Spring is in the air, and the season is signaled by buds on the trees, birdsong in the morning, and the peeking of the daffodil and tulip bulbs from the cold ground. Weak sunshine cheers us and we look forward to more hours of daylight and more time outside. For those of us who play in the digital space, spring also means a return of Social Media Camp, Canada’s largest such conference. Held [...]
Most of us are familiar with Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. These are apps that help us connect with friends and loved ones and share the details of our day-to-day lives. What about apps that support health and wellness? There are literally thousands of apps available in the consumer marketplace to support personal fitness, health, stress-reduction and diet goals. Public [...]
Facebook Groups are a great tool for building online community, offering value, and encouraging true social media engagement. However, life in Facebook-land means responding to ongoing changes to Facebook’s algorithms, including those that govern groups. As a simple explanation, the algorithm is a process that ranks all available posts that can display on a user’s newsfeed based on how [...]
The launch this fall of The Digital Hallway is good news for parents, teachers and high school students. The Digital Hallway is the brainchild of B.C.'s That Social Media Guy, Sean Smith. It is a program that teaches parents, teachers and teens about social media. Not just the bad, scary side of social, but the good as well. According to Smith, there is a cycle when it comes to social [...]
I recently spent a Saturday afternoon at a local hair salon. To keep me company while I had my hair cut and coloured, I had my smartphone, and old-school, a fashion magazine. As I leafed lazily through the magazine, a darkly beautiful young woman took the seat beside me. I noticed first her grace as she sat, and then her outgoing energy. She is vivacious and happy, chatting with her [...]
I have a friend. Let’s call her Jane. Jane had a minor falling out with another friend. Let’s call him Dick. Dick and Jane don’t see too much of each other these days. They are polite, but a little uncomfortable when they bump into one another, even though they share many interests, and have many friends in common. Both Dick and Jane have Facebook accounts, and they have an even wider [...]
I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to experience Facebook fatigue. I am spending less time online, and less on Facebook, specifically. I unfollow people whose posts annoy me, and seek out those whose content inspires, nourishes or entertains. I recently asked my Facebook community to tell me what kind of original content they are creating for social media. My question was a sneaky [...]
July 1 is Canada Day, a federal statutory holiday where Canadians across the country celebrate the anniversary of the enactment of the Constitution Act 1867, which united three separate colonies into a single Dominion called Canada. I swell with pride just typing this I will be out of the country on Canada Day, and will rely on social media newsfeeds to share the celebration. To me, this is [...]
Scrolling through the Facebook news feed can be an emotional roller coaster ride. Life and death, tragedy and comedy all flow across our screens at a scale and scope that isn’t really possible to consciously absorb, let alone respond to adequately. A year or so ago, Facebook added ‘Reactions’ to its vocabulary of responses. Prior to the ‘Reactions’ rollout we could reply to a post by [...]
There is almost nothing I like better than gathering with friends and sharing conversation over food. Recently, on a fine and sunny Sunday, my husband I had an alfresco meal at the Maple Ridge home of our friends Dominic Kotarski and Christina Waschko. Dom and Christina are what I call ‘international citizens’. He’s from Tennessee and she’s from northern Germany. They met in Australia. [...]