Assignment 5: Keeping Up [Daniel Gustafson, dgg67]

Orlikowski points out that even with proper training in a new technology, existing technological frames can be difficult, if not impossible to break. In trying to market Facebook to a significantly older demographic, one must take this fact into consideration. Rather than trying to break their existing technological experience and introduce them to the larger, much more difficult concept of social networking I feel it would be best to explain Facebook in ways that augment their existing technological frames.

Most likely, this group primarily uses the internet for email correspondence (a glaring over-generalization, but not implausible), and so it would be most effective to present Facebook as a more powerful correspondence tool. I feel an "instructor" would most likely lose some of his/her audience the instant the term "social networking" is mentioned. It is therefore important to follow a specific order in presenting Facebook to the audience, putting the features most familiar to their existing technological frames first, and the most abstract features last. I would present Facebook messaging as an alternative to traditional email, but be sure to next demonstrate the chat feature (and checking who is online) as in instantaneous form off communication. Wall posts would most likely be the least familiar concept to this demographic, and should probably be avoided (widely distributed, public messages to others most likely wouldn't catch on). Photo Albums could be a large source of support for Facebook if presented right. First the group should be introduced to creating their own albums and viewing albums on other profiles, familiar concepts to nearly all, and then introduced to the concept of tagging photographs for ease in finding pictures of individuals. Training should continue like this, finding the most familiar concept, then extrapolating to the most abstract concept of each category.

As this technology is being presented to them as a more powerful correspondence tool, the rewards are self explanatory, however the incentive to switch technologies is not. Given that Facebook messages are by default forwarded to an email address, and you need an email address to sign up for Facebook, I would predict the most common complaint to be "Why not just keep using email and avoid the switching process?" This is where Facebook can shine as a homepage and/or communications portal. With "traditional" email communication, photo albums, instantaneous chat, threaded messages (for planning large-attendance events), etc. all gathered into one convenient and attractive dashboard, there is little reason for this demographic not to extend their technological frames to the Facebook system.