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The Social Media Connector Set

by Steven Hodson on November 29, 2008 · Comments

Chris BroganLet me start this off by saying that Chris Brogan is one smart person and I have a lot of respect for the man. He is one of the brightest; and best in my opinion, writers on this idea of social media. However I noticed something over the past week or so - his tone; or maybe his set of concepts around social media has been shifting.

Previously I had the impression that much of what he wrote was about social media on a large scale; or bigness as I phrased it in an email to him. What I have read in the past week or so seem to point to a shift in his thinking more along the lines of small social media; or as he phrased in a post very early this morning - cafe-shaped conversations.

Changing the shape of the conversation

If this shift in his thinking is indeed the case then for me this is a well signaled change in how social media could move forward. After all someone as well respected as Chris is doesn’t shift without some very serious and deep seated reasons. He is someone that is listened to and conversations he starts do make a difference. I’m not alone in this either as evidenced by Robert Scoble’s comment about Chris’s post on FriendFeed

Brogan is doing the most interesting thinking of social media, communities, conversations out there. - Robert Scoble

Now, I’ve spent the better part of today going over Chris’s recent posts trying very hard to piece together a germ of a thought that both his last post plus our short email exchange started. In effect this post is kind of a verbal effort to try to piece it all together in some sort of coherent fashion; but isn’t that what having a conversation is all about. Rather than a solid structure in which you point form your thoughts or ideas that you already have shouldn’t a conversation here be just as ’semi’ freeform as when people are face to face?

crowd of peopleMuch of the social media philosophy currently in place today has been one of it being a totality that we have to deal with. Social media is big and everything is a part of that bigness. The people and all their conversations are part of a single social media ecosphere. All the services within that single ecosphere are vying for our attention in order to be our social media endpoint. After all the more people using any one service makes it potentially more profitable and in the end that is why these services are provided - the need to make money of some type.

Businesses are being sold on this idea of a unified social media network that they can be tapped into. A single entity that they can get their heads wrapped around; but what if this isn’t the case?

Suppose the conversation(s) taking place weren’t a part of something large but in fact were just small islands of conversations joined together by those services. What if rather than the services being the connectors it was the conversations?

Social Media as an Internet Tinker Toy set

Whether it be services like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or FriendFeed, businesses; and people, are being told that they need to be on all of these social services. They need to be there so that they can manage (protect) their brands, to make themselves as available to as many people as possible because that is the mantra - bigger is better.

After all this is the corporate mindset we are dealing with. The global village, the global economy. It is all about bigness and being able to convince corporations that social media is big enough to warrant their attention. With that attention of course comes the real reason to go big - that’s were the money is. As far as the corporations are concerned big is the ticket because that is their mentality. The mentality of getting the biggest bang for the smallest buck possible.

internet tinker toysWhat if the reality of social media is different than that?

What if social media is all about the smaller conversations and these services are nothing more than the tubes allowing us to travel between conversations. Much like the sticks holding together wooden disks - or hubs of conversation - in those Tinker Toy sets from my childhood.

What is the value to corporations then; or do they even care?

If social media is about all the conversations I might be having at any one time rather than the services I use to get to those conversations how does this impact corporations?

How does this impact those services?

Shifting from service valued social media to a conversation valued one

At this point in the gestation of social media we are still being led to believe that bigger is the way to go. We are being told that we should be joining not only the biggest and hottest of the services but also the newest. We need to make the services the drawing card for businesses and the conversations are secondary. It is like social media is WalMart and the services are just the different departments in the store that we shuttle between.

With his cafe-shaped conversation idea Chris has begun questioning this notion; as it should be. As he says in his post

I think we’re moving towards something and I don’t think it’s going to be an easy shift. I don’t think social media just plugs into the marketing mix, though sometimes others prove me wrong. Alan Scott, CMO for the Dow Jones shared his 2008 marketing spend and there wasn’t a dollar allocated to social media. Instead, he used social media as just another card in the marketing deck. He doesn’t treat it poorly. He just doesn’t call it out as anything really different.

