What I Learned This Week (Part 3)

Tokbox is a new-ish online video conferencing system that doesn’t require plug-ins or downloads. There’s some interesting applications that Tokbox could have for international education, where a guest speaker could present from a distance. While it only would be a talking head, that might be useful enough for some content. This certainly could be a Skype killer. Nice that contacts can be added through a myriad of e-mails and IM providers.

In a presentation, the Pew Internet declared that Online Social Media is democratizing, meaning that the numbers and demographics are not as skewed as they were in 2005. The problem I  see is that it’s comparing Social Media use to Internet usage. As Social Media becomes more prevalent, of course more people using the Internet will be using Social Media. The real democratization will be when people start comparing online to offline and those numbers are equal. We’re still seeing overall usage skewing towards mainstream cultural groups, when a real variety of voices have access to the Internet, never mind Social Media, we’ll then be able to talk about real democratization.