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…

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Conversations take time, managing them takes energy

There are a lot of people I have met over the past few years who have asked the proverbial question, “Who has time to blog?”

For me, the answer lately has been ‘not me’ - though I continue link blogging here, photo blogging and Twittering because it takes little effort and can be fit in between other tasks and activities. In a meeting with Shel Israel this afternoon, Shel pointed out how woefully out of touch I am with what he has been writing about lately - which is embarrasing because I am working with him on our first Social Media Club Workshop series and I genuinely find his blog well written and insightful.

As some of you know, I don’t regularly use an RSS reader, though I probably should - the thing is, not being a regular RSS Feed Reader works as a blanket excuse for why I am not up to date on the happenings of the 1,000+ people I have met and would like to follow if I had the time. For the past few months, I have not had the time to do 80% of what I would like to be doing and about 60% of what I must be doing. In fact, I had a conversation yesterday with some friends about how 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, eventhough it is all around me every day.

This brings me back to one of the drums I have been beating for a long time - the purpose of an organization is to organize resources (human, capital and systemic) to complete tasks that serve the needs of a group of people. The organization should be managing resources to complete activities that ensure desired outcomes. The trouble is, that most organizations are managing too few resources in support of too many activities, resulting in the inevitable opportunities slipping through the cracks, and a lower level of quality in the outcomes being produced. This requires decreasing the number of expected outcomes (focus) and gaining better utilization of the resources at your disposal, which actually takes more time to do effectively…

So this is where I come to the title of my post - the conversations take time, which there is little of while investing the majority of your energy in the management (and development) of a (fledgling) organization. This is ultimately one of the main reasons why many business people ask the question about having time to blog. Given the fact that they are already employing too few resources against too many activities, how can another communications channel, that takes real time to cultivate, be properly engaged?

From my perspective, this points to a real need to ensure that everyone understands the roles they fulfill, and that they are part of a team with adequate authority and available time to participate in the conversation, with enough energy dedicated to manage where and when and with whom conversations should be taking place. I know of a few companies out there that are starting to properly staff and realign their management responsibilities to do this right such as Lenovo and Dell, but am wondering who else is out there investing the time and energy it takes to not only do this, but to do it right.

Do you know of any good case studies in regards to staffing for conversations with customers? What about organizations that understand the value of conversations with customers and the need to invest the management energy in cultivating better conversations?

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Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Saw a Tweet from Jeremiah Owyang giving a nod to his boss John Furrier for standing up for his team, and then saw Robert Scoble’s post at the heart of it all, telling people he was going to hang out in the hallway at Microsoft’s Mix 07 Conference since he did not have a conference pass. Apparently, Alfred Thompson thinks that conferences like Mix 07 should only be attended by and reported on, by “people inside the trenches”, “whose business it is to not only understand but use this technology?” He sees little value to the media, and thinks Robert “is a writer for the popular press no real different from some reporter from Wired magazine.” (he also thinks Robert is a nice guy, so don’t go jumping on him for expressing his opinion)

You can think whatever you want about Robert, even insist that he has no real influence in the mainstream portions of society and that he is only important within the Blogosphere’s echo chamber, but that is missing the real point. You can’t marginalize anyone based on the role they are serving in society, especially when that someone has proven themselves to be a good person, worthy and deserving of the trust placed in them by others to shape their opinions of the world. Einstein was famously a patent clerk. Hundreds of important contributors to the advancement of society have held mundane, or even ‘dirty’ jobs.

This is not about Robert and Alfred though, this is about the need to respect other people and not be dismissive of the potential value they can contribute out of hand, for the title they hold or role they serve. For too long we have easily dismissed ‘the media’, ‘the marketing people’, ‘the geeks’ and, as Mary Hodder talked about on her panel at Podcast Hotel the other day, ‘the others’ because they are not like us.

