Jonathan Woodlief, 14, leads Facebook revolt

Nearly a million and a half angry Facebook users are protesting recent changes to the Web site. The leader of the furious online mob? A smiling eighth-grader from Apex who wears his baseball cap backwards and likes to play FarmVille.

His parents were not aware of this.

“He's doing what on Facebook?” asked Jonathan Woodlief's father when the Observer called their home near Raleigh on Tuesday night. Then David Woodlief and his wife, Claire, got Jonathan, 14, out of bed. He came downstairs and explained just how he happened to become the leader of one of the fastest-growing viral movements online. The group was booming by more than 100 new members a minute on Wednesday.

Adding a twist, Jonathan Woodlief just happens to be a dead-ringer for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, another social media whiz kid, who is only 11 years older than Jonathan.

Jonathan is the administrator of the Facebook group CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL!!, which has exploded over the past six days in response to unpopular changes the site made to its News Feed feature. The feed now shows only those friends Facebook deems “important” to you.

Maybe innocence helps a cause. Jonathan added a note to the side of the group page that reads:

Lets try and get 10,000,000 people to join! :)

Jonathan did not start the group, but joined it a day after it was started because he dislikes the changes. Poking around on the page, he noticed that the group had no administrator, the person who configures the page, allows posts, and makes rules for the group. Believing in the cause – and perhaps sensing an opportunity – “I clicked a button to make myself the admin, and that was it,” he says. Since then he's been inundated with messages and friend requests from around the world.

“We had no idea,” David Woodlief said after the situation became more clear. “He's a smart kid.”

Why Faceberg has its pitchforks out

In Faceberg, the people are up in arms over the new, improved Newsfeed, which seems to choose for us what we see about our friends. The goal is to help filter the "social utility," and the New York Times writes a jaw-stroking think piece about how it represents an important new direction online. Hmmmmm...

That hasn't stopped 700,000 people from joining groups -- in just the past three days -- protesting the change. The biggest affront? Facebook only allows the 250 friends it deems most important to you (algarythmically, of course) to be listed in the feed. After that, the filtering philosophy says, you don't really care. (NYT glosses over this point.) Here's a link explaining how to remedy this.

Do people care in Charlotte? Uh, yeah. I posted two items about the changes on my wall and received more than 40 responses in two days. (And remember, only 250 of my closest friends could see this, at least when clicked on the new, default Newsfeed.)

Over on Twitter, everyone's favorite annoying little bird has been crowing about its new searchability, thanks to Bing, the greatest search engine no one uses. (And, apparently by design, a very economical porn search engine.) Google is huffing and puffing its way up behind the Bing deal, and all this was announced at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, where there was so much tweeting about tweeting that 50 tweets simply announced Twitter CEO Evan Williams was taking the stage.

Here's just a really radical idea: Why don't you guys stop twisting the dials long enough to make a little money? I agree with the NYT that filtering is the next big thing in cyber-communications. But Facebook friends lists, the simple way to filter that most users won't take the time to set up, does this pretty well.

Over here in the cobwebbed corner of what my friend Andria Krewson calls "legacy media," we do something pretty well: Hit people's seasonal needs. Halloween is Saturday. Facebook is the biggest photo-sharing system in the world. How'sabout a cheap way to share via family, age groups around the country, topics of costumes, with a paying prize for best costumes? Thanksgiving will be big-time photo sharing on Thanksgiving. What about a nonprofit tie, or a way to support the troops? Christmas might have a few Facebook and Twitter holiday e-card possibilities. Hello?

Twitter is already searchable. Sure, incorporating tweets into search engines is intriguing for all its possibilities. But let's work on some standardized hashtags first. And I want to get updates on my NCAA bracket this year, telling me exactly where I stand after each game. I want Election Night tweets that aren't all over the map.

Instead of giving us "the next big thing" every few months, why don't you guys just give us better platforms for our real lives? In other words, we're your customers. Act like companies, not messengers of the gods. Follow our needs, and stop leading us into "the future."

Live from BarCamp 2

Charlotte BarCamp 2 is huddled in Area 15 near NoDa today, for the Charlotte Area's chic-est geekfest, an "unconference" that develops as it goes. We're kicking off this morning with what looks like about 200 in the lofty, artsy space. It's a different crowd for Charlotte -- geekier, friendlier, not-so-Southern, happily nerdy. SEO man Corey Creed, massage therapist/geek Summer Plum, former Observerites Crystal Dempsey and Andria Krewson and, of course, Justin Ruckman, the boy hero of CLT Blog -- and one of the organizers -- are just a few faces in the crowd.

