Recap - Social Media Club NYC - 1-23-07

Social Media Club says “Hello World”

New York’s most recent Social Media Club meeting put itself out there for all to see. Howard Greenstein, the organization’s co-founder, has gone “all-in” to borrow a Texas Hold’em poker expression, leaving his day job to pursue this full-time.

The Social Media Club (SMC) was presented as the second disruptive wave after the World Wide Web in the mid 90’s. Coincindentally, Howard and the author of this report were founding members of the WWWAC, the World Wide Web Artists’ Consortium back in the day, and this organization, as such, has a similar feel to it.
SMC is designed to assist its members in leveraging their online and in-person relationships, building upon credentials, and shared knowledge within the group, as well as reaching out to the local communities, schools and not-for-profits. One of their programs is to have members “adopt a blogger” and help them get on the right track online.

To be clear, this is a membership organization running as a “not-for-loss” and there is a dues structure, which can be found here: http://socialmediaclub.org/membership. The stated benefits of being a member are: a social network, discounts to industry conferences and organization
Discounts, and of course a t-shirt and other organization paraphernalia. The intent is that the organization be funded by the members for the members.

The mantra for SMC: “Stop telling people they don’t get it, and them get it, by building a broader understanding, establishing standards and ethical guidelines. Throughout all of the SMC meetings I have attended the concepts of transparency and disclosure have been made paramount.

In a period of 4 months, 800 more than1000 people have met in 8 cities around the United States, with four more locations coming on board: Dallas, Austin, Atlanta and South Florida.
This New York meeting was held on the premises of Fleishman Hillard, a leading Public Relations firm. David Bradfield, Senior VP and leader of its Digital Team had been the only member of the group to put agenda items on the wiki, so he was able to set the agenda. He served as one of the meeting’s facilitators putting forth the evening’s agenda:

* What tools are people using to track Social Media Content?
* What is the perception of Social Media? What matters most?
* Is Social Media redefining Advertising, Public Relations & Marketing?

Tools:

Even with 40+ people in attendance it became readily apparent that the environment fostering Social Media and Web 2.0 development is still so new to so many. The responses to what tools are being used barely scratched the surface: News Readers (Ranchero’s NetNewsWire, Google’s Reader, and EspRSSo), followed up by:

Touchstone - http://www.touchstonelive.com - Stay Informed Without Getting
Distracted

and

Netvibes - http://www.netvibes.com - Personalied news, data feeds, pod and video
casts aggregated on personal website.

All of the above are worthy of merit, I (David) was just struck by such a small list and the lack of vocal enthusiasm on the part of the attendees to champion their respective favorites. Time to stop preaching to the choir. We are far from a common toolset and as for barriers to entry, let’s just agree that they are not physical.

From the assemblage it was clear that both measurement and metrics in a Social Media/Web 2.0 world are wholly subjective. People were hard pressed to agree on how to gauge success, let alone what constitutes it. For those of you reading this who do “get it,” understand that you are clearly in the minority and that there exists such a chasm - the size and scope of the Grand Canyon lends itself to understatement.

Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations are three wholly distinct and separate discipines. This is what I was told and had drummed into my head growing up. Well, these times are a changing. There’s a mad scramble for all these folks to establish their footholds and much like the automobile industry, there definitely will be more hybrid organizations encompassing the three disciplines. It will be interesting to see who runs out of gas first.

The evening was capped off by the attendees breaking into small clusters and banging on about authenticity online. Four distinct groups with their own take.
Here is a sampling:

• The environment is self correcting, and the audience will decide for itself
• Disclosure above and beyond all, maintain relevance, manage thresholds
• Online journalism become the new traditional media
• Greater emphasis on friends and colleagues to prioritize and legitimize

FWIW

David says: I am not sure I trust the general public, or more aptly the audience. There are a lot of television programs that I liked, which got cancelled due to ratings, and more than enough trial verdicts I wish were overturned. The idea of bloggers as journalists and as our “new media” is indeed evolutionary, even revolutionary, but do you really want to have just anybody be your messenger? The idea that we are now relying on our friends and colleagues to help us sift through what is and what is not speaks volumes as to how overwhelming this has become.

The online video space has come full circle. Much like television in the 1950’s, a whole new generation is re-discovering this visual medium and how it can be exploited. Media people are elated. The Internet has doubled back a point in time, a paradigm, which they not only understand, but can sell, albeit in much smaller chunks.