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Last month Allison Fine started an interesting discussion on her blog about women, social media and influence. Allison wondered if social media might be the X factor that would help women make real strides in closing the leadership gap. Among commenters, there seemed to be a general consensus that women, as well as other groups, have been able to circumvent, at least in some instances, the glass ceiling and constraints placed on them by the traditional business world. Women have been able to use social media to get their thoughts out to the marketplace without having to get permission or backing from an organization.

The Women of the Year list by She Takes on the World is full of women who have used social media to champion all manner of causes from the global water crisis and microcredit to idea-sharing and motivating young people to succeed. While all of these women would probably be making a difference without laptops and iPhones, they have been able to multiply their efforts with creative social media use.

Organizations like Blogher work to help women online by create opportunities for exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. A 2009 Blogher study reported that 42 million American women are using social media regularly both to share and find information and advice. The survey also found that more than 60 percent of these women use blogs and social networks to find information about social activism.

A recent Vanity Fair article, America's Tweethearts, discusses how previously unknown women representing different sectors and interests have been able to use social media to gain a unique kind of fame on Twitter. In the article (whose author doesn't seem to be entirely sold on with Twitter) one of the "twilebrities" featured, Felicia Day, points out: “Doors were closed to us before. Now the tools for success have been democratized. It’s just me and whoever wants to talk to me, wherever they are in the world.”

It doesn't take a celebrity spokesperson or even a twilebrity spokesperson to leverage social media for wide reach. Like an online flashmob, scores of women (and oddly, some men) began posting one-word status messages yesterday. "Black," "lavender," and "red" were littered among our news feeds, and quickly people began asking, explaining and commenting over the colorful posts, not only on Facebook, but on Twitter and other social media platforms. The Case Foundation's Allie Burns wrote a post discussing both the buzz and the criticism around the campaign. Whether a quietly orchestrated awareness by a breast cancer organization or a prank by a group of young women, it has created a discussion carried on by common women which has permeated the social media world.

It's exciting to see that social citizen gals are using social media to share their ideas and passions and to advocate for the causes that are important to them. And since Millennials may be the most active and engaged online, Millennial women - as individuals and as groups - may have a greater opportunity to be heard and wield influence at a younger age than the women before us. I hope, and trust, that we will continue to take advantage of this opportunity - not to grab self-serving fame for it's own sake, but to change the world with our creative approaches, open and transparent conversations and inspirational acts.

This morning I was in a cab on my way to the airport when I decided to quickly scroll through my email and Twitter feed to see what I might miss while on the five hour flight from DC back to San Francisco. It was very rainy this morning when my plane took off -- nothing like the September 11, that I remember while working on Capitol Hill back in 2001. The sun was beaming off of the Capitol dome and the clear blue skies created a surreal feeling as smoke from the Pentagon billowed in the distance.

The Septmber 11, digital archive is also using electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the history of September 11, and its aftermath.  It contains more than 150,000 digital items, including more than 40,000 first-hand stories, and more than 15,000 digital images.  For my sister-in-law, a first grade teacher in the Bronx,  a digital archive like this allows her to share stories with her students, many of whom are learning of the tragedy for the first time.

As Millennials everywhere head back to school over the next few weeks, we are going to be thinking and talking about some intersections of social media and the college experience.

Today is the first day of school for many students across the country. After a few months of beach vacations, summer jobs, and lounging around the house, it's time to get back into the swing of going to class, writing papers and taking tests. With its increasing popularity, social media is bridging both worlds - in the classroom and out - and people have begun to study what all this social media is really doing to our brains.

My mom used to tell my brother that video games were going to turn his brain to mush. Many studies now dispute this, showing that gaming can actually improve perception, sharpen thinking and increase patience. Point for my brother. (Unfortunately, I lost interest in video games after they moved beyond the original Nintendo.) Similarly, some have speculated and worried lately that all of this social media use by today's young people is ruining their ability to write. At the very least, they say, Facebook and Twitter leads to time wasted talking about yourself to no one in particular.

And with all our ROTFLs BRBs TTYLs RTs, HTs, and other abbrevs, I can see how our teachers might be concerned that proper spelling, capitalization, sentence structure, and good old fashioned grammar have gone by the wayside. But could it be that our constant texting, tweeting, blogging and facebook posting are actually just as helpful as summer reading and flash cards?

