Reflections on SMC Atlanta Event

Last night’s Social Media Club meeting focused on the the changing face of media, and a phrase ending with “…the people formerly known as the audience.” The setup was a little different than usual, because we had a set topic and a slate of specific presenters (Steve Riley from WSB-TV and Marlon Manuel from the AJC) rather than the usual and flatter setup of all “participants” who might also be presenters as part of the meeting. The objective was to look at how those organizations view the current media space, and that’s why we had them set up as panelists. That did serve to change things up…

To read more of the story, please visit the Earthlink blog.

Social Media Club Forming Leadership Council

Brief update on our members and co-founders call this morning.  We have created a page on the Wiki for the Leadership Council which will be the public place to stay up to date on what is happening with the organization as we move forward and evolve the organization.  It seems our work over the past year now has garnered enough interest that there are some great people interested in contributing to our success and volunteering to lead the Club into its next phase of growth.

Thank you everyone who joined the call.  Unfortunately, my Skype recording plan did not work so we do not have an audio record of the call, but we can rectify this for future calls.

Why did Ragan Really Delete the SMC Group?

This morning someone forwarded me the latest press release from Ragan Communications promoting the MyRagan site and yesterday someone forwarded me an email from Ragan promoting their next social media conference. In both cases, Ragan is claiming to be the first. The first social network for PR Professionals, and the first social media conference for PR Professionals. Why isn’t anyone else calling him out for these plain and simple untruths that are clearly indicative of his bravado and boastfulness. Why isn’t anyone pointing out to them that being a MySpace clone is really not all that great a claim? Why are they touting Strumpette’s effuse praise…. in a press release?

Could the real reason that they deleted the Social Media Club group on My Ragan be because they were about to start heavily promoting the site and selling their educational events and did not want to have the largest group on the site be from someone they view as a competitor? Funny thing Mark, you said, and your own Blogger Dave Murray quoted you on this, that you would help me promote the club and our workshop through your site. Mark Ragan said at that time, referring to me and Social Media Club, “I don’t fear you”. How should people interpret your words and actions Mark?

For others who think this is a ‘dustup’ between myself and Mark, you are very mistaken – this is a matter of someone using their power to control the conversation, now employing spin meisters to pull the wool over people’s eyes. This is a matter of transparency, truthiness and trust that is much more important than me or you or even him. This is a question of how we want the world to be, and how we want corporations to communicate with the world – is it going to really be about conversation, or is it going to be about the rouse of conversation as a front for the same old, same old BS.

Social Media Now: Blogosphere No More!

Two indications that the heyday of the “blogosphere” is over this week.

First came the rapid rise and seven figure sale of WallStrip. From an industry perspective this is vlogging’s “Dan Rather” moment. I expect a lot of heat around vlogs in the next few months. DIY Internet media always proceeds from easiest to produce/lowest bandwidth text based stuff, up through harder to produce bandwidth hogs. Its time for strong, semi-pro vlogs to climb up into the mainstream the way political blogs did a few years ago.

Second comes today’s Technorati redesign. Technorati founder Dave Sifry writes:

Whereas folks using Technorati a couple of years ago were predominantly coming to us to search the blogosphere to surface the conversations that were most interesting to them, today they are increasingly coming to our site to get the 360 degree context of the Live Web – blogs of course, but also user-generated video, photos, podcasts, music, games and more. They want all the good stuff out there, all in real-time, and we’re using the power of 80 million bloggers to help organize it and make it fun to browse; using the wisdom of crowds as a mirror on ourselves.

Technorati made itself the arbiter of success in the blogosphere by inventing a kind of blog economy where links were the currency. But the company’s own research showed the growth of blogs slowing and new kinds of metainformation (like tags) replacing links in the value chain.

Steve Rubel’s experience summarizes the situation nicely:

…I have to admit that I don’t use Technorati nearly as much as I used to. Link authority was a good metric a year ago, but it’s not nearly as worthwhile today when you consider all of the centers of influence one may wish to search and track. Link authority doesn’t tell me who’s an influencer on Facebook or which video artists are rising on YouTube. It was great in 2005, ok in 2006 and really has faded from relevance in 2007.