For the rest of the world, I believe that there will be some issues with how social media delivers. I think some companies will want big conversations, mass messaging, when what we’re offering are cafe conversations. We’re offering the intimate, the personal, the chance to talk in numbers of dozens and hundreds, and to make the appropriate kind of impact.

It doesn’t matter if I use Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed to move between conversations. What matters is the conversation. That is what has the value. It matters what I am saying in one conversation - the cafe - or the same subject but with different people - the corner store - and then another set of people an possibly the same topic - the park with friends. That is what people and businesses are interested in not how we got there.

Where we have the value not the services

What we need to realize is that it doesn’t matter how big the services is that you are on or how many of them. That is just the marketing of the services and businesses herding us together to maximize their bang for the buck. Businesses don’t want to invest any more time or effort than absolutely necessary. for them the value of social media becomes diluted the more they have to spread out their involvement. For the services it means too many fish in the sea and make it harder to turn themselves into a bigger target for the whales.

What we need to realize is that for social media to work we have to understand it is about us. It is about making it easier to have conversations with our friends - it isn’t about making it easier for businesses to market to us. We don’t need to be in every single social media transport service in order to have conversations with friends. As Chris said in another post we don’t have to touch every conversation and we shouldn’t be conned into believing that we do.

I believe; like Chris, that the whole idea of what makes up social media is going to change. The problem is will businesses be willing to sit down at the cafe with any of us with no guarantee that we will let them join the conversation?

Will they be willing to chew the fat with you and your friends at the park without seeing an immediate ROI?

Will they be willing to understand it is our conversations that have the value - not theirs?

Social media may think it has changed the playing field but I think it might not be the field that everyone thinks it is; and that is going to be a shock to a lot of people - and businesses.

I hope they’re ready.

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  • In the US, airlines made a move a few years back to go small. They perceived that what Southwest and JetBlue did had something to do with the size of the planes and the cost of the airfare. Delta launched Song and failed. United launched Ted and failed (though there are a few Ted flights still out there). In short, they couldn't grasp what Southwest and JetBlue did. They just thought that small must be the secret.

    It's not small. It's the craft beer versus Budweiser analogy. It's doing something with a focus on the personal and the custom. THAT, Steven, is what I think I've caught on to in the last little while. That's the big change. I believe.

    Will large scale social media work? Only as well as advertising works in other mediums, meaning, not really that much. But it will FEEL like it's working for a while.
  • I am a strong advocate for getting in touch with your customers - more importantly relating to them on a "personal" level. This is why the Big Three failed (as I stated in my little rant http://www.newward.com/articles/?p=127). It's one thing not to listen to the market in general... it's a whole different level of failure when you do not listen to your actual customers. The advantage to social networking that most large corporations can not grasp is that small is the new big and time is the investment that needs to be made. People want to be touched, they want to know that the company they are doing business with cares enough to ask if they are happy, and if they are not WHY. The tool that is used to accomplish that is secondary as long as they are conversing where their customers gathered.
  • InternetStrategist
    This is yet another example of how we (collectively) have got it all backwards. Instead of giving all the power to Corporations, each of us can help all of us by NOT following - start LEADING instead. Or at least follow someone who has YOUR best interests in mind instead of those who are only interested in money and power.

    Corporations do not now nor have they ever actually listened to "us". They don't really care what WE want; they just want us to conform to what THEY want. Listen to the words they use: "protect their brand" - "damage control" - they're about keeping us from outing them when they ignore or take advantage of us.

    Technology has finally made it easier for the individual to be more important in each of our lives than the vested interests. Start sharing what you like, which products are great, whose services are worth paying for, which business took good care of you. Stop thinking of it as "more advertising" and start seeing it as sharing what you've learned to help others.

    Then start voting with your time and money. Vote by buying from small businesses run and owned by friendly, hard-working people who actually care. Support your local businesses. Think Mom & Pop Shopping instead of big nameless greedy corporation. Let's change the world one individual at a time.
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