Now, from reading the conversation (via the comments), it seems that Alfred is a pretty decent guy, honest and genuine - but when I read statements such as “Don’t you really want to hear from someone like you?”, it makes me cringe. This is, of course, ok because we like hanging out with people like us, they are our friends, our tribes and our families generally, but we should really find a better way to include more diverse perspectives within the context of conferences such as Mix, Web 2.0 and others. To be clear, I don’t feel the same way about conferences on the latest advances in neuroscience, or white-hat hacking or other very focused professional topics. This is not to say that programming is not a professional topic, it is, but the profession of programming includes many levels of skills and areas of expertise that are important for everyone’s success. (DBA, SYSADMIN, CODE, ARCHITECT, UI, QA and ACTIVE USER to name a few)

Over the past several years, one of the things I have been talking to people about is how much economic value (and hard cash) has been wasted as a result of the marketing people and the technical people not getting along. Trillions of dollars have probably been lost as a result of the fact that these two roles are filled by different types of people - people who are not like each other in many ways (not all the time, I know plenty of people who successfully translate between the two groups or who serve both roles). As I have constantly stated, in the knowledge economy the most important aspect of creating value is the ability of smart people to collaborate with one another. The value of cultural diversity is widely known and lauded, but many people often insist on only hearing and participating in monocultural discussions.

BTW - This is not to say that there can be some really silly things that come from people who don’t understand what we are talking about, which is what I believe Alfred is trying to protect against - along with preventing media from misreporting the story. Indeed, we should create contexts in which experts can gather and explore their expertise, going deeper and advancing their industry/market - this is in fact, a part of our vision with Social Media Club as well. The real issue though is that we should work to create contexts for all of these types of conversations to take place and create good signals about them (via tags and syndicated distribution) so that the right sort of people, with similar expectations participate.
From my perspective, Alfred’s point about Blogs (and direct reporting from ‘experts in the trenches’) replacing the need for mainstream media, actually supports the inclusion of people like Robert and other’s who are ‘not like him’ (Alfred). By this I mean to say, that Blogging is transforming the very nature in which we interact with news and knowledge and each other. It is no longer the one way communications of a static newspaper article, but it is a conversation, with ebb and flow, moving the participants to a deeper understanding through the back and forth exchange and thereby correcting mistakes in early reporting and resolving misinterpretations for the benefit of all.
What is it going to take to open up our discussions and our perspectives, to include more divergent observations, insights and points of view?

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Courage, Conflict and Compromise

Another set of 3 C’s - I am beginning to think that C is the most powerful letter in the alphabet… This should be a long post, but there is not enough time to do so, and I promised Nate Ritter from Eventful that I would try to be short with my posts (also means that they are a bit messier, so please forgive me).

Courage

I think this is the most important element that Champions need to make a difference. The courage to face the potential risks for doing the right thing is an incredibly important ingredient towards success. The ‘ask forgiveness instead of permission’ model has been cited more than once privately by a few very senior executives when talking about why what they did worked. Even this morning, during the breakfast I blogged about on Future of Communities, it was the courage to support the lone person who was willing to speak his displeasure that helped to turn the tide of the conversation. Many people felt the same way, but only one person was willing to support the person who risked himself to stand up for what he felt was right.

Conflict

We are really not ever taught how to fight/debate well. I know of some organizations who have specific training in ‘having difficult conversations’, but even they don’t do a good job of addressing the tension that arises from different opinions during a discussion or meeting. We must get better at managing conflict in a respectful way. This starts with the formation of the team and continuously improves through ongoing interactions between the people involved. The more trust that is built amongst the people involved, the better chance the organization has of using conflict as an opportunity to succeed rather than getting derailed.

Compromise

This occurred to me yesterday, and was validated in conversations I had this morning. Why aren’t potentially great products better? The ability of champions to courageously stand up for what they think is right, to navigate through the conflict, to collaborate well with the other stakeholders and ultimately to NOT make bad compromises. The political systems of organizations which employees need to navigate often force them to make compromises in the short term in the hope that it will get corrected in the long term. These are often bad compromises which will neglect the real needs of the consumers for want of not dealing with a very serious challenge or obstacle that can not be overcome easily. Don’t make bad compromises!