At the heart of the new Technorati is the goal of truly live search of the live Web across all its platforms (text, audio, video) and all it’s meta-information sources (keywords, tags, directories), a universal search that goes head to head with Google’s strategy, a losing proposition to Rubel who says “the heyday of dedicated “live web” search engines like Technorati is coming to a close.”

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch reads the redesign similarly:

This is also a clear move by Technorati away from blog search, although many of the media search features have been around for a while. It may be an acknowledgment that they can’t beat Google Blogsearch over the long run, or it may be a strategy to go after a larger potential market for time sensitive content. Or both….

All signs are that Technorati is continuing to look for a replacement to Sifry, the founding CEO, and rumors that the company is looking for a buyer persist despite denials from the company.

But Robert Scobble kicked the tires at the new Technorati and was impressed:

Technorati does “Live” search MUCH MUCH better than Microsoft and even better than Google’s Blog Search.

I predict that, with this update, Technorati will become a quick takeover target. If I were at Microsoft I’d be spending a few corporate hours wining and dining Dave Sifry.

Technorati is so superior to all the other blog search engines now that it isn’t even funny.

Can’t wait to spend some time with it.

Gifts for dad for around $100

• Personalized American Eagle (Valadium) Men’s Ring
• J.A. Henckels Black Fine Edge Pro 13-pc. Block Knife Set
• Lexmark All-in-One Photo Printer Copier Scanner – White/Silver (P4350)
• Casio Atomic Solar G-Shock Digital Watch
• Pandigital Digital Picture Frame, 6″ 1 ea
• Professional membership of the Social Media Club

Don’t worry. This isn’t spam. And I have no affiliate links to any of the above. $100 doesn’t go very far these days, according to the ‘Gifts for Dad’ page on Yahoo at least (where the first 5 links came from). While it is always great to get things for free, you eventually come to realise what you value most. If you value the Social Media Club then please support it – ideally financially, but even an encouraging comment goes a long way!

Make sure the kids know which gift you would value most on Fathers Day (my husband is getting a rather interesting construction of egg boxes which I’m sure he will treasure!)

The Evolution of Social Media Club

It is with great sorrow that I write this post today. I have been searching for a business partner to help me realize some of my visions for many, many years, and in Howard Greenstein I thought I had found “the one”. He is a bright guy that has been through this before and has many of the skills that are really well suited for this type of work, but he wasn’t happy, so I must respect that.

As Howard so eloquently expressed in his post, the reality of running a community organization from day to day is much different than the idealism that inspired it. The vision of improving the world around us by bringing people together to share their understanding of the emerging Social Media market is vastly different than trying to manage a global network of local groups and online activities without sufficient resources.

The main reason for not announcing this sooner is that I needed time to reflect on the situation and on how my path might change as a result of this news – on what this really means for me, personally and professionally. When I met Howard, I was looking for a CEO to take the reigns and build the organization – to operationalize the vision and allow me to be the visionary, evangelist and thinker – to let me focus on my strengths and mitigate my weaknesses. As anyone who has personally met me will tell you, I am a fairly self-aware sort of guy, and I am very clearly aware that managing an organization and all the little details is not one of my natural strengths. Though I have done it before and could do it again, I just don’t want to –I want to be happy doing what makes my heart sing, and I know what that is and what it doesn’t.

While Howard’s observations are indeed true, there is of course more to this – a sort of more which Howard politely avoids bringing to light, but which radical transparency compels me to note. One of the ideas I have been evangelizing around the knowledge economy for the past several years is that “the number one factor of creating value in the knowledge economy is the ability of smart people to collaborate effectively.” We just never hit our stride, with different work styles, different ideas of success and the geographic challenges Howard mentioned contributing to the difficulties we faced.

Personally, I have gone from the high’s of the dream and all its possibilities to the reality of not enough resources, mounting personal debt and the struggles of being overwhelmed each day with too much to do. In short, I am tired and ready to find another way forward, to take this in stride and make a course correction that will let us accomplish the goals of improving media literacy and hosting conversations amongst social media professionals and those seeking to learn.

