by Kevin Wolfe
After the Web 2.0 Conference in 2005, Anil Dash commented on the lack of diversity in social media. Mashable's Pete Cashmore picked up on this as a discussion point on his site.
Through the comments on the post, it seems as though the social media world at it's roots, the creators and event organizers, are not as diverse and do not come across as accepting as it may seem from the general user's experience.
Marshall Kirkpatrick also wrote about this issue on his blog after reading about it on mashable.com. Kirkpatrick provides some suggestions, such as stepping outside of the normal realm of "A-list" bloggers when considering experts in the field and bringing together the for-profit and not-for-profit organization.
User diversity doesn't seem to be that large of a problem at the user level. The largest barrier to using social media may be the accessibility to the Internet by some lower income people. But all the average citizen needs to become a user of social media is access to the Internet, something that most library systems provide free of service to patrons.
Social media may end up being a great unifier in the common person's ability to create and access media on their own.
Picture from http://mobasoft.com/wordpress/category/social-media/
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