What do you think about these three issues? How are you dealing with it in your day to day work? Am I on to something here or just overly obsessive with the letter C lately?

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Is SxSW going to be the death of Twitter?

Just about 6 weeks ago, I wrote a post about Twitter being a great evolution of IM, moving to EM, which I called “everywhere messaging”. Well, in the weeks since, I have come to realize it is really about EP, “everywhere publishing” - but not just publishing in the broad sense, but rather, it is a functionally restricted form of micro-blogging. If you look at my Twitter feed, you will see that this is generally how I use it.

Unfortunately, it feels like Fonzi is getting his swim trunks on, and the sharks are looking ferocious. Why would I suggest that this great channel that I have been touting for the last few weeks is about to jump the shark? Because of the amount of focus on the use of Twitter as a communications channel down at SxSW (did I mention how bummed I am that I am not there?). BTW, I am seriously asking the question of whether SxSW will be the death of Twitter? The reason being that we must cross over and bump up against barriers in order for us to realize they exist in new realms - the amount of traffic coming through Twitterific is just overwhelming and causing it to lose its’ intimacy for me.

Tonight, I came back to the Social Media Clubhouse from dinner with Kristie and Tom Foremski to see that my last 20+ Twitters were a back and forth conversation between my friends Chris Pirillo and Robert Scoble about Twitter. In fact, Kristie, Tom and I were just having a conversation in the car no more then 60 minutes ago about the same problem. I already can’t keep track of the friends I really care about staying connected to with the increase in usage, and now I am feeling guilty every time someone adds me as a friend when I don’t add them in return. But I can’t add everyone - I just don’t have the extra attention to invest, and to Chris Pirillo’s point

what happens when you have 10,000 followers - and their responses get buried because you can’t reciprocate?

The thing is, the very nature of Twitter, which Kristie pointed out mirrors the addictive nature of Flickr, will lead to a natural increase in the frequency in usage, the scope of usage and the number of people using the service. In the last week, I have received at least 30 friend requests, and I am not really that well known or popular. Scoble is over 1,000 already and climbing fast. Pirillo is right, but he need not go out to 10,000 followers - Scoble is already having responses and more get buried - it has happened in his voicemail where he directs you to email, and even in email and other channels, he is always going to fight to keep up, despite all his very hard work and great intentions.
The thing about Twitter, Flickr and other similarly architected services is that we like staying in touch with the people we care about, the people we WANT to have connecttions with. Unfortunately, and as I have been saying a lot lately - Humans Don’t Scale. Dunbar was really right - I am pretty much putting the Dunbar number in the same category as Newton’s laws of gravity. It is important to note that I am not hoping for its demise - far from it. I am however wondering what can be done about those of us that care about such things in thinking about some sort of guideliness to prevent usage patterns from destroying the incredible value we find in staying connected to the people we care about most.

So what are the limits of Twitter, what are the best uses? Can we put this altogether in a wiki? Am I just crazy? Or is the usage of it morphing in ways that are really decreasing the value of the channel instead of increasing it? Is there any possibility to save Twitter from Twittering itself to death?

Mea Culpa: Occasionally, I do use the dreaded @ myfriend message myself. At this time, I want to apologize to everyone for this terrible, terrible assault on your attention. Direct messages should be sent directly - or if it was/is necessary to build upon a conversational thread, I should have made the slight additional effort to have blogged it myself on my full site. Perhaps Twitter could make a C messageID, or C myfriend feature to redirect some of this additional traffic. But honestly, I think the additional volume, the experimentation and the morphing of this great everywhere publishing must give us all pause, to rethink what works well and what doesn’t - to then start modeling the behaviour we hope to see from others…

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What is Social Media? No, really, WTF?

I have been thinking about this question for a couple of years and have a few thoughts around a coherent answer which I have talked about through this blog and through comments on other people’s blogs. I have talked about it in a beercast with Mike Hudack and I have talked the ears off of people like you who are passionate in your like and dislike of this language to describe what is happening. Of course, the whole thing has blown up a couple of times lately inside the mediasphere, with these posts from Jeremiah Owyang, Robert Scoble, Brian Solis, Doc Searls and many, many others. Today, I am beginning a new journey, to co-create with you, a very clear answer to this question, from which we may all benefit.