Unfortunately, I too must step down, or more aptly, I need to step back so that I might be able to make a living, pay for some of my wedding and pay for my monthly living expenses. I have focused too much on trying to do things for the community and not taken care of myself properly. I did this with my first startup, only I gave employees salaries when I could not afford to take one, learning the hard way how wrong this was. The thing is, that if we had money to pay people, I probably would have made that same mistake again (especially to get you involved Dave).

So what does this mean for Social Media Club? In the short term, nothing – monthly meetings will continue, we will continue to blog to the sites, we will complete development of our new social network through drupal and I am still responsible for shepherding the vision forward. All this really means is that I can not spend all my waking moments thinking about how to build the club and can no longer afford to hold out hope that I will soon be getting a salary from Social Media Club. Instead, I need to invest my attention in promoting myself as a Social Media consultant, customer advocate and social software architect/analyst – as a big thinker, new media marketing maven. I need more consulting gigs or I need to find the right job for my unique talents – both of which I am immediately moving towards and will write more about shortly. Sucess here will let me continue to cultivate the club as a part time endeavour.

We will continue pressing onward with the Social Media Workshop Series – this is a great event we have designed, and we will be working on doing several more cities in the fall such as Austin, Boston and New York.

I will soon be announcing more details (and seeking more input) on our new community site, to be run on Drupal, which will provide real value to the membership and value for the membership dollars already received.

I am now investigating how Social Media Club might be reorganized as a 501(c)6, a non-profit designation for trade associations which will make Social Media Club a member owned organization, or put another way, a sort of co-op. This was a large part of my original vision for the club, which I confided in private with many who can verify this idea. I think members of the club should benefit from the value we co-create with one another. I alluded to this in part in my comment on the Social Media Now “when users attack” post.

In closing, while this is very difficult in the short term, Social Media Club is not going away, we just need to find a new path forward together – and I will need your help to do so. I still have very high hopes that Social Media Club will accomplish its mission and fully serve the community in the way I had intended, but to continue to try to do things in the same manner as I have, would surely be proof that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the epitome of ‘being crazy’.

If you are a co-founder, I really need your help more than your dollars. If you are a local leader and not yet a paying member, please consider doing so in order to help move the organization forward – it will be a requirement of the new organizational structure as it takes shape, so we should all have some ’skin in the game’. Stay tuned for more to come later this week, but more importantly, join the conversation about what we can do together as a community on the Social Media Club mailing list…

Stepping down as CEO of Social Media Club

On May 1st, after I had a conversation with Chris Heuer, he wrote “Conversations take time, managing them takes energy.”

This is true in so many ways. In fact, Chris captured this critical fact:

“… we have had to expend so much energy in managing the Club to host conversations about Social Media, that we have little time to actually produce it or to be fully engaged in the conversations about it, even though it is all around [us] every day.”

This has been bothering me for weeks now. I enjoy blogging and writing about Web 2.0 and Social Media. I am listed as the CEO of Social Media Club, and expected by all to be blogging, podcasting, vlogging, talking with members, going to member meetings, and in general being out there with the people doing Social Media. The reality of a time-constrained startup life is that I can accomplish only a few things every day, and creating media has fallen to the bottom of the list .

When I signed up to manage the day-to-day affairs of Social Media Club, I intended to participate in the industry. I hoped to learn from great people in the communication arts, to synthesize and share my knowledge on a regular basis with the club and the public, and to help others make great connections. The day to day is very different. I’ve realized that running an association is not the same participating in the industry for which it serves.

For all of the technological advances of 2007, with video cameras built into laptop screens, and almost-always on wifi, geography is also a challenge. Chris is in San Francisco, and I’m in New York, and working together across miles and time zones takes a huge amount of energy and has proven a logistical challenge. While we both love working with each other, we have very different working styles.

We have mutually decided that I will step back and Chris as majority owner (and rightfully so, considering his investment in time and captial) will run Social Media Club (he’ll discuss how he will do that in his post). I will continue to work on the New York chapter along with some other volunteers. I also will continue to vocally and blatantly cheerlead for Social Media Club. I will participate in the local-leader and co-founder calls and wikis. I look forward to teaching what I know at the upcoming Social Media Workshops. Chris and I will continue some small consulting projects we have started, or which have come looking for us. I will also be consulting on my own, helping companies understand Social Media especially where it meets customer evangelism. I’ll also continue providing personal and executive coaching services, especially with entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.

