone is super busy and swamped all the time, and I think the stories in this book really remind people that the resilience of the human spirit is powerful. And that when given the opportunity, people do the right thing or open themselves up in a very positive way, as in the case of the kidney donor.


      On a personal level, what were some of the other stories that stood out to you?


      The story "Waiting for Baby" is one of my favorites. It's about a couple, Seth and Melissa Edlavitch, who had been trying to conceive a baby for years. They'd experienced a tragic stillbirth of twins and had undergone multiple IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycles. Melissa's sister had even acted as a surrogate, but nothing was producing the outcome they so desired—to be parents. So they decided to pursue adoption, which can be a very long and expensive process.

      One night on a whim, Seth converted an adoption flyer they'd made to a JPEG and posted it on Facebook. Through the domino effect of social networking, two months later, they took home a baby boy.

      One of the other stories that really resonated with me is called "Heaven Sent." It's not your typical fairytale, because it's about a family in Alabama who lost their teenage daughter, Jessica Elkins, very suddenly to meningitis at Christmas time a couple of years ago.

      Not only were they able to create a cause page and a group on Facebook to help raise money and awareness for meningitis, but the really touching Facebook aspect to the story—and the reason I chose to include it in a book of fairytales—is that Jessica's father has used Facebook as his means of coping with his grief over the loss of his daughter. He was her friend on the site, and for the past two years, has written her a Facebook message every single day.

      It's what helps him get through each day. He also keeps in touch with her friends on the site, which allows him to feel connected to Jessica. So while this may not seem like a "happily-ever-after" kind of story, again, Facebook infused some happiness into an otherwise awful situation.


      Matt, a manager on Facebook's communications team, is becoming a fan of Facebook Fairytales on Facebook.


      Tip: Share your stories here with us about interesting and inspiring ways you use Facebook.
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    • Topics: Facebook Fairytales, Connecting with...
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    • Connecting with Chuck Martin: The Facebook Grader
      by Matt Hicks on Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 10:19am
      At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people—from experts and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook blog in our "Connecting with..." series.


      Chuck Martin and a team of researchers from the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business & Economics recently found that the amount of time students spend using social media and services like Facebook does not affect their grades. I talked with Martin, a lecturer at the school and the CEO of... organizational research firm NFI Research, about those findings as well the use of social media in his classroom and its impact on the workplace. Martin is the author of eight business books, including his soon-to-be released "Work Your Strengths."


      You and a team of researchers recently looked at the correlation between using social media and grades. What would you say is the big finding from your perspective?


      Martin
      The big finding is that there is actually no correlation between the amount of time that students spend using social media and their grades. We found that basically the heavy users and the light users get pretty much the same grades.


      In addition to the finding that there isn't a correlation, what were some of the results about just how much students are using social media?

      For the purposes of the study, we considered social media to be Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn.... This study was very wide. It was 1,100-plus students out of the 12,000 at the university, and we surveyed every college at the university.

      But of the heavy users of social media, 63 percent got high grades, and of the light users, 65 percent got high grades. So there is no real difference between the two. And of the heavy Facebook users, 62 percent got high grades. The light Facebook users, 62 percent got high grades. It was identical.


      And did that surprise you?


      It didn't. Interestingly, the hypothesis of the students was that there would be no correlation and they were correct. But if you talk to any adults, adults were totally surprised by this. And adults and parents typically have the view that you need to spend more time on your homework and less time on your social media so that your grades stay high. Well, it turns out that it makes no difference.


      Why do you think there is this disconnect? Is this just a generational gap, or something about how people use (social media) differently?


      It's not just generational, it's actually behavioral. If you look at the students today, they have grown up with things like Facebook and YouTube and blogs and so forth, so it's not a separate thing. In the early days of the web, people would be at work or school and they would start surfing the web and two hours later they would come back and say, "What was I looking for? I forgot."

      They basically got lost in the experience, and today with social media it's actually become integrated with people's lives. So it's not a separate thing where people leave life and go do (social media). It actually has become part of what they do every day....


      They have a multitasking ability that's a little different?


      I created a course for the university called "Social Media in Marketing." (During class) we had my presentation on the screen live, and we were dipping in and out of the web. We had a live Twitter feed projected to a large screen, and we had a third screen with another projection, where we had a back channel so that people could communicate anonymously on the big screen.... There were three big screens in front of the classroom with three live network feeds, and we also had video and we had people patched in by Skype.