Rather than diving into the 3-4,000 word post I was trying to get posted today, let me get to the point and propose my initial draft of an answer to the question:

Social Media is redefining how we relate to each other as humans and how we as humans relate to the organizations that serve us. While it is commonly represented by blogs, podcasts, vlogs, wikis, user generated content and social networks, it is not about those specific things as much as it is about what happens around and because of those things. This includes most notably the ability and desire to easily share with each other, to build upon that which is shared and to discover people, places and things that are of interest to you, because the sharing of these things with these new tools, is making visible that which was previously unknown.

While the early days of the Internet talked about the Three C’s of Content, Commerce and Community, we have come to realize that this era of our evolutionary growth has it’s own Three C’s, which speaks more closely to the fundamental needs of society beyond the interest in the technology for its own sake. The “Greater Significance” of Social Media is a newfound understanding of the importance of Context, Communications and Collaboration. The context of what we are trying to accomplish and why we are passionate about it is the starting point for our conversations and the basis of everything else. Communications in its traditional and emerging forms, references how we come to understand and connect with each other. Collaboration is about how we work together for our common and individual interests within the various contexts in which we invest our attention.

While this definition is still a bit long and not fully refined, I think it does move us forward in the right direction. Ian Kennedy’s insight from the Stirr mixer last week was crucial in bringing me back to these important points, which I first made at a Net Tuesday event with Mena Trott what seems like a very long time ago. Also deserving a mention here is Giovanni Rodriguez who told me during our Social Media to Corporate Media workshop in October 2006 that he felt we should be talking about “socializing media” instead of Social Media. While our choice of language here is seemingly one of convenience for many, I feel it is indeed the most fitting and appropriate in light of the greater importance. As I have said elsewhere, in a few years, it will just be referenced as media and people will talk about the “early days of the Social Media era.”

The backbone of the New Media era (aka Web 1.0), while constrained by limited connectivity to the network, complicated software for tinkerers, expensive tools and simple Web pages, was conceptually centered around edge activities. Today, in the era of Social Media, the limitations on participation defined by those prior constraints are largely, but not completely, lifted, moving a greater number of those activities to the core of society. Because participation is more broadly available across society, it is the contexts in which we interact with others that is most crucial - within those contexts we communicate with each other and if through those communications, we reach agreement to trust one another, we can collaborate towards common goals. As I have stated many times, in the knowledge economy, the greatest barrier to value creation in the enterprise and between them, is the inability of smart people to get along with one another.

In September of 2006, I sought to answer the question “Why is Social Media important?” - it was a powerful question which is informative here in trying to answer the current question. In trying to define anything by what it is very specifically as some have tried to do, we restrict the possibilities for what else may be considered in that same light - in trying to define Social Media by what it is not as Robert Scoble did in comparing what is different today, we are being more expansive in allowing for new possibilities to emerge. In that this is an emergent term, I think it appropriate to more broadly define the term rather than trying to be restrictive, though many will disagree. In defining Social Media by what it is not, we make it easier for people to understand the concept by the comparison to other known things, but we also do not fully impress upon people the “greater significance” of why this is important. This is ok - really it is - for the 90% of society that may never fully participate in online communities or contribute to our greater social wisdom, they need not think of what they are doing in the same way we, the early adopters are - they only need gain the benefit and enjoyment from within their specific contextual frame of reference. Does grandma need to understand the broader impact of social media, or does she merely care about the fact that she can read about what is going on in your life and stay connected to her grandchildren?