I think Social Media as an industry has a very large growth path, and I want to help companies who are part of the industry. I also believe that Social Media Club will play a large role in that growth, connecting companies and resources, establishing standards and educating participants. These are all exciting challenges and I look forward to the success that Chris and Social Media Club will have in taking them on.

My future, as Obi Wan Kenobi once said, lies on a different path.

Chris Heuer on RSS Ray Today (May 23)

I am really excited about being on RSS Ray’s show tomorrow, and glad to focus my attention on the fun parts of my work – helping more people learn and understand how communications is changing as a profession to be effective in a world where the company is no longer in control (or holding onto the illusion of control). Of course, we will talk a little bit about Social Media Club as well, but I hope to focus the talk on those trends and transformations that are of ‘greater significance’ here more so than myself and the club. Lee Hopkins wrote about a portion of my perspective on this the other day, but the original post was removed – and there is a bit more you can read about on my old consulting company site (not updated for a long, long time). I have been thinking about “The Communications Strategy” for a long time, and many of the things I only envisioned when forming these ideas are actually now a part of the toolbox. Wiki’s, blogs, tools for measring influence, better distribution and so much more are a part of our everyday lives now…

From my few conversations with Ray and listening to a few of the archived shows you can download, Ray is a really sharp guy and has a great team working with him on his show. (I wish I could get a producer like Stacey!)

So tune in tomorrow, or if you can’t be there live, go back and download the podcast – I love this stuff and can’t wait to do more of it…

PS – this is my first real radio interview in about 10 years…

PPS – no, I won’t be talking about that other story, we are going to focus on marketing and how it is changing and more importantly, how communicators need to change with it. [blatant_plug] I will be revealing a bit about “Listen. Join. Start.” The Social Media Playbook for Professional Communicators which is at the heart of our Social Media Workshop on June 11 [/blatant_plug]

Update: My Interview with RSS Ray Segment 3 — My Interview with RSS Ray Segment 4

Social Media Club No Longer Welcomed at MyRagan

Since I have received a few emails from some members already, let me just say I am disappointed that Mark Ragan has decided to take this action.  I have setup Social Media Club groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning and many other social networking sites, so that members who use those services can come together to further the goals of the club.  Mark invited me to create a group on his “myspace” clone a few weeks ago, and even invited me to promote our Workshop through it.

Since becoming the largest group on MyRagan, Mark has apparently changed his mind, because the group (and my profile) was represented by the Social Media Club logo.  His post to the group (which he deleted after my response to this message) read:

We are recreating the Social Media Club tomorrow and re-naming it to read simply: Social Media Tools and Strategies.

The current logo for the club is giving the impression that we are somehow selling this space to an advertiser.  We are not. These groups are designed as non-commercial places where free discussion can flow without fear of being pitched. 

Your moderator will be Ragan editor Bill Sweetland.

Because we are changing the name of the club, you will all have to join it again. But, as you know, this only takes a few seconds. Look forward to seeing you back here soon.

Mark Ragan
CEO
MyRagan.com

There is more to say about this of course, but for now, just wanted to let you know that if you want to talk more about this, please join the main Social Media Club mailing list or of course, comment here.  I wish I could still have the message I sent in reply to him, but since it was deleted before the conversation could even begin, it is lost. I am sure I was not overly polite in it, but I was definitely speaking to the truth of the situation.  This is apparently not a MySpace clone at all – it now just seems like a social network established for the purpose of selling Ragan rather than serving the interests of the community as he originally told me.
Truth is though, it is his site and his rules so he can do what he wants with it and there is nothing to do about it except leave.  We will simply take our conversation elsewhere and I will move on so we don’t waste anymore energy on such things…

Social Media Now: How Much is DIY Talent Worth?

Is DIY Internet video a new media type? Or just a minor league development system for traditional media?

