Discussing online community on KUOW (in Seattle)

I just got off the phone with Jeannie Yandel, the producer of a show called The Conversation on an NPR station in Seattle, KUOW 94.9 FM. She asked me about how online communities cross over into the real world, what did I think about the rash of bad-news stories about teens on MySpace lately, and whether online communities are here to stay.

It looks like I’ll be on the air live around 1:25 to 1:35 pm, speaking with the show’s host and possibly with callers as well.

The promo for the show looks intriguing:

MySpace is a web site where you can post a personal profile with your picture and your interests. It’s become hugely popular among teenagers. MySpace gets more than twice the web traffic of Google. It’s just the latest example of social networking on the web, following Friendster and Meetup.com. Is this a revolution in the way we relate to one another? Or is it just a fad? Do you use a social networking web site like MySpace, or do your kids? Is it worth your time? Has anything good come from it? Has anything bad every happened? Do you have a history of on-line social networking? How has it changed? Have you dropped out of on-line social networking? Why? Do on-line social networks really connect people or are they just simulations of real human interaction?

They’ve posted some related links as well:

• ‘Show and tell online’, The Guardian
• ‘Scenes From the MySpace Backlash’, Wired
• ‘MySpace: The Story of the Month’, Poynter Foundation
• ‘20 Calif. students suspended for looking at MySpace site’, USA Today
• ‘My daughter is on Myspace.com and I’m concerned…’, The Seattle Times
• ‘The cases your judges are hiding from you’, The Seattle Times