The Generational Digital Divide

I came across an interesting study done by the University of Vermont which aimed to "engage youth in teaching senior citizens computer and Internet skills to navigate and obtain needed information from the Medicare web site".

If you check out the study results, it proves that after training sessions the senior citizens proved to be very competent at using the Medicare website.

Nielsen Online released figures over 5 and half years ago, outlining the growth in senior citizens using the Internet. I have no doubt this has escaluated and the ratio between young and senior citizens online have narrowed. Just think about all the grandparents checking our their grandchildren on Facebook.



Check out these blog posts for more informative posts on senior citizens online:
Is Online Video Marketing Bigger Than Social Networking? (Included are some more recent stats on senior citizens watching online videos)
Online Social Networks Empower Older People (Some info on online community for aging baby boomers).

Holy Moly - Catholic Facebook!

The latest news this week was that the Pope & The Catholic Church are going to create a social network (like Facebook) as the central communication channel for World Youth Day. He'll also be sending inspiration holy text messages to those participating, as well as hosting digital prayers walls.

I guess this doesn't surprise me much - considering that social networks are really just specialised groups targeting people with specific interests - collating everything together just makes more sense. It's great to see this happening, especially within our beautiful country!

A few posts ago I mentioned that if social media is to become adopted by Australian organisations, more coverage is needed in traditional press. Well it seems to be heading that way, not just World Youth Day branching out online - the front page of AFR was a story on Woolworths planning some Facebook involvement.

I guess now it's just more discussion and research into specific ways Australian businesses can target online audiences.

Investigating the online trail of Lou Veyret

On the topic of managing your "digital dirt" I decided to evaluate my presence online. Sure there's my myspace, facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter pages - but what about what comes up when you search "Louise Veyret" on google?

Luckily that's all quite innocent, I'm not committing any kind of facebook suicide and I'm managing my online reputation well so far.

Amusingly, for the past 10 years or so (literally) the first thing that came up for Louise Veyret on google was a response to an Australian Science Magazine poll. Despite the comment being published in 1996, the comment seemed to haunt me as I was reminded of how I didn't think that violent video games would prevent someone from beating someone up. I kept thinking that this could sway the opinion of future employers, as the comment wasn't well written (I was still in primary school!) and not really related to anything that would be of interest to me. So I started signing up to other social networks, and slowly that link has made itself down the pile, surrounded by mentions of my father and other siblings.

I guess it's true what the social media experts and online gurus say about monitoring your online image - anything can be tracked or sourced, even things from over 10 years ago.