The announcement that CBS is acquiring Wallstrip, a business group vlog covering stocks, sure looks like the classic minor league or indie rock development path. Wallstrip founder Howard Lindzon tells the rather unremarkable tale of the company’s development on his blog under the headline “You Can Make Money from Blogging!!!” But that headline is a big of misdirection. First, Wallstrip isn’t a blog, it’s a vlog. If it were a blog CBS wouldn’t have been interested. Second, proof that a company will acquire your vlog is hardly proof that the vlog can make money.

I don’t mean to dis WallStrip–in fact I’ve never seen one of its vidcasts and my friend Fred Wilson is involved and I know he has impeccable taste when it comes to Internet companies. I just want to put the deal in perspective for all the new media triumphalists out there who insist that Internet video is killing the TV stars. It looks more like Internet video is creating TV stars. And, as Om Malik points out, “the Wallstrip deal does put a price tag on these ‘talent’ oriented buyouts.” The price for the Wallstrip talent acquisition was $5 million according to reports, but what exactly is CBS buying? Said Duncan Riley at Techcrunch:

From my previous discussions with my source close to the deal, WallStrip has close to no revenue; indeed he claimed that WallStrip has no revenue at all. The cost of CBS or other media outlets establishing a rival video blog to WallStrip would be relatively low and CBS now faces that real threat, the purchase of WallStrip bound to create new startups targeting the investor focused video podcasting market.

I think I understand CBS’s thinking. The company needs to prepare content for the new Internet video distribution channels sprouting like mushrooms (like AOL and Joost). It needs a team that understands how to make content that suits that form and feed the monster, and the Wallstrip team has proven it can produce video if not revenue.

But if getting a pretty girl to read news and commentary online is worth $5 million….well, any pretty girls out there interesting in starting a social media vlog?

 

Facebook Opens Up: MySpace may be the biggest operation in the social media business, but Facebook is the best.

At every step of the way the company has made the right decisions, at least according to my standing focus group–my 15 year old daughter and her friends. Staying elite before going open kept the creeps out. Keeping the nav and design clean make it quick and easy to use where, according to the girls MySpace was clunky and slow to load.  Today my daughter keeps a ghost MySpace page (I wonder how many MySpace members are, in fact, vestigial), but she and her friends live their lives on Facebook.

Now the company is apparently ready to open itself to third party developers who will do everything from widget building to social shopping, as yesterday’s WSJ story noted. If there were social shopping on Facebook my daughter and her friends would never visit Amazon or J.Crew; if there were music recommendation and downloading they’d never go to iTunes.

Yesterday’s WSJ  piece was the kind of Monday morning leak that only reporters at the WSJ and the NYT get, and it touched off a lot of speculation as to the true nature of Facebook’s new program, which will supposedly be unveiled on Thursday.

Tony Hung described it as a “reverse API” strategy:

But, what is Facebook doing?

Its letting *other* companies build mashups *for* Facebook *within* Facebook, and then not sharing any revenues (if any are made) with that company.

Wow.

Whatever you call it and however it shakes out, Facebook’s strategy is 180 degrees opposed MySpace’s vertical integration strategy of buying backend service providers.

Link Love:

Sharing the Widget Wealth
Change.org, The Network for Political Change

Second Life

I’ve been hanging around in Second Life lately. My avatar, Chauncey Barkkorn, is an omnivore. He’s a 28-year-old male. But I am not, and I am finding the interface daunting, although friends in both SL and RL are helping. It took me a long time just to dress Chauncey and choose his appearance, and now I am learning to move him around to places I want to go, rather than places someone will teleport me to. Although right now Second Life appears useless to me, I am confident that it’s going to be important in the future, and thus I am going to study it.

I’m sure I am not alone. So the next meeting of Social Media Club Phoenix will feature Steven Groves, a long time marketing professional who has taken it upon himself to learn Second Life in detail and share it with the group. Steve is in touch with someone on Second Life who has developed a tool for determining marketing ROI in SL, and he will share it with everybody on June 14 at 6:30 PM at Jobing.com where we meet.

This idea for a meeting theme is shamelessly plagiarized from our own Chris Heuer.