As the Cluetrain Manifesto rightly pointed out, “Markets are Conversations”. Social Media and the tools we use to create, consume and connect with each other are making those markets, and those conversations, more visible, and as a result, laying bare in plain sight those people and organizations we can trust, and those we can not. It is why I still think David Brin’s Transparent Society is such an important read. It is why many of the ‘folks like me’ are so optimistic about the potential for Social Media to empower ideas like The Noble Pursuit and more broadly create economic opportunities while delivering on the original promise of information technology to provide true market efficiencies.

So let’s see how well we can communicate and collaborate here within this context - the definition above has been posted to the Social Media Club Wiki for you to edit and refine. Love it or hate it, I want to see how you can make it better. If we do well with it, I suggest we ask our friend Jimmy Wales to consider the resulting definition to replace the current entry in Wikipedia. If you want to propose your own separate definition, or write more about this separately of the wiki page, please use the tag whatissocialmedia so we can all follow along. Either way, as the very wise Howard Rheingold says, “What it is –> is up to you.”

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The Discussion About “Social Media” as a Meme

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…

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The World is Grey and Mushy - Part 1 of a gazillion

I was chatting with Brian Solis just now about his post called, Are You Talking to Me? Taking the BS out of Business Blogging, when I noticed Strumpette’s comment bagging on conversational marketing and some of the broader Cluetrain principles.  Its a funny thing that everyone is always trying to be absolute and literal instead of allowing for smart people like Brian and others like Dave Weinberger who understand both the ideal and practical implications of “markets as conversations”.  Regardless of your perspective, I hope that more people do understand that all of these emerging practices, however you want to classify them (conversational, social, participatory etc…), are based on COMMUNICATIONS, one way, multiway and bi-directional.  To that extent, there are times you want to talk to people and times you want to listen.

The thing is, Strumpette gets caught up in the social and conversational side, or rather the word ‘conversational’,  neglecting that all media is a form of communications, and could be easily described as conversational in most of its forms, eventhough the purpose is occasionally out of self interest than group interest.  The media created between a performer and their audience, between a blogger and the people who are interested in what they have to say and even David Letterman is largely conversational.

Is conversational marketing or business blogging always good? - of course not, but it often is, and could be better if we work together to explore how and understand why.

Much of the same criticism leveled at Social Media champions like Brian is very similar to that slung at brand marketing before it became widely understood and refined.  Same for banner advertising.  Same for ecommerce.  More case studies with ROI will appear in time.  Indeed it already has helped many, they just have not shared their stories yet with many trying to maintain a competitive advantage.

No the world is not always flat, nor is transparency always ok, nor is a consensus driven model always best - we need to use the right thinking in each unique situation.  The world is grey and mushy, not black and white.  However, when a stragegy is more often broadly appropriate for organizations than less, why not talk about a practice area affirmatively and discover the edges of what works and what doesn’t and where it can go.  As I was reminded recently, ‘don’t make yourself the Chief Electricity Officer‘.

When a company has established its trustworthiness in the market, when it is focused on creating value over greedily chumming up sales, when it listens as much as it talks, good things generally do happen - the organization is, in a sense, in harmony with the market it serves.  If the organization is having conversations with customers, potential customers, former customers and influential people in their market segment, and the right people are leading the organization’s team, conversation can be the difference between delivering an ok experience and one that becomes a Lovemark - which would you rather have?

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Vote for Best Use of Social Media In Super Bowl 2007

Great first half, boring second half, but fun time over at Brian Solis’ tonight for the game. The ads were ok, nothing really outstanding, though there were a few gems that got everyone laughing (and a few people cried for the robot who lost his job - or was that a shebot?). Regardless, we are here to determine who had the best use of Social Media in their Super Bowl Advertising. Some tech companies did not throw down the big bucks, but did put up ads on YouTube that were less than funny or entertaining - good thing they did not blow that $2.6MM

I will collect votes through WED morning, Feb 7 @ 9am PST, so cast your vote right now…

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Best Use of Social Media in the Super Bowl Award - 2007

While it may be a long name for an award, this intersection of advertising and Social Media is short on competitors for top honors. As the premiere venue for traditional advertising, it should seem obvious that Super Bowl ads are ripe with opportunities for leveraging Social Media. In that Super Bowl advertising usually includes the best and brightest creative talents and the biggest budgets, I was hoping to see more of a brilliant flash of innovative Social Media strategy. Unfortunately, it seems that the level of risk and potential for backlash from a mishandled effort on the world’s stage was just too much for these advertisers to bear. With $2.6 Million on the line for 30 seconds of airtime, it is somewhat understandable, but it is also a real shame when I think about how much great Social Media could have been produced with all that money!