Yes and no. Tracy Alloway, a psychologist in Scotland, recently studied the impact of social media on working memory. She claims that Facebook helps enhance our intelligence because keeping up with so many friends is like a workout routine for our memories, but she warns that other types of social media might not be so helpful. Twitter's character limits, along with the brevity of text messaging and YouTube videos, shrink our attention spans and fail to engage our brains because we don't have to process the endless stream of information come at us. 

So social media's effects on memory seem to be split. What about other skills? The social web has turned us all into content producers, rather than just consumers. In addition to giving us an opportunity to share what we think and voice our love, hate or indifference on all manner of subjects, it also gives us the valuable opportunity to practice writing.

Andrea Lunsford of Stanford University says that her study shows that technology and social media are improving students' ability to write. Like we've always been told, practice makes perfect, and thanks to our habits of constant online communication, this generation of students is getting more writing practice than any group of students ever before. This is because Millennial students are not just writing in the classroom; they are writing throughout the day. Clive Thompson points out that this is a huge paradigm shift - in generations before us, essays were written in class, and that was it. And it is more persuasive writing because they feel they are always writing for an audience.

Not only do they write more, but today's students are also adept at using appropriate tone and style for their audience. Because of the interactive nature of social media, users are more aware of their various audiences. Rather than just writing for one professor, they are writing for friends and peers with whom they have varying types relationships and shared interests. They know not to use the same writing style in a research paper as they do posting birthday well wishes on a friend's wall. Likewise, it's often occurred to me that Twitter helps me to practice a more concise style of writing - a habit which can be difficult to form.

Are you convinced? Is social media the best thing that's happened to the classroom since the overhead projector, or are you still waiting for our brains to turn to mush?

Yesterday I came across this charming video in which Graham Smith and his buddy Josh Baron set out on a Facebook road trip for a thesis project. The two traveled more than 1,800 miles in less than a week to explore how the friends made over a lifetime were more than a series of updates on Facebook. What Graham uncovers through this little exercise, is that communication through digital means can at times be limiting.

As the use of social media in organizations grows, things are getting a bit messy for Millennials. We are having to navigate how to project the professional persona we want - with colleagues, bosses, and potential employers are checking our twitter and Facebook profiles - using the tools that, for us, cannot easily be limited to the professional.
 
We all have things we do and think but wouldn't advertise at work, yet if a colleague requests our Facebook friendship, we can't exactly deny them. We go through breakups, we take unflattering pictures, we sweat when we run 5Ks. We all have opinions on politics and religion. I wouldn't add to my resume or cover letter that I find Will Ferrell extremely funny, my favorite song to sing at karaoke night is Weezer's "Say It Ain't So," and, oh yeah, this is what I look like in a bathing suit. But since colleagues can access my facebook profile as easily as my resume, some of the stuff that, as a professional, I wouldn't mention to my intern, my CEO or my grantee is on the table.
 
It feels a little like some social media tools have been hijacked by the professional world. In 2004, Millennials were using Facebook purely to connect with friends, share pictures, personal interests, and now that the corporate and nonprofit worlds are beginning to recognize a value in Facebook for marketing, fundraising, advocacy, they are eager to capitalize on those benefits, our generation's expertise in using the tool, and our robust networks. And I agree that social media can be extremely valuable for organizations, and they help breathe new life into causes and missions. But does that mean pieces of our personal online personas need to die?
 
In some ways, I think letting the personal bleed into the professional has a positive impact. I'm not so interested in following people on Twitter that just read like an RSS feed direct from their organization's marketing department. It's like signing up to see commercials. But I follow @Zappos because he is clearly a person with thoughts that go beyond how he's going to sell me more fabulous shoes. I follow @tomjd and @AshokaTweets because I find them both interesting, but I maintain @tomjd has something that @AshokaTweets lacks. He reaches a new audience with his "personal" tweets but also exposes them to his work at Ashoka.
 