      Everybody in the room used a computer for the entire three-hour class, and they were encouraged and actually did interact. They were tweeting with people around the country during the class about the content, and people were tweeting from outside the classroom from different parts of the country with questions that we would then tackle as a group.

      And it turns out that the engagement level of the students was higher than a traditional classroom. We talked to a neuropsychologist, who is actually one of my co-authors, about this multitasking aspect and his view was that it's not really multitasking. It's really using different media simultaneously on the same subject matter.


      That's really fascinating because the conventional wisdom is, "Oh, this is just a distraction from paying attention to the lecture."


      Right, we had people come in and monitor the class. We had trustees or we had the finance people, and they were all astounded by what they were seeing. Every class was longer than it was supposed to be because we couldn't really get the students to stop.


      Do you find that it extends the conversation outside the actual class, and are there other ways of using things like Facebook beyond the lecture?


      We actually, for that course, ran the course on Facebook.... Since this was social media, we decided that we needed to use social media and we created the course on a private (Facebook) group. So all of the members of the class were in the group, and then each of the (study) groups created their own Facebook groups for their teams. The difference between that and a traditional course was the course then ran 24/7 because people were having conversations about the content all the time.... We will be teaching this course again in the summer and will be using Facebook for that as well.


      Thinking further out, though, do you think that more classrooms will begin to adopt this idea of using social media both in the class and outside?


      When we were doing the social media course...we had requests from outside the classroom from other parts of the country that they wanted a live streaming feed. So one time we just streamed it live onto the Net, and that's because of the demand. It's not necessarily because the teacher said he wished to do this. It's because the market said, "Hey, we should do this." Once you use the back channel in a classroom, for example, and it's highly interactive, it's difficult not to have it.


      Where do you see Facebook and social media fitting into the workplace moving forward? What would be your advice to business leaders?


      Let (employees) do it and encourage it. It's just like in the classroom: The great fear of adults for our class was that (we would have) all these people behind computer screens and that they weren't going to be paying attention to the class (but) going to be shopping and doing all these other things online.

      Nobody did that, nobody. It just didn't happen, and if that happened it would mean that I was failing as a teacher.

      It's the same thing in business. If you let your employees do their work more effectively, they will work more effectively.


      Matt, a manager on Facebook's communications team, passed paper notes as a back channel when he was in school.
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    • Topics: Education, Connecting with...
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    • Connecting with... Jonah Seiger: Online Politico
      by Matt Hicks on Wednesday, March 3, 2010 at 5:01pm
      At Facebook, we're constantly connecting with interesting people — from experts and researchers to celebrities or visitors to our office. Occasionally, we'll share these conversations on the Facebook blog in our "Connecting with..." series. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jonah Seiger, a pioneering Internet campaign strategist and the founder of Connections Media, where he develops online campaigns for U.S. issue groups, political candidates and companies. Most recently, he worked on the 2009 reelection campaign for New York Mayor... Mike Bloomberg.


      Given that you have been working in Internet policy and online advocacy since 1993, what do you think, looking back, has been the biggest change that the Internet has brought to politics?


      Transparency, and I think we still have a long way to go. But the ability of citizens, voters, to have access to source information, to engage with each other outside of the filter of the media, establishment and traditional media, has changed the whole dialog, and I think brought mostly good things to the politics of America.


      Can you think a seminal moment where this was made clear to you?

      Seiger
      The Starr Report (in 1998). I think it was like within the first 24 hours, it was downloaded 25 million times...People now have access directly to the same information that the reporter gets, and they can parse it themselves...

      There were things that followed very quickly after that. John McCain's victory in the New Hampshire primary in 2000. I guess you would have to rewind and say Jesse Ventura's election as governor of Minnesota (in 1998). John McCain's fund raising success in the aftermath of his victory in the New Hampshire primary. Howard Dean's success in 2004. And then it just kind of cascades. People give Obama credit for inventing all this, (but) it actually starts a lot earlier than that.

      The one change we have seen in recent years is the rise of various types of social media. How has that in your mind changed what the Internet can do in politics?


