Some people embrace the internet and are comfortable using all sorts of social media from Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Wordpress.. you name it and they’ll try it. Then there are folks out there that shy away from it and never use it at all even though their kids might be. I can see their point of view, and I’ve heard all kinds of reasons not to bother. Social media isn’t for everyone.
I was a little surprised when I heard that Mitch is teaching his kids to blog. I thought, it’s so open! But of course! That’s the point. Open is good, it’s easy to monitor. Of course, blogging is different from Facebook, but the same rules apply. You really want to be actively involved with your children online for all ages, you listening Mom & Dad? 
Virtually ALL of the experts that are concerned with Internet safety, as it pertains to minors, agree that the MOST effective way to accomplish this is by the PARENT becoming integrally involved in their child’s on-line activities.
Now, before you start thinking, “Oh God! How much time is this going to suck out of my day?” Take a deep breath and relax. My guess is that it could be far less time than what you spend reading bedtime stories. Well, no doubt if you’re reading this blog and have kids, I’m preaching to the converted and you’re already getting involved with your child’s online activities. Obviously, you still have to choose which social media to engage in. Stuff like Twitter I still don’t understand, but then I don’t get Instant Messaging or use a cell phone either. I’m so old.
This idea of getting your kids to blog seems pretty cool to me. I mean, I really have no interest in reading kids’ blogs, well, if I know the kid, maybe (probably not) but the exciting thing to me is that it instills the right attitude. The attitude that the world is listening (and that anyone in it could be listening). That’s a really cool idea when you get used to it.
Let me explain, in case you’re a newbie to blogs, this is how blogging works.. First of all there are like a gazillion blogs out there. There’s obviously no way any of us can read more than a very small percentage of those blogs. Also there are popular blogs that everyone reads and then there are blogs that hardly anyone ever reads. However, when you write about someone’s public blog using your blog, they know about it because they’re told. This means that if you write about something and someone else writes about you, you’ll know about it too. This instant networking, induces instant collaboration. You can build on ideas. Sometimes it takes months or even years for the ideas to grow and really good ideas stand out (so do really bad ones).
Of course, not everyone listens to what you might have to say about their blog, also there’s no reason to write about someone else. You can just write about yourself all day long if you want to. Basically, there are no rules, well some might argue that Google dictates them, and we’ve broken all of those linking rules and have been punished for it (we only have a pagerank of 4, yeah can you believe it? Me neither!)
If you use Google and chances are you’re reading this because you thought the universe is watching you or you typed some other variation on the keywords that pulled up this post in the search results. To me that’s magic, and a great thing to show your kids.
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So who’s coming close to a great enterprise-class social media product? IBM. Who’d have thunk it.
