Lizzie Jackson

People are already talking about the bust that’s expected around Social Networks. Jason Lee Miller is a WebProNews editor and writer covering business and technology; says in an article titled You’re Getting Older and So Are Social Networks “We’ve speculated doom, as is our nature some say, doom for the real world, the digital world, and most pointedly and assuredly for social networks. But social networks are an easy mark – in the beginning they depended on kids.”

This reminds me of BBC Radio 1 (the BBC’s radio network for teens/younger listeners). The station began in the days of Pirate Radio, when I was in my teens in the 1970’s. As the network matured us kids became older, but we ‘didn’t leave’ the network. When the BBC had started online communities around its radio and TV networks this phenomenon became more obvious. The BBC Children’s community, which is for 7-11 years olds, has kids in there who are ‘too old’. The reason for this is partly because radio networks and online communities are places to be, to hang out. We feel ‘at home’ there. If you habitually view/engage with/visit media you have mentally homesteaded.

With social networks you have your links and your pals all nicely organised in your home space, do you want to move on? Maybe not. You may stay there for some time. So the hip network you joined will grow older together, and maybe the teens who joined My Space will become mums and dads?

Jason Miller has a point. He ends his article by saying ”the biggest challenge to social networks will be attracting the next set of youngsters to their hangouts, not retaining their regulars, as they reach the plateau and become where the “older” kids frequent.” Interesting.

It’s twenty days until I leave the BBC to join the University of Westminster as a Research Fellow, and do some consultancy. One research project is for BBC Future Media and Technology and The Arts and Humanities Research Council, therefore this will be a gentle transition.

I hope to help organisations create strategy and management systems for social media. The research projects are about how to facilitate interactive and social media, and how children use virtual worlds. I’m working with two fantastic Professors, David Gauntlett and Jeanette Steemers, so it’s going to be great. The other scheme is to write a book on the facilitation of participatory media - how fan groups are organised around brands like Big Brother, new continuity methods for cross-platform content, new types of presentation for media consoles, how to market interactive brands, and how to minimise risk. I’d like to write down all the things I learnt over the last 10 years on online communities and creating interactive content and pass it on, to either Undergrads or businesses.

I got the Internet bug when I did the first year of a course at Birbeck (Creating and Producing Multimedia) about 1995 or 6. There were 30 in the class and they all, bar four of us, wanted to learn how to produce CD Roms; we were seen as slightly mad and very reckless. Then the second ‘Mr Toad’ moment was with online communities (in 1997).

So, the next month is crammed with packing up some things and starting others, like this blog. I’ll have a month to get it going a bit before I begin ‘Phase 2′ or ‘career 4.0′ of whatever. While I get going (with this blog), it might be a bit bumpy on take-off.