Trying to catch up in Web 2.0

Can a graying guy who can operate a typewriter, recognizes a pica pole and remembers the smell of molten lead figure out the social-networking world of Web 2.0? I'm trying.

In the last few months, I've been adding friends on Facebook, connections on LinkedIn and sharing (presuming that someone has actually found them) bookmarks on Del.icio.us. I've been sharing photos on Flickr for more than a year. I haven't mastered any of them yet, but I'm having fun. I'm connecting with college friends I haven't seen in years. Family and friends have enjoyed (or at least tolerated) photos of my travels and my middle son's wedding.

I wouldn't say I "get" social networking yet, but I think I've moved beyond clueless.

I'm not doing this just for fun. I believe that any journalist, innovator or trainer (and I try to be all three) needs to learn how social-networking works, even if you don't know yet how you're going to use it.

To be honest, I shouldn't use excessive self-deprecation in discussing my web life.

Yes, I grew up in an age when social networking, if we even used the term, meant gathering on Friday nights at the A&W or the Lil' Duffer in my hometown of Shenandoah, Iowa. I started my newspaper career in the transition from linotype to cold type (Print 2.0?). I wrote my first newspaper stories at a roll-top desk, using carbon paper and editing with a pencil as thick as my little finger.

But I didn't, and couldn't, remain analog long. I was an early user of a Texas Instruments portable computer (you wouldn't call those monsters laptops) that used a roll of thermal paper, then the loathed "Trash-80" that showed a mere four lines of text on its screen. I used my first spreadsheet to analyze data for a newspaper story in 1995 and created my first web site more than a decade ago. I've been content coordinator for seven-plus years for No Train, No Gain, a web site used by some 13,000 journalists a month. I've been blogging for about four years (though I have to admit that my blog entries, like this one, still read like columns). Most of my work involves teaching newspaper executives and journalists about innovation and helping them see the possibilities of the multi-platform marketplace. I load my blogs with hyperlinks, as you can see, perhaps as much to show that I "get" the interconnected world of the web as to help my readers.

The point here is not to boast about my digital life, but to say that you can think you're running pretty fast and look up one day and find that the world is racing past you.

I wasn't boycotting social networking tools or missing out on their development. I just always had something else to do, usually something more familiar and comfortable. I read about Frappr! on Sree Sreenivasan's Web tips column perhaps a couple years ago and started a map tracing my travels to train journalists. But I never really finished the map or got the possibilities of that tool (I tried to link to the map, but it must have expired from neglect). When I got my first digital camera, it wasn't long before I learned about Flickr and launched my own page. When my wife, Mimi, and I travel someplace fun or when we have a family gathering, such as Joe's wedding , I post photos and send out an email to family and friends (some enjoy, some ignore, not yet ready to make the social-networking plunge themselves). In addition to using this network more, I'm using more of the tools it offers - tagging and mapping. But I don't use it much to look at other people's photos, and only one friend has found me on Flickr, beyond those I've directed to my pictures.

I didn't gravitate right away to Facebook or MySpace because of their early dominance by people a generation or more younger than me. And I don't have a video camera yet, so I haven't posted on YouTube and haven't viewed a lot of videos there (but I'm watching a few now and then on my iPhone, trying to get a feel for it).

LinkedIn is a professional network, though, so when I received an invitation to join, I filled out my profile. Partly because I was too busy to seek out connections and partly out of curiosity to see how my network would grow just by people finding me, I didn't initiate any connections for several months. Any time someone asked me to connect, I did, though. With this passive presence on LinkedIn, I added about 40 connections when people found me - journalists I had coached, former co-workers, fellow trainers, one guy I can't remember meeting (though we worked briefly in different departments at the same paper, so I might have).

Del.icio.us was pretty easy to use and I quickly bookmarked lots of my online training materials, my blogs and some articles of interest. I'm sure this can be more interactive, but so far I'm not aware they have helped anyone but me.