I appreciate that Craig Newmark has a soft spot for squirrels, and even though guides to professional success would tell me to hide any Susie Homemaker tendencies in the workplace, I do enjoy baking. Do we risk losing respect by revealing some of our quirks? Or do we risk more by keeping all of them offline? Will we get to the point where it doesn't matter?
 
So, what's a Millennial to do?
This is something I have struggled with, but I try to walk the line between professional and personal because I think it serves the best of both, but even doing that, there are tricky times. Friends from college might complain that I blew up their twitterfeed from a philanthropy conference, and colleagues probably don't care about seeing the Facebook pictures of the time I met Tyler Hansbrough's dad at the Final 4. That's my approach, but I know others who are adamant about using social media for only professional or only personal audiences or maintain two separate profiles. I don't see a perfect solution. What's yours?
 
Millennials are used to living in an interconnected world, where we share all kinds of information with peers via social networks, including the causes we care about, our spring break trips and our musical taste. It's against my nature to accept that I have to censor myself and try to live in silos that are wholly work and wholly personal. I don't think we can be authentic and still maintain that level of separation, and one day, I don't think it will feel necessary. I think Millennials and their use of social networks can usher in a new standard for transparency where we will all have to start admitting to being human. No, I don't need to know all the skeletons in everyone's closets, but I don't think we can continue to maintain the division between professional and personal lives that our parents had. Won't we all - as individuals and members of the public, private and nonprofit sectors - be better for it?

Don’t tell anyone, but I’ve titled this post the name of the book my mom says she’s going to write one day.  But since I’ve lived through about 30 years of listening to the great titles of the wonderfully inspirational books my mom was going to write, I don’t think I’m blowing anything here by sharing with you what she would have included.

As SXSW comes to a close, I have lived vicariously through the tweets, blog posts, and Facebook status updates which have all served as a gentle reminder that I’m not there. Let’s be honest, I have a bit of SXSW envy. For the past five days the SXSW Interactive Festival has featured a plethora of engaging panelists, digital creatives and visionary technology entrepreneurs, all in an effort to celebrate some of the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology. At least that’s what I surmise from the 140 character tweets I’ve come across this past week. 

• Tweet Congress [WINNER!]
• Clif Bar 2 Mile Challenge
• I Am Second
• Just in Queso
• Sunny Side

Whether you were on the ground in Austin or tuning in from the comfort of your couch and MacBook…what were your favorite moments as captured by Flickr, TwitPic, Facebook or others?

Last week as Mark Zuckerberg began to unveil the features of the now highly anticipated Facebook redesign (the second in less than a year), I posed the following question on my Twitter feed: “Interested to see if the new facebook redesign helps or hurts NPOs and their causes. Hope it helps, any ideas?”

The new interface means more sharing and communicating. This will allow donors, activists, volunteers and constituents to engage in real, substantive ongoing conversations. The applications which were such a central part of the Facebook user experience a year ago, will diminish as the authentic voice of the nonprofits and their constituents will have the opportunity to take a more active role.  Gone are the days of being limited to only sharing your message with your immediate fans or supporters. Updates to an organization's Wall or other discussion sat idle and were never broadcast – in other words, if your fans and supporters didn’t return to your page, they would never know a new discussion was happening. Now, they won’t have to go to your page to interact, they will see updates in their newsfeeds and participate as part of your community.

An interview with Facebook’s “in-house sociologist” Cameron Marlow, appeared in last week’s issue of The Economist and has since created an interesting debate about the value and depth of our online social networks. Marlow looked at the size of one’s network on Facebook (in terms of number of friends) and then analyzed the rate of communication and interaction between those friends - based on comments, status updates, wall messages, etc.

What do you think about the Dunbar Number’s relevance to organizational use of social networks? Is your organization taking different steps to engage online in a more meaningful with your donors, volunteers and constituents? How can organizations move beyond the 5-10% that seems to be the human threshold for meaningful interaction?

From entertainment to communications, consumers are increasingly taking charge of the creation, distribution and of course the consumption of digital media. We upload videos, download podcasts, we blog, vlog, rank, rate and tweet – and we’re doing it rates that are unprecedented in the history of media. That is according to eMarketer and their recent User-Generated Content report which analyzes a trend that promises not only to transform the face of the Internet, but also radically alter the distribution of all media.