How to turn 2 minutes into profit from information products online

Probably due to the fact that I lived for seven years in Germany, and for much of that time my English lanuage radio fix was provided exclusively via crackly Long Wave by BBC World Service, I adore podcasts and am rarely in transit without white wires hanging from my ears.  One of my favourites is Internet Business Mastery, by Sterling and Jay.  The content value is so high that I put off listening to their programme until I know that I will have the opportunity to take notes! 

So I was intrigued to learn that Sterling and Jay are developing a training course including “techniques that are critical in the new internet landscape like blogging, podcasting, social media and many other Web 2.0 techniques that most internet marketing courses don’t include.”  This struck a chord with me as I recently invested in the Internet Marketing Center’s Insider Secrets course.  Actually, Internet Business Mastery first recommended Insider Secrets to me, and it wasn’t until the second recommendation that I bought it despite the overly-zealous sales copy.  Although I learned a huge amount from it, I personally would have valued more social media ideas, and in particular, more guidence on profiting from selling information products online.  Which is where Sterling and Jay come in …

If you have two minutes to spare, and you are interested in being put on the early notification list for what I anticipate to be a great training package, fill out this simple survey.  You will be asked to rate on a scale of 1-5 your interest on 10 factors, such as branding yourself as an expert in your niche, or building a community around your site.  You will also have the chance to vote for the course format which is of most value to you: a mailed audio-visual course; a six-part weekly teleseminar; or a six-part weekly online seminar.  Finally, there’s one more time consuming question – if you have an opinion – on the one main thing you would like to get out of such a course.  For me, I’d like some guidence on the sorts of people I need on my team to get my community concepts off the business plan and onto the internet.  I’m thinking web designers, copywriters, email marketers, business angels, content management suppliers, but what are the testing criteria for who to employ, who to subcontract, which roles I absolutely must do myself, and where these people need to be physically located.  I got my question in early, so I’m hoping Sterling and Jay can offer me some answers.

 

Second Life: How Virtual Worlds Create Real World Value (mtg in SF)

At last month’s Podcast Hotel, I finally had a chance to catch up with good friends Ted Tagami and Kathleen Craig, who have been moving at warp speed working for Millions of Us producing some amazing work inside Second Life for some very, very big brands. After delving into the practical business value and the utopian ideals of virtual worlds which many of us have been discussing for over a decade, I invited him to speak at this month’s San Francisco Social Media Club meeting to share what they have learned so far from their real world experiences.

This is going to be the sort of meeting you don’t want to miss. So please join us On Thursday May 24 from 6-830pm at Adobe’s SOMA HQ for a presentation and discussion on Second Life and the potential for virtual worlds to deliver real world business value. Ted Tagami will lead the presentation which will be followed by a round table discussion and a live Exploration of Second Life. Ted will be joined by his Millions of Us colleagues – Mat Small, Director of PR, and Kathleen Craig, Producer. During Ted’s presentation, we will hear different case studies of how brands have been able to successfully enter Second Life.

As always, the round table format is meant to be interactive, where everyone has a chance to ask questions, share their personal experiences and add their perspective to the conversation.  If the group is fairly large, we will break into smaller groups for more intimate discussions, but since we will be “in world” for most of the presentation, are striving to keep the group together.
Special Thanks to Adobe and Crimson Consulting for sponsoring the San Francisco meeting. We are looking forward to seeing you on Thursday. Please do register here so we can let Adobe know who is coming and prepare the room accordingly.

Co-Founder Membership Opportunity Ending on June 30

Just a quick note for anyone who was considering becoming a co-founder of Social Media Club as an individual or a business.  We are going to be making many announcements next week about the next phase of this experiment in organizational formation via Social Media, some very exciting and some a bit disappointing. But that is reality, to smell the beauty of the rose, it often has to grow through a lot of stinky manure…

Anyhoo, some people have been asking, and some people have been joining as Professional Co-Founders, including Conrad Hametner, Brenda Thompson, Randy Stewart and Stewart Pratt.  Also, both Bryght and One by One Media have recently joined as Small Business Co-Founders.