Watch live on http://cltblog.com/live

The topics for the seminars will be pitched in a moment. "And hopefully they're not all about Twitter," joked one of the organizers.

Web 3.0 and journalism

Google Wave represents a new opportunity for print journalism. Wave itself is still a buggy, empty platform, and it might never succeed. But it represents a potential new approach for journalism: Bringing readers and citizen journalists into the process, and making the developing story a product.

There are at least four deliverables from a transparent, collaborative reporting process: The immediacy of tweets and other social media updates; incremental short pieces in a Wave-like approach; what we now consider to be the finished product; and a kind of scrapbook of the pieces that is archivable.

Here's why journalists should care: It can make money.

By aiming this process-is-the-product strategy to mobile, we can hit a marketplace and audience that is willing to pay. It took many big companies years to make money online, but consumers have been far more willing to spend money on the devices and services associated with the mobile Web.

But they won't pay for tweets, which are free and omnipresent. And they won't pay for what print journalism has always considered to be our final product, because years ago we committed ourselves to the philosophy that information is free online.

They will pay for incremental breaking news multi-media stories that come in waves from events that they care about. It's a product they've never seen on their mobiles, and they can take part with social media. Web 3.0's geo approach can target users, and pair mobile advertising with stories.

This would look like a user in Chicago getting an alert on their mobile that the Olympic Committee was about to announce the selection of 2012's host city, with a short video, print story, photos, and the ability to share the story with friends, and an ad from Olympics sponsor Bank Of America.

The user could be updated every 15 minutes, and share the story while commenting. If they committed to the developing story, location-based ads could be attached to the story. ("Sad the Second City didn't get the Games? There are beer specials right around the corner...")

There are many moving pieces, but this pulls together some promising strategies. Journalism needs to take on the challenge.

How much time on social media?

How much time do you spend on social media? Too much?

Nielsen Online reported over the summer that Americans people spend more time on Facebook than any other Web site. The study noted that 87.25 million U.S. users visited Facebook during June, and each of those spent an average of four hours, 39 minutes and 33 seconds on the site during the month.

More recently, Nielsen reported that time spent on social network and blogging sites accounted for 17 percent of all time spent on the Internet in August, nearly triple the percentage of time spent on the sector a year ago.  

"How do people work a full-time job and manage all their social media accounts?" an old-school communications guy asked me recently. It's a good question. Social media users might argue that the sites make them more productive, helping them quickly gather information, connect with colleagues and stay plugged in. But there's some goofing around that goes on, too.

Here are my opinionated suggestions for how to limit your social media time to a well-spent hour a day:

Direct messages: Whether on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, read and respond to these as they come up. These are like answering the phone. This isn't so much social media as direct communications. If you get dozens of these a day, you're either so successful that you need a personal assistant, or you're a teen-ager. Either way, I don't feel sorry for you. Time spent: 10 minutes, as needed.

Twitter: Tweets are like Tic Tacs. You always have time for one, and they can be refreshing and fun. But if you're popping a Tic Tac 30 times a day, do you have a problem? Your mobile device should be your main Twitter interface, and you should tweet, and post pics, as they come up. If you see something or hear something great -- and especially if you witness news -- whip that phone out and tweet. (I enjoy people's mobile tweets far more than the jabberers who sit home or at work and post all day long.) Twitter is also the ultimate dentist-office time filler. When you get a break in your day, nothing wrong with checking Twitter. (I've wondered recently if Twitter users would have been heavy smokers in a previous generation.) Time spent: 15 minutes in the form of daily gap fillers.

LinkedIn: I think you should check in with LinkedIn for 10 minutes every day. That is, unless you're rock-solid confident about the economy, your job and peace and prosperity in general. Work today is all about networking. LinkedIn is not a place to park your resume. Drop a key contact a message, reach out, and see what colleagues are doing. You might need their help someday soon. Think about LinkedIn as like watering a plant or brushing your teeth. It's a healthy habit that pays off. Neglecting to do this has sad results. Time spent: 5 minutes in the morning. 

Facebook: Biggest time suck in the universe right now? Nope. Not even close. Nielsen reports that the average American TV consumption remains at an all-time high of 141 hours per month, more than 30 times the average time spent on Facebook. But I think a good way to think about Facebook is like your favorite TV show. If you sit down for a half-hour in the evening and check out what's going on in your friends' lives, you'll catch many of them at prime time. If you have friends lists, which I highly recommend, you can sort of DVR your experience by focusing on separate areas of your life. Time spent: Half-hour in the evening.