      It gives more power to the true grassroots. It makes it in many ways a lot easier to organize, but more challenging for the top-down type of organizing. And it changes the calculus of a campaign's communications operation, because it's much more difficult to have tight control over every aspect of the message. And the tighter the control attempts to be, the less successful you will be in social media. You have got to give people the ability to add their own flavor and their own voice to your message, and that could be really scary.

      The Internet is all about decentralization; it always has been. Social media extends that to another level. The ease of sharing (which) Facebook and Twitter and other platforms provide accelerates that. And I think it's great for politics, but it also makes it challenging for people who practice (politics), especially people who come from a more traditional approach to political communications.


      Who do you think is further ahead: The everyday voter who is using social media or the campaigns themselves? Where is the balance right now?


      What we continue to see—and this is not a hard-and-fast rule—is the challenger has an advantage because they have more degrees of freedom. The incumbent has more to protect, and so it's a little bit more difficult to embrace fully the openness and decentralization that the Internet and social media, in particular, provides.

      So those opportunities are more available to the insurgent challenger candidate, that Jesse Ventura example, the John McCain in 2000 example, Obama.

      It's why the success of Mayor Bloomberg in New York City is an interesting example, because he was the incumbent. He was one of the only incumbents to win since the 2008 cycle. (Gov.) Corzine had lost in New Jersey (and) the party in power lost in Virginia in that same election. So there are examples to the contrary, but I think it gives, generally speaking, more opportunity to the challenger...


      Looking more recently, like in the past year, has there been any specific examples of either where social media played a really big role in the election or in the public discourse about an issue that surprised you in some way?


      I don't know about surprised me, but I think the example that's most salient right now is the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts (as a Republican U.S. senator). There was a combination of Martha Coakley's campaign running a very traditional establishment (approach) against a very energetic challenger, who successfully nationalized the race using social media. And that (nationalization) channeled money, it channeled support, people talking about the campaign, generated press coverage, and just helped to propel them forward.

      Now at the end of day, the election happened in Massachusetts, people voted only in Massachusetts. So nationalizing a race only gives you so much, but I think that story is an important example of some of what's happening with politics and social media.


      What if you are not a Barack Obama or you are not a Mayor Bloomberg or you are not looking to even nationalize a campaign, but you are a local candidate or you are a political advocacy group. Are there certain things you can learn from what some of these big campaigns have done?


      I think what social media provides is a new way of doing old things. Organizing has always been about talking to as many people as you can, to find those people who support you and get them engaged. Social media is one more avenue for that. It provides new ways of quantifying the return on every dollar or hour or new person that you are going after.

      So I think that the same old tried-and-true tactics of organizing still absolutely apply, but the platforms that social media provide give you more efficiency, more reach, and may create opportunities for news coverage and an interest in your campaign that otherwise wouldn't be available.


      So you have seen all these changes in the last decade-and-a-half of Internet advocacy, what do you think is the biggest change to come that we are yet to see?


      I hate that question, because...technology alone is not the story. Technology enables things, but successful campaigns are about connecting with people, and persuading (people) that you have the better solution to a problem that's commonly understood... What I have seen is that the Internet has enabled more people to participate than might otherwise have. (It) provides a way of channeling latent public interest and attention in ways that can be measured and directed, and no matter what the next technology is that will still happen.

      I do worry (that) as much as social media is powering greater participation in politics, it also has the effect of fragmenting and distilling (issues) to a slogan, almost. And I think it is becoming more difficult for us to have national conversations about complicated issues... I see it in the discussions about climate change, for example, and healthcare reform and creating jobs in this economy. We have lots of new opportunities to kind of shout at each other, and it's a little harder to build consensus around complicated matters...

      Four years ago we were talking about podcasts. I don't know, is anybody still doing them? Blogs have found their natural place in the panoply of media. They are definitely having a major impact in challenging the establishment of media, but they have their role and we understand it now. Social media will settle into its own place.

      So what's the next platform? Somewhere in (Silicon) Valley here someone is figuring that out. I don't know the technology, but the communications dimension, I think, is going to continue to be driven by people sharing information, and that's very cool and very positive.


      Matt, a manager on Facebook's communications team, is connecting with his local candidates for San Francisco supervisor.
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    • Topics: Connecting with...
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