The Discussion About “Social Media” as a Meme
February 17, 2007 by Chris Heuer
Once again, the use of the term Social Media is under scrutiny by some of the loudest voices in the blogosphere. Robert Scoble’s post “what is social media” seems to have reignited a thread that Jeremiah Owyang started a couple of weeks ago that I responded to with my post, Is It Really Called Social Media, Yes!. Yes Dare Obasanjo is right, the Social Media entry in Wikipedia is woefully lacking, and there are many other very insightful points to consider in that conversation which point out reasons to be vigilant. Rather than diving in to a tit for tat on everyone’s points which would take me all day, I had a great conversation with Brian Solis this morning about a post he is writing which lead me to write this comment for Robert’s blog, which I decided to post here as well…
Many early adopters are worried that the very idea of authentic human engagement, based on trust and conversations between individual’s via the Internet will be corrupted in the way that the original spirit of netiquette was corrupted by spammers – that real world social problems like greed and predatory behaviour will infect our idealistic utopia, ruining it for everyone. They surely have reason to be concerned, even though they are not being completely practical - nor are many focusing their anger at the right people. As Brian Solis pointed out to me this morning “most of the people that need to hear these things, are not even participants in this conversation, and therein lies the problem.” Worse, those other people will see many of the angriest voices as indicative of a more serious problem with how things are today and won’t ever respond in a way that will let them really understand why it is important.
This is why we need to come together, acting like paramedia, in groups like ours and others with their different and overlapping interests, to illuminate what is right and and to point out what is wrong – to have conversations like this in our global neighborhood around the question of why things are and how we think they should really be. To hold up those who really ‘get it’ as examples to be followed and analyze things like WalMarting Across America for why it is so wrong.
We need not throw out the term Social Media for the mere fact that some people will sour its intention and purpose during the course of socializing the deeper understanding of what is happening and what it means. The worst of the arguments I see against the term is seemingly inspired by a desire to be a part of a select group of early adopters associated with a phrase that is only being used on the edge by the cool kids – ie, our clique has no room for all you ‘squares’. There is much value in this bath water, and I think our baby on this journey across the chasm is called Social Media.
Let’s stand up for what is right about “social media” rather than tearing it down just because a few misguided folks are misappropriating the meme. Better still, let’s not get all caught up in trying to control the message around the phrase – isn’t that part of what many are fighting against anyway – the right of people in the world to choose how they tell the story? Kind of ironic that so many ‘defenders’ of the spirit of what we are doing are in fact engaging with the same controlling mindset as those they are attacking. We can get all caught up in the semantic analysis and attempt to create a taxonomy for “social media” or we can stop trying to control it all and watch what emerges, accelerating the good bits and putting the kebosh on the bad. The world is often grey and mushy, especially when it comes to emergent memes such as this…
The big problem with Social Media is the Name. Social as in having to go to the family dinner where the drunk uncle is going to show up and try and feel up your partner.
Media as in tainted with the Main Stream Media, which is in itself is enough to sink it as a meme that will gain any serious traction, as the majority of participants are ‘individuals’ who are posting to the web.
The assumption that folks as you put it:
“Many early adopters are worried that the very idea of authentic human engagement, based on trust and conversations between individual’s via the Internet will be corrupted” is one of those ‘are you still beating your wife’ questions, and is disengenous as you have already decided upon a definition and are presenting bird of a feather arguments to support it.
Everybody does this so don’t feel too bad. It is one of the phases that one goes through on the web.
Another way to look at this is to proclaim that 100% of the people on the web use keyboards. Since you have a keyboard, you are one of the cool kids too.
What you have here is not a ‘failure to communicate’, but a ‘failure to understand communication’.
But hey, good luck with that….
Hi Alan - thanks for stopping by - you are a smart guy with many valuable insights, and I appreciate you taking the time to comment here.
The underlying problem with this issue is that you can’t please all the people all the time - I still detest the use of Web 2.0 as a term, as do many others I know, but we begrudgingly use it as convenient short hand. People who are beyond your control are going to do things with your phrases and your brands - just ask Thomas Vanderwal about some of the very incorrect uses of the term folksonomy.
Further, everyone has certain words and phrases that bring up negative impressions, regardless of the usage of the words by others. To that extent, I can understand where Alan is coming from on this. But if we replaced ‘Main Stream Media’ with ‘Independent Media’, isn’t there a different feeling around it? Isn’t it something that more people are enthusiastic about and wanting? If instead of being social with the family and dealing with the drunk uncle, we thought about the word in the context of an ice cream social, isn’t that a different feeling too? Regardless, this goes to the point that we can’t control the message - every individual’s experience will naturally filter what you are trying to say and impact how they will respond to you and your communications.
In regards to what Alan believes is my assumption, all I can say is that it is actually based on conversations with people like Stowe Boyd and other early bloggers who have expressed this concern using their own language - which is why I paraphrased instead of quoted. I did not say MOST, or ALL, I said MANY, as in a notch above SEVERAL, which is representative of some people I have spoken to and other things I have read online. Perhaps it would have been better to say ‘SOME’, but again, we end up wasting time in semantic arguments rather than getting down to the meat of the matter. Where the point I was trying to make is ignored and summarily dismissed for the use of one word over another. Then again, I am making an assumption about Alan’s real concern with that statement, since it was dismissed offhand I don’t really know. It may be that the problem lies in the deeper discussion around the role of authentic engagement, or it may be that he, as an early adopter, is not worried about that problem, but I can’t tell because more attention is made to dismissing the whole (and me) rather than moving the discussion forward.
As to having already decided what it means, I would hope you might allow for me to share my thoughts on what I think it means without casting me as disingenuous for doing so. If you are referencing an incongruity between the headline of the post, and my commentary on this issue, you might note that this post started out as a comment, and is indeed my commentary on the subject. More analysis of the broader discussion, with a fair analysis of both sides of the issue and some suggestions on moving forward, is forthcoming.
Since I have been thinking about the use of the term Social Media for quite some time, and talking about it with people all over the world, it goes without question that I have made some decisions on this point. Still, as I said in the post above, the term is emergent - so let’s watch what emerges to accelerate the good bits and slow down the bad.
Alan, it would be great to share a few beers and talk about this some more - I imagine we might see you on Wed 2/28 in Phoenix where we can chat and hopefully laugh about it all a bit. You truly do have some valuable insights on your blog, SEVERAL/SOME of which I can actually agree with and other’s I don’t.
Chris,
I will be happy to get together in Phoenix, Looking forward to March 1st.
We can beat this thing up some more. I think we are basically on the same page in tool usage, it is the end game where I think we diverge.
Chris … It strikes me as a little ironic that the same folks railing against the social media term are probably also proponents of social tagging (letting folks name stuff according to their world view). If we all believe that tagging is an efficient and effective way to categorize information, it would seem over time “social media” will either grow to mean something increasingly specific — or the term may just go away in favor of something else. We can all agree the term is certainly not perfect, but if we have to pick two words to get people talking and thinking about the complex ideas and technologies imbedded within them, Social Media seems to be doing just fine right now. Just my2cents.
[...] Chris Heuer also held a passionate discussion on why Social Media matters, “Let’s stand up for what is right about “social media” rather than tearing it down just because a few misguided folks are misappropriating the meme. We need not throw out the term Social Media for the mere fact that some people will sour its intention and purpose during the course of socializing the deeper understanding of what is happening and what it means.” [...]