In late November, I decided it was time to make the Facebook plunge. Almost right away, people started finding me. This time I wasn't passive. I used Facebook's search for college classmates and found a woman who had worked on the staff of the Daily Skiff with me more than 30 years ago at Texas Christian University. We quickly reconnected, exchanged catching-up emails and became Facebook friends. I also found a former city editor with whom I've been sort of out of touch and reconnected with some other former colleagues.

While I found a lot of professional acquaintances on Facebook, I also found personal evidence that Facebook participation still has a wide generation gap: Of my 14 brothers, sisters, brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law, I was the second to post a Facebook profile. I quickly added my sister-in-law (the youngest of the 14) as a friend. However, I found 10 nephews and nieces on Facebook (interestingly, though, none of my three sons; I'm not sure what that says about them or me). I did not invite any of my nieces or nephews to become friends; I'd read or heard somewhere that the presence of old folks like me is taking some of the luster off Facebook and MySpace for younger users. And I'm curious how long (if ever) it will take them to notice me and invite me to be their friends (can an uncle be a friend?).

I decided it was time to be more active with LinkedIn, too. I spent a couple hours one morning and a few more minutes here and there seeking to connect with former colleagues and fellow trainers. I checked the connections of each of my connections, finding editors, reporters, trainers, a couple more college classmates - 97 in all (with nearly 50 invites outstanding, I expect to top 100 by the end of the day). As new connections accepted my invitations, I'd check their connections and send another invite or two.

The differences between the two platforms is clear - Facebook is more fun, though you can use it professionally, and LinkedIn is quite serious and professional, though it is fun to trace the web of connections and find some blasts from your past.

I don't have much more than my résumé and connections on LinkedIn. Every time I check in, my profile page reminds me that I'm only 85 percent complete. It recommends that I seek some recommendations. But I don't feel right asking anyone for recommendations. That asks more from them than just the click it takes to connect. And they'd probably start some speculation that I'm job-hunting. And if my boss looked at my profile and saw it littered with recommendations, would he presume I was seeking a better gig? I want to learn how they work, though, so I'll probably write some recs for some of my contacts and see whether they reciprocate.

On Facebook, I comfortably mix the personal and professional (a photo album of my family and one of me in action professionally). I added apps (see, I'm already too cool to call them applications) that let me finally finish that map of my professional travels (a couple, actually, one of cities and one of states and countries). I've joined a few groups, one by invitation and four by curiosity - American Copy Editors Society, Exploding Newsroom, Journalists and Facebook, New Media and Trust Me. I'm a Journalist - though I don't know yet how groups work. Steve Outing recommends that journalists maintain separate personal and professional Facebook pages, but so far maintaining one is plenty for me.

I use the same photo on my LinkedIn and Facebook profile pages - me in jeans and a T-shirt, standing by a concrete letter B outside the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. With the self-critical eye that most of us view our own photos, I like that my hat shades my face, though I notice the gut pooches out a bit under the T-shirt. It fits perfectly on the Facebook page but looks a bit light for the résumé approach of LinkedIn. I'm wondering which photo to use on LinkedIn. I'm not wild about my API mug (way too close) or even the best photo of me in action as a trainer. The photo of me interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev is a professional shot, and it's a great photo to have, but wouldn't using that on my profile page be way too pretentious (not to mention dropping the name just now)? So the Gutenberg shot remains for now (but let me know if you like one of the others).

When I invite people to become connections on LinkedIn, I ask them to tell me how they find it useful. I'll ask the same question of my professional Facebook friends. I'll share some of their responses in a future column - er, entry - but this one's already getting too long. And I'll report later on my experiences with MySpace, YouTube, Second Life and whatever comes next. That LinkedIn connection I can't remember meeting just sent me an invitation to join something I never heard of, Plaxo Pulse.

An old guy can run pretty hard into the social-networking world and still not feel like he's catching up.

Update: In the six hours since I posted this column/blog, I have (as predicted) reached 100 LinkedIn contacts, created my first Facebook group (Washington media trainers), received my first LinkedIn recommendation (I didn't ask for it) and received my first Facebook poke (I'm not sure what that's all about). Most of that happened with no work on my part, while I attended a four-hour meeting.