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I submitted the essay I wrote , alongside my fourth graders who were writing research-based, “This I Believe” Essays, to ThisIBelieve.org almost six months ago.  About three months after it wasn’t published, I began to give up hope that it ever would be.  Yesterday, out of the blue, I received an e-mail from ThisIBelieve.org stating [...]

Bubbl.us: Values and the Holocaust Originally uploaded by teachergal My students will be crafting their thesis statements for their essays today. As a pre-cursor to thesis creation, I had them complete a “Values Activity Sheet” from pg. 13 of the “This I Believe” Middle School Curriculum Guide. These were the values that seemed to be [...]

My students are embarking on their final unit of study of the school year. We’re doing research-based essays, which I’m attempting to tie-into the “This I Believe” Style. I have my teaching points and some of my charts (well, the ones for this week at least!) ready-to-go, but I’m still trying to write [...]

So last week Facebook announced new models of advertising, including allowing brands and products to create Facebook pages. In the past, one had to be a real person to create a facebook account, but now the spectre of monolithic corporate presence looms large over the booming social networking site.

Penguin (never backward when coming forward) has today become, we believe, the first publisher to take advantage of Facebook's largesse and we've created our own product page which you can find here. We're now busy adding pictures, videos and all sorts of other gubbins to the page to create what we hope will be an interesting, engaging and regularly updated destination for our new fans (brands and companies have fans, not friends, which makes sense really). Let us know what we could put on our page to make it more interesting, either by writing on our wall, or by getting in touch via the comments on this blog, though our myspace page, by IMing our second life avatar, on the podcast, through the website or, if you must, with terribly old fashioned phone, fax, email or snailmail. Phew.

When news of our facebook page rippled through the office reaction was mixed, ranging from total disinterest, (very) mild excitement to deep mistrust. The last response came from our most enthusiastic facebookers who feel that a company has no place muscling in on a social networking site. Facebook is a place where friends can hang with friends, tag each other in photos and catch up on news of bawdy nights out (rest assured, you will not see pictures of Penguin, passed out in a shopping trolley after one too many Moscow Mules). I was reminded from a passage from All Tomorrow's Parties where William Gibson disects the disappearance of geographic bohemias:

"Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies ... But they became extinct.”
“Extinct?”
“We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general..."

So, sorry if we are treading on your toes. We honestly won't get in your way and, after all, you don't have to be our friend, or our fan, or our follower or part of our gang. But, if you want to stay in touch, we hope to make it as easy as possible for you to find us, and connect with us, our authors and their books and other readers.

Jeremy Ettinghausen
Digital Publisher

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Generally, I would describe myself as an early-adopter - I like the shiny shiny new things, whether they be gadgets or cool websites or even chocolate bars with 'New!' in a starburst. I appreciate that this can sometimes make me the internet cafe equivalent of a pub-bore, but it is the way I was programmed...

So I can't really explain why it has taken me so long to create a facebook account - but three days in, I just don't get it. I've registered, uploaded my addressbook, been friended (but not 'poked' yet), added a couple of widgets and, er, what now? My virtual friends can contact me by a number of ways, through Twitter or Second Life and my Real Life (or 'meatspace') friends often know my actual address and even sometimes my phone number! So what do I get out of Facebook? Emails telling me that someone has sent me a message? Just send me the message already! The chance to participate in the 'How do you like your chocolate chip cookie?' Poll of the day? (I prefer a Ginger Nut). I also was struck by Jason Kottke's post about open Vs closed networks - he describes Facebook as an intranet - surely less interesting than the internet itself.

So come on - am I doing something wrong? Have I missed a trick? How do I connect with books and with readers and with authors? Am I just suffering from social network overload and is it affecting my job? Am I simply too old? Let me know your thoughts, here, there or other places entirely - if I don't find something good soon my facebook account will join http://myspace.com/jeremyet in a pretty short list of deleted web services.

Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher

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