While we have not brought in enough membership dues or sponsorships yet to afford a salary for myself or our fantastic editor of Social Media Now, Jason Chervokas, it has been enough to start development on the new community site for the club, cover some of the expenses of formation and some travel expenses to keep the club growing.  The thing is, when we launch the new site, I think the membership will begin to swell – it really is that compelling and the value proposition of membership will be made very clear and very real.

So I really want to reward all of the people who took a real leap of faith, in a new and unproven organizatiion, based on the strength of a few key ideas, a strong sense of shared values and the vision of one person that has become a shared understanding of many.

Also please note that ALL paid memberships registered before June 30, will have their membership extended through the end of 2008.  It is not about getting more money from those of you have really been the co-founders, it is about the gratitude I feel for all of my friends and colleagues who have been kind enough to support this idea with more than words and links – those who have opened their hearts and their wallets (or paypal accounts) to contribute to the modicum of success we have enjoyed so far.  You have given a chance for life to this thing we call Social Media Club and have given me reasons to smile – and eventhough we have not been able to get as much done as I had hoped over the past few months, you have continued to support us rather than berate us.

So to you, and the many others who have promised me they were registering or getting their company to join, I say a profound and hearty THANK YOU.
If you have considered becoming a co-founder of Social Media Club but not pulled the trigger, pay attention to what happens over the next couple of weeks and be sure to join as a member before June 30 – after that time, the co-founder’s will be who the co-founders are…

Social Media Now: Virtual Religion

James Au, whose pioneering beat for Reuters is Second Life, has a fascinating story this morning about the rise and apparent fall of Avatars of Change, one of the first native religious orders to be formed in SL.

The group was founded  as a Neo-Confucian “ecumenical religious and cultural order, united by the Avatarian Way.” It’s membership is interdenominational and it’s practices seem to be centered around consulting an I Ching-based, software oracle.

Au’s story revolves around a controvert sparked when the group’s founder (an offline Christian whose avatar is Taras Balderdash, a gray-bearded Asian man in a silk robe with a blue dragon on his shoulder) asked group members to vote on a proposition that would bar Muslims on the basis of the proposition that Islam is inherently intolerant and therefore not “Avatarian.”:

“There are many jewels of Moslem culture,” he avers. “Music, Sufi mysticism, etc., but the world is now dealing with the youthful energy of its fundamentalism. What I am hoping to hear from our Avatarians is a positive argument against my position; someone who argues, based on the Quran, that I am wrong. So far all I’ve got is constant reminders of other religions being intolerant, particularly Roman Catholic Christianity.”  Taras considers this an evasion of the point. “I am interested in the theology. People are people, whatever their faith, and God loves them all. But what hope do we have that a tolerant Moslem theology will win out?”

The vote, which is scheduled to conclude this Sunday, naturally sparked controversy in SL.

(Au interviews a Sufi, Drown Pharaoh, who leads regular prayers in an SL mosque, whose response to AoC paints the group’s vote as an extension of old western Orientalism. If the exchange reads as an argument among theology students that’s because it is. Drown Pharaoh identifies himself in the story as “a religious studies graduate and a committed member of an interfaith community on SL, Koinonia.” The discussion is fascinating, and it mirrors offline debates about the nature of Islam and about who is entitled to speak for Muslims.)

And enough of an AoC membership revolt that the religion appears to be collapsing. From Au’s interview with Taras  Balderdash:

My questioning the tolerance of Islam for other faiths has produced such grief and chaos that I have rethought the concept of the the Avatars of Change and left the Order,” he told me late yesterday. “I am just a monk now. The Order is falling apart pretty rapidly, so I’m not sure how much of it will survive without me.”

I’m less interested in the theological debate–which mirrors debates in the offline world about the nature of Islam and who has the right to speak about a given faith–then I am in the nature of religion formation in virtual worlds. In an environment where there is no real death, where nothing is random, and there is no mystery as to the creation of the universe, what role could a native religion play?  One sign that social media is truly transformative–not just a new way of doing old things, but a new kind of culture–would be the rise of a native spirituality. But do people’s avatars have spiritual needs that are different in nature from the needs of their humans? Or is there some kind of spiritual practice native to cyberspace that can offer something missing in the real world?

I wish I had the answers. Stay tuned.

Next Page »