Please understand me: I am NOT recommending everyone spend an hour a day on social media. If you spend less, or don't use these sites at all, more power to you. But if your time on the sites is growing, and you're not evaluating or monitoring it, I hope this helps provides some perspective. 

Now get back to work.

How can causes use Facebook?

I am so impressed with the Charlotte teens who reached out on Facebook to tell me about their favorite cause, Playing For Others. The organization pulls together the performing arts and volunteerism. High school students involved with the performing arts go through a nine-month program in which they buddy with special needs kids. This year the teens are working with Misty Meadows Mitey Riders, which provides equine therapy for special needs kids. The photo above is from the group's public  Facebook page, which you can see here. 

Morgan Lane Grubbs, a senior at Hopewell High school, said this on my Facebook wall about Playing For Others: 

"Not only is PFO helping local non-profits work with these amazing children, it is also raising a future generation of leaders who are inclusive, accepting and driven to create change in their communities. I have been involved with PFO since I was a freshman in high school; now as a senior I can see the visible and tangible changes in myself. I am better equipped to deal with the adult world I am about to join. PFO has changed my life. I would encourage everyone I know, and even those I don't to check it out."

Many other teens, and a few adults, chimed in to tell me about Playing For Others when asked you to tell me about your favorite Charlotte causes. All these folks wrote about PFO on my Facebook Wall:

Emily Hudson, Julie Thomas Walton, Joseph Vladimir Ehrman-Dupre, Kaitlin Wightman-Ausman, Austin Whitehead, Rebecca June Moore, Savvy Jillani, Melissa Lebet, Julianna Sosa, Marina Hoggan, Meghan Neal, Briann Messick, Tracy Irick Grubbs, Emily Moore and Clara Grace Howell. If I'm not mistaken, Kate Schwab, daughter of two Observer types, started the whole movement to get PFO noticed here. 

You'll notice this whole thing took place on Facebook, which has become a gathering place for nonprofits. But how is that working in the recession? Are causes able to find financial support?

Tonight there's a get together at the lovely McGlohon Theater uptown to talk about Mission Possible, the media-partner effort to brainstorm and implement innovative ideas to help Charlotte nonprofits get through this hard time. You can find details at the Facebook events page.

I'd like to hear from you: How can our community best use social media to help good causes?

What Google Wave adds

I have a Google Wave account, and have played around with it in pathetically rudimentary ways. I even had some extra invites to join the new communications platform, and was besieged by requests for them. (Google slaves do the begging for Google faves.)

The hilarious saga of a blogger auctioning Wave invites on eBay suggests some of the hysteria around the release of 100,000 invites to check out the new platform. Even searching for invites online can cause you to wander into some weird neighborhoods.

This is reminiscent of the lines to buy iPhones. (The photo above is of a line in Boston for the 3G when it as released in July, 2008. Today, who wants a 3G?) If technology and social media are the new rock 'n' roll, this might be the equivalent of screaming so loud you can't hear The Beatles. A lot of this hype. Google Wave isn't anything yet, and a lot of what it offers was available on Google Docs. It's lonely on there, and buggy and not relevant yet.

But here's what I think Google Wave adds to the conversation:

We used to think of composed communications as being sent when they were completed. You wrote a letter and mailed it. You wrote an e-mail and sent it.

Then real-time meant you didn't have to wait. You could send right away. This took the immediacy of a phone call and put it online with chat and Twitter.

Wave adds another option: The incremental, periodic communication. People collaborating on a communication that is somewhere between immediate and completed. The process becomes transparent. The conversation becomes the product.

And the big question is: Will this change how we exchange information?

I think it will -- maybe not in the form of Google Wave, but using this philosophy. I think communication is, by nature, incremental and collaborative. At a cocktail party, one conversation doesn't end before another begins. Groups of people flow in and out of topics and add what they have to contribute. (And, these days, that sometimes includes pulling out an iPhone to show photos or videos.)

Waiting until a document is completed now seems archaic. Blurting out whatever is top of mind is, as we are discovering, sometimes too ephemeral. Wave suggests a compromise: A transparent process in which the ephemeral gradually adds up to something more lasting.

I do think that's a significant contribution, and a good thing to think about in an open, growing conversation.

BTW, I sold my invites for $100 apiece.

Kidding. But they are all gone.