Digital Frontiers

(on Wednesday, January 20, our Digital Frontiers class was split up into groups, given 5 stacks of post-it notes, and told to “create value”. This is the story of how one group used networking principles to create new connections, and hopefully new friends, among the student body)

One of the largest changes that Facebook has wrought in our generation’s mindset is our new willingness to post personal information online. When I tried to explain to my octogenarian grandmother how social networking has changed since the advent of the internet, her immediate reaction was to question the benefit of having private data displayed for all to see. It’s unprecedented to have so much personal data in the hands of a nongovernmental organization, and a lot of Facebook’s perceived value (estimated by Microsoft to be $15 billion in 2007) comes from its immense stores of personal data. The personal data that all these users provide is used to network with each other and express themselves – but this process is groundbreaking only in its scope. The same principle was working in business cards, bulletin boards, and conferences long before anyone had heard of Mark Zuckerberg. Since the time of the Egyptians and before, the writing on the wall has been important in mankind’s communication.

But in this age, the wall is usually just a digital representation on Facebook – basically the same technology that has existed since BBSs in the early days of the internet. When our team used post-it notes and the new mindset of information-sharing to create a (literal) “friend wall”, we were combining old technology with new ideas; in a sense, the opposite of popular social networking sites. Our goal was to use our limited resources to help college students make friends based on common interests and experiences. Although most college students have hundreds of Facebook “friends”, usually they actually interact with a much smaller number of people, mostly based on common activities or passions. The idea of the friend wall is simple: at some public location, take over a wall with scores of post-it notes; label it as such and promote it enthusiastically; ask passers-by to write their first name, point of intrigue, and contact information on a post-it and stick it up; encourage everyone to take an interesting post-it home and hopefully make a friend. The response to this simple idea was surprising enthusiasm.

Once the little yellow contact cards started going up, passing students became curious and thronged to see what the commotion was about. It seemed to be a refreshing new side of social networking – people used the opportunity to describe themselves briefly to appear as interesting as possible. Between lacrosse players, aerial dancers, musicians and tetris fiends, UF’s diversity was on display and students were able to meet people In a nonthreatening and unique way. All in all, we probably connected 100 people in a limited timespan. The idea of a “friend wall” has real potential.

What it shows is that people respond strongly to community, even artificial community, because the relationships we have with others are some of the strongest forces in our lives. Especially for students, the opportunity to connect and share some of yourself is to powerful to pass up. Hopefully, we can apply the lessons we learned on Wednesday to help Citizen’s Co-op create a marketing plan that emphasizes the community of a cooperative grocery. If there’s one thing that will stick in my mind from this creativity exercise, it’s that nothing is more powerful in marketing than the excitement of a crowd.

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