So, as part of our class exploration of social media tools, we dove in to Academia.edu. I created my profile as required. It was pretty straightforward. I was reminded as I perused lists to determine my research interests that different disciplines claim the territory we are studying. At some point, I should probably go back and review the lists more closely. My first reaction was to look for the category “English” since that’s the department I’m in, but it didn’t really offers the sub-categories/areas of interest I was looking for. I didn’t add a CV at this time because, frankly, I don’t have an academic CV. I have a resume… but this isn’t LinkedIn and I’m not sure what I have is appropriate for this venue since it is more focused on industry rather than academic endeavors. I enjoyed logging a few of the books I’ve read as part of Masters and PhD studies And, I enjoyed the department diagram.
One thing I’m not really sure I have the hang of is the KEYWORDS feature. I see it Dave’s and Liza’s pages, but I’m not sure how to make it active for mine. I searched for help, but didn’t really find what I was looking for. It’s possible I wasn’t using the right terms… or that the info I’m looking for wasn’t easily accessible. I ran a few Google searches for my name, but the football player of the same name from Baylor still ranks more highly than me (first two hits; no surprise there). My Facebook page comes in third, my Twitter page 5th, LinkedIn profile 8th, class blog 9th, and then various excerpts from news reports on Zoom Info that date from my stint as Communications Manager at Norfolk Public Schools rank 10th on the search. (That’s just the first page. Ironically, my portfolio site and Academia.edu listings didn’t appear until the third page of Google results.) [Side Note: It occurs to me, in light of our discussions of the Panopticon and participatory surveillance, that I've just connected quite a few "digital identity" dots for someone with this post. Oh well!]
In any event, I thought the site was fairly easy to use. I also can see how it would be helpful for academics looking to make connections. It’s clearly geared for a specific community (for example, there are no categories for administrators in higher ed) and it appears it can be pretty successful in serving that niche. With that said, I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. Perhaps I have social media fatigue, but I find I barely update my Facebook status anymore. I rarely have used LinkedIn. I tweet most regularly (but that could be because I have to use it for class). I’m just not sure I want to invest the time to update so many sites. I guess we’ll have to see…
