facebook

Back in 1994 when I was recruiting a design director for Star Tribune Online, I got a blizzard of applications from artgeeks from as far away as Australia arguing that if I really believed in the new virtual interactive universe I'd hire them and let them work from home.

Well, I didn't believe that much. When I eventually hired Jamie Hutt from the Halifax Daily News, I forced him to confront the hell that is the U.S. immigration system, haul his family halfway across Canada and south to Minnesota, and set down new roots in Minneapolis, where he continues to crank out great designs today.

In 1994 it seemed obvious that we were far from prepared to have a fully virtual organization.

But 14 years later? We've made some progress. Twitter, Skype, Pownce, Facebook, Ning ... these tools all collapse space. This morning I know that Naka Nathaniel took the buyout from the NYT and that Kevin Anderson in the UK just installed Hardy Heron and that Matthew Buckland is "sniffing paint" in South Africa. And that Ernesto Burden is attending a NewspaperNext workshop while Ken Riddick is not going to be freezing in Minnesota any more.

But despite all this electronic connectivity, when it comes to getting high-quality work done quickly, face to face still wins.

I just stepped out of a darkened meeting room. Half a dozen coders are gathered in a sitebuilding sprint, working on a big Drupal project for one of Morris' non-newspaper businesses.

These guys ordinarily work in cubicles on one of two floors in the Wachovia building in Augusta. It's not as if they're ordinarily separated by six or eight time zones, like the code sprinters who gather at your typical Drupalcon. And it's not as if they're actually talking -- in fact, when I walked in they all had headphones or earbuds.

Yet that proximity that makes for casual, high-bandwidth, intense exchanges seems to really make a difference when it's time to roll.

That and a large continuous supply of drinks and munchables.

Facebook isn't journalism. It doesn't even try. But like other conversational/participative media, it's brimming with opportunity for journalism, for community-building, and for commerce.

Facebook came from a university setting and precisely targets a poorly met need in the general area of community and communications.

So why was Facebook created not inside a college of communications, but rather by a computer programmer who briefly attended Harvard?

I read an item today about how geeks at Arizona State have created a breakthrough in nanotech computer memory.

Where are the university-driven breakthroughs related to journalism?

Is it the students? Writing for the Knight-funded MediaShift Idea Lab project, Chris O'Brien says "advisers from colleges and universities of all shapes and sizes are frustrated at how resistant their students are to embrace new digital media tools and to collaborate with other media organizations on campus." Are J-students -- who, after all, chose to pursue journalism based on a set of assumptions about its nature and purpose -- stuck on an old-media worldview?

Or is it the faculty? Is the J-school culture overly focused on received wisdom rather than on discovery and invention? Are there too many bureaucratic impediments, or perhaps just no funding for experimentation?

Or is it the alumni? Are universities being steered away from creative opportunities by powerful, successful and generous benefactors who don't appreciate the crisis of change that faces journalism today?

Is it merely an overly narrow definition of the mission?

I don't know the answers. I'm just asking.

Admittedly, although the field isn't exactly crowded, it isn't bare. One of the more interesting university-based journalism research projects was the Readership Institute's work with newspapers.

I started examining Facebook through the lens of the institute's "high potential brand areas." Here's what I found:

Easy to read: Certainly Facebook comes out well on this score, compared with the average newspaper's cluttered, junky, in-your-face, ad-dominated website. Trivial content aside, the usual pings and remarks from your friends would score well on a Flesch test.

Intelligent, successful, experienced: That would pretty much depend on your friends. I have many who fit that bill, but your mileage may vary.

Informed, in the know: In some cases a social network may shine on this score, in other areas it may be poor. Facebook has 15,000 members in the Augusta, Ga., network, but I have yet to see a single interesting/informative posting on a local topic. The Neighborhoods application extends it down to my suburb (Evans, Ga.) and even to my subdivision, but I'm the only member from either of those. On the other hand, my Facebook network of new-media buds is definitely informed and in the know.

Honest, trustworthy, helpful: This is one area where all social networks and any well-run online community will shine, and it's also an area generally misunderstood by mainstream media. People bond with online communities for a host of highly personal reasons, and may of those reasons are utilitarian. Want advice? Just ask.

Think about how some of the other attributes apply, or don't apply, to Facebook and other new-media sites:

• Community leader, strong personality
• Middle class, neighborly
• Makes me think
• Reflects my beliefs, cares about me
• Fun, creative, energetic
• Belonging, fulfillment
• Can be used anywhere, anytime

And how do our "journalism" websites score on those measures?

As Facebook slowly opens up, it's becoming possible to pull your own data for your own purposes. Dave Winer mentioned one way, so today, in just a minute, I added a block containing my Facebook status updates to my website pages (see the column on the left). I'm not entirely thrilled with the way it displays, so I may write my own module. At the moment it's just stock Drupal RSS aggregator functionality.

I can update my Facebook status from my cellphone at any time. Within minutes that data is added to my own website.

There are two things to learn from this.

First, it no longer matters where data is stored, so long as we have open REST interfaces. We don't need One Database to Rule Them All.

Second, the phrase "everything is everywhere" applies to the trivial, the mundane and the uninteresting the same way it applies to the profound and valuable.