Social media lovers celebrate "the revolution"

The popular social networking blog Mashable has declared today Social Media Day, and techie-types across the country are planning Tweetups to celebrate, as Mashable puts it, "the revolution of media becoming social." Locals are planning a lunch at noon at the Area Fifteen conference center in the Optimist Park neighborhood just north of center-city Charlotte.

Whether you think sites like Facebook and YouTube and Twitter are a bunch of crock, they are having an undeniable impact on life and communications today. Check out these statistics, collected by researchers with Experian Simmons:

• Two-thirds of Americans now use social media sites, up about 230 percent from penetration levels just three years ago.

• It's not just kids. Some 41 percent of online adults ages 50 or older visit social networking sites monthly.
• Nearly half of the people who visit social networking sites say they do so multiple times per day.

Individual networks will come and go, but the millions of people sharing their pictures, videos, Web links and unnecessary random musings over the Internet aren't going to give those privileges up anytime soon. What do you think? Are social networks just a fad? Or have they changed the way you communicate?

Can 'startup culture' catch fire in Charlotte?

Ben Vandgrift, a software developer, has done the Big Company thing.

He worked for IBM and Sun Microsystems. He even worked for the Charlotte Observer. But a few years ago, he decided to go solo. His current project, a dating website called Flowmingle, hasn't exactly put Match.com on the run, though. He's considering revisions.

Though life as a tech entrepreneur has its headaches, he doesn't sound like he's going back to Corporate anytime soon.

"It's so incredibly liberating," he said. "Once you get bitten by that bug, where instead of working on other people's vision you're working on your own, it's very hard to shake."

And these days, with big companies shedding employees, many smart people are finding themselves with skills in search of a market. Often, they turn to freelancing. Vandgrift is hoping he can help people like that through his latest venture, Start Charlotte (@StartCLT on Twitter).

He and his partners are taking an office space suite at the Area Fifteen business incubator in Optimist Park and turning it into a membership-driven co-working hub. They hope to attract freelance Web designers, software developers and other creative tech types. It's still a work in progress, but he hopes eventually he'll have enough members to leverage the kind of discounted group rates corporations enjoy for services such as health insurance or accounting.

That, he argues, would leave the members free to create and collaborate, and hopefully, form the kind of startup culture that breeds innovative companies like Google or Facebook. Beats working from home, he says. "Some people can handle working off of the couch for eight hours a day. I can't."

Interested? Drop by Area Fifteen at 15th Street and North Davidson on Thursday from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., when Vandgrift and his collaborators will be holding an open house. Or you can visit the Start Charlotte's website or e-mail Vandgrift at ben@startcharlotte.com.