While I still believe 2007 is the year that Social Media will cross the chasm into the mainstream, it is obviously not happening in February. The earliest of the adventurous travelers are perhaps just now preparing for their journey ahead. Oddly enough, we may not see the massive surge of insightful Social Media usage by large companies come until after the elections, in the time leading into the 2007 holidays. It is strange to think that marketers are going to be learning from politicians in this instance rather than the other way around, but it is a distinct possibility as they are some of the first organizations that are truly being forced to engage through Social Media - participatory democracy here we come…

I hope I am wrong, but my experience as Conference Chair for Content Week over the past few days demonstrates how difficult it will be for many corporate cultures to change from a risk adverse attitude to one that fully embraces authentic engagement built on a model of trust instead of fear. Indeed, the “Attack of the Bloggers” piece from Forbes had a chilling effect on decision makers across the Fortune 2000 and beyond. Thanks Steve.

Then again, this further supports the need for the sort of dialogue that we are hosting with Social Media Club. More specifically, this clearly points to the need for two of our primary missions, training the champions within these organizations and their communications agencies, and more broadly promoting a new level of media literacy across society. As early adopters though, I fear we may all still be focusing our energies on who has the loudest voice, rather than understanding that the ability to hear what people need and respond is more important [thanks to Ryan Troy for pointing this out at our Social Media Cafe]. In sales training they say that you should listen at least 2x as much as you speak. More interestingly, I believe that Superman’s real power came from his super ears - being able to identify people in trouble from far away and swoop in to save the day.

Until this point in time, most corporate Social Media efforts have emanated from digital communications and public relations departments. However, there is more to Social Media than is apparent from the most obvious aspects of user generated content and citizen journalism. While the communications industry is being massively disrupted as individuals wrestle away control of the messaging juggernaut, it is only natural for those entrenched in their gatekeeper roles to resist and defend the status quo. As the Borg says, resistance is futile. Perhaps more poignantly, as my manager Michele Bartram at the US Mint used to say, “the camel’s nose is already in the tent.”

The good news is that the stage for the revolution is clearly being set, and some big brands are getting ready to play. So today, while watching the Super Bowl ads, I ask you to think about the role that Social Media plays and more importantly, think about the role it could have played. As the brightest minds in Social Media, you can help shape the future of advertising and help to make it more than just user generated ad contests and companion blogs. We should all be innovating towards more of a holistic strategy, being made visible through advertising, rather than stopping with the ads and remixes that will be distributed online.

So on to the awards…

Unfortunately, some advertisers keep their ads a secret until they air, so I will be coming back here after the game to post a complete list and open the voting. So far this year, we found three contestants to consider who took the user generated advertising route.

Best Use of Social Media in the Super Bowl Award - 2007

The Entries Thu Far

• Doritos: ‘Crash the Super Bowl contest’ was opened to the public to submit ads with the best one featured on air and the five finalists awarded $10,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl in Miami. This is the closest to pure user generated content of the three pre-announced, with the web site for voting open to comments via JumpCut and promoted through Yahoo!.
• The NFL: They ran a “Pitch us your idea for the best Super Bowl Ad ever. Seriously” campaign, with the winner, advertising agency employee Gino Bona from Portsmouth, NH having his commercial shot by award winning director Joe Pytka. The commercial sounds like a good one, with just the right balance between humor and sentiment, but the approach was influenced by the desire to control the positioning via the production value. Then again, I would love the opportunity to work with Joe one day myself, so that is pretty cool.
• Chevy: They held a similar “pitch us” contest that was only open to college students. More importantly, they actually tracked the progress of the contest and engaged with people through their Chevy College Ad Blog in addition to a broadcast tie in with CBS’ Early Show leading up to the announcement of the winner.

