By Mike Wilson
Facebook, once seen as limited to American college kids, is now used by 500 million people worldwide. The average user has 130 ‘friends’ and 70% of users live outside the United States. The site has 70 language translations. Every month 250 million people engage with Facebook on external websites.
And Twitter? Some 20 million active users rely on it each month for updates on everything from subway delays to election results — and a growing number of companies, big and small, seek to use Twitter to market themselves and track customers. I have an account but I don’t do much with it outside of my work here as editor of Farm Futures. But I spent some time with a Canadian colleague at our IFAJ business meeting in Berlin a few months ago. It was amazing to watch how she worked her ‘smart phone’ and communicated with others in the world via twitter.
I open with these statements because it has become clear to me that social media technology is now a driving force for international organizations like IFAJ. It is a door-opener, a way to help people say hello and cross the often difficult cultural barriers that have kept us apart until now.
That was certainly true in Berlin when we met a Turkish agricultural writer/TV journalist there to cover GreenWeek from Turkey. I could hardly pronounce Çağla Yüksel Kaya Kuyululu’s name, but she spoke good English and a couple of us were interviewed for her TV show. We got to know each other more through Facebook and now we’re exploring the idea of her writing a blog on Eastern European agriculture at the website for our publication.
Another Turkish journalist also ‘friended’ me on Facebook. As I was writing this column yesterday, Unal Ornek’s name popped up in the ‘chat’ box, so we exchanged greetings and got to know each other. Turns out Unal is my age, is a TV journalist. He directed me to a Facebook website, “Tarım Yazarları ve Gazetecileri,” Agriculture Authors and Journalists; while it’s written in Turkish, it seems from first glance that this is a way Turkish colleagues are getting together and talking about their interests.
Unal and I began talking about Çağla and it turns out, they are also friends. A quick look at Unal’s Facebook page led me to discover that we both know a lot of the same people, many of them IFAJ members.
Funny thing is, Turkey is not yet a member of the IFAJ. I suggested to Unal that he work with Çağla to organize an association in his country. He said he and his colleagues are already working on it. I’m confident now that we will see Turkey become a member of IFAJ within the year.
And that could not have happened without 15 minutes spent typing with each other in that little chat box.
But I do want to add a word of caution. No amount of door opening through social media will make any difference if we aren’t ready to take the next step and actually commit to build those relationships with other colleagues around the world. It’s one thing to ‘friend’ a colleague on Facebook; it’s another thing to nurture a professional relationship and get to know each other, through email, skype, phone calls, webinars, or face to face at IFAJ events like the upcoming Congress in Canada.
I have no doubt the IFAJ is ready to do all those things.