At nearly 40, I’m way too old for Netlog, and my 11-year old daughter is way too young for it, despite all her pleading to start an account.

My really old father keeps on warning me that my photo blog will turn people away from hiring me in the future.

So-called “friends” de-friend me on Facebook every day, saying that I am way too long-winded and that my posts take up half of their home pages.

If I struggle with the 420 character limit on Facebook, how on earth am I ever to function in the 140-character world of Twitter?

But I have no choice anymore, and neither do any of us, really. The time has come.

If you do not have a digital identity, then, like me, you will be faced with a digital identity crisis soon. If you are a business or organisation, and you aren’t online and using social media, then your future looks even more plagued with trouble; you will cease to exist within the next five years.

At least that’s what the experts are telling me on this road I’m wandering down at my job at Howest University in Kortrijk. Through E-Clic, a project of the EU’s Interreg programme, which helps Europe’s regions form partnerships to work together on common projects, Howest has set up The Studios, a creative hub focused on entrepreneurship and innovation. The Studios will be immersed in research on social media and digital persuasion and influence.

As assistant to The Studios project manager Christel De Maeyer, I am surrounded by people who were riding the digital wave before we even knew there was one. They had the Twitter T-shirt before the first Tweets were ever made. De Maeyer has been trying to persuade me to get on Twitter and start Tweeting about The Studios. This is the same De Maeyer who sighs at my long emails.

The great thing about Twitter, she said, is that “it makes you think about the essence of what you want to say”.

Netlog, a Gent-based social-networking site, started its existence all the way back in 1999 as ASL.2 by thinking about the essence of humanity: What is your age/sex/ location?

“They had this idea to make individual websites – profiles based on those same questions,” explains Cedric De Vleeschauwer, Strategic Partnerships Manager of Netlog. “It was a tremendous success.”

Today, Netlog, a Ghent-based version of Facebook, has 63 million users worldwide and exists in 38 languages. Not bad for a little start-up launched way before the social media boom by an 18-year-old from Flanders.

“In the beginning, it was easy to grow,” says De Vleeschauwer. “There wasn’t any competition at all.” And then came Facebook.

“Facebook is targeting much older people. There, you can search for old friends and keep in touch with existing friends,” continues De Vleeschouwer. “On Netlog, there are young people trying to find their first girlfriends and boyfriends. It’s all about people discovery, meeting new people. We want to be the ultimate online entertainment network for young people age 14 to 24.”

Netlog doesn’t mind, then, when their users go to Facebook, especially the older ones, as Netlog is “really a place for youngsters to be youngsters.” He explains that Netlog tries to keep parents off the site, noting that lots of their users leave Facebook when they see their parents and even grandparents have joined.

Reinventing privacy

As Howest students fit well into the Netlog demographic, I asked some of the “youngsters” busy with New Media and Communication Technology and Digital Arts and Entertainment about their social media use. This is what I heard:

“I don’t think it’s necessary to post my status or make comments. Why should people know what I am doing?” “People are realising that what they post online can be seen by their bosses.”

“Netlog is more public. Facebook is better for privacy.”

Huh? Dad, is that you? Who would have known that people in their early 20s are savvy enough to be careful with what they put online?

According to Bart De Waele of Flemish web design company Netlash and social media marketing company Talking Heads, we will have to rethink our vision of privacy. He says we will eventually evolve as a society to accept and embrace that the young talent we are hiring with public party photos on Facebook is only human. De Waele’s companies do all of their recruiting online via social networking sites. They also don’t go after clients, but instead use a large presence on social media and the web to pull them in.

Jo Caudron, who ran the first web agency ever in Belgium back in 1993 and now runs Dear Media, a consulting company specialised in new media innovation, said that you can’t lie on social media and claim to be something you are not. “It forces you into transparency. If you are not on social media, you don’t appear to be transparent.”

Political twitters

Vincent Van Quickenborne, the federal minister of economy, innovation and telecommunications, also gets the titles of first MP in Belgium with a blog, one of the first Belgian politicians on Twitter and one of the first with more than 5,000 friends on Facebook.

According to Van Quickenborne, companies can’t use social media for pure publicity; they have to be authentic. Companies and public figures should use Twitter to learn from others. “You can’t just add your gadget. There needs to be content and constant dialogue,” he says. “It’s a real opportunity for a company to adapt to customer needs. It’s an ideal tool.”

Eventually everybody will be connected in one way or another, something he is working on in his political capacity. “Digital,” he says, “will be the next normal.”

Like many others I spoke to, Van Quickenborne claims that Twitter is only at the start of its evolution in Belgium and that mobile and smart devices will take off, once the market opens up, prices drop and internet connections become much faster – all issues he’s working on improving.

Joost Landsheere, meanwhile, of Sweet Lemon, a Flemish company focused on integrating new media into communication strategies, follows Van Quickenborne’s Tweets, noting that they are a good mix of personal and business. “He’s not only telling us what he’s doing,” says Landsheere, “but he’s also teasing his followers to give feedback or putting direct questions into the community.”

Landsheere, who also recently launched mobile application company Mobile Minds, educates his clients about how important it is to build trust via social media sites. “Companies have to shift the way of thinking to a customer-focused business and to make a real connection with the community,” he says. “They have to talk to the community and get feedback. They can move in a new direction thanks to the feedback, and the reach can be much higher and more easily measured online than via traditional marketing.”

Mobile Minds, along with former Netlog strategist Louis Jonckheere’s new company In the Pocket, are two of a handful of companies starting to be really active in the Flemish mobile market. Jonckheere has no doubt that this year – next year at the latest – will be the year of the mobile once and for all. In the Pocket is so convinced of this that they focus completely on mobile and don’t do any online development.

Maybe that’s what I should do – skip the whole online world and become an expert on mobile. Then I’ll be a true trendsetter. Come to think of it, that would make a good first Tweet.

www.thestudios.be