Interesting Possibilities

• A man who goes by the alias JP has been seeking sponsorship of his marriage proposal to air during the big game. He originally sought out funding through the Web but in only raising $75,000 online, is turning to traditional big corporate sponsors for help. For some reason, I think this guy will get lucky in more than one way today…
• Both HP and Snickers are running ads that use the ‘go to the Web site to see more’ angle. To say that the Snickers ad I just saw online is less than compelling is more than an understatement. HP at least takes the celebrity tie-in angle with the boys from American Chopper as the featured stars.

I am sure there will be more, so come back on Monday morning to see the whole list and cast your vote!

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Is this really called Social Media? Yes!

Jeremiah Owyang is one of the brightest and most influential commentators on Social Media and Web 2.0 today (I know because I track these things with BuzzLogic, a company I advise), but he writes in a post this morning that he hates [has been challenged on the use of] the term social media, and asks that you help come up with a better term [if you have one]. The discussion on his blog is insightful and very helpful in bringing more people to an understanding of this issue, and the proper usage of the term - something that has gotten way out of hand with regards to the term Web 2.0, with some enterpreneurs calling every piece of software Web 2.0 regardless of how true it is. This is a conversation I appreciate, and one that I had with Mike Hudack of Blip.TV back at Portable Media Expo 2006, which you can listen to here in this ‘Beercast’ entitled “What is Social Media Anyway?” He also felt the same way as Jeremiah, but changes his mind after our conversation - perhaps in part due to the level of beer consumption before noon that day.

As with many other commentators on the naming of Web 2.0, I not only have a problem with the 2.0, but also with the simplification of using only the term Web. If you look really closely, that term is completely wrong on many levels, but that did not stop it from being widely spread as a defining phrase of our era. The thing is, “AJAX Internt Applications for Communications and Collaboration” just does not roll off the tongue as easily - nor does it allow for much individual interpretation that creates personal relevance - it makes it hard for people to ‘own’ the term and its wider meaning. When talking about Web 2.0, I get to the heart of the matter, and it is not much better. I often talk about the idea of Web 2.0 (or Web 2.2 if you were paying attention in November) as the Live Web, Open Web, and Social Web - and so much more. Memes are seldom perfect usage of language, they are really just symbols of a deeper meaning - a linguistic iconography if you will.

The language wars (like that we went through around the broader idea of what I have been calling the Social Media Release) are a part of what we go through in conversations and deliberations to get to a deeper, and more widely accepted meaning. This process is good to a degree, as long as good intentions are at play and people are focused on supporting one meaning over another rather than predatorially attacking and pushing down another. Unfortunately, there are still smart people who resort to slinging mud and derogatory aspersions at those who disagree with their view on the world instead of being engaged in the longer discussion required to come to an understanding of the real points of disagreement. Personally I feel that if it is that important, people should take the time to consider and discuss all viewpoints of other respectful participants - as I am doing now, even though I am serving as Conference Chair of Content Week in San Diego at the moment.

To get back to Jeremiah’s concern though, I do think the key word is Media [definition 2, noun specifically from that link]. What makes this era and this medium different is not possible to perfectly encapsulate for everyone’s agreement - becuase what is different is unique to everyone based on their socialization and prior experience. It is really some different versioning of the broader concept of media - which can only be called Media 2.0 because of the broad acceptance of Web 2.0 and its wicked sisters. How about “New Media 49.5″? Perhaps we should take into account cave paintings, Guttenberg, the penny press, radio, television, interactive and all the other versions of media we have experienced? Yes, what makes it different is the interactive nature - the read/write Web - the conversational media - participatory culture through media - knowledge sharing - collaboration in the commons - blogging - podasting - convergence and so much more. But aren’t these all just subsets of the broader term already?

The phrase that is gaining wide acceptance amongst real people (not just early adopters and technologists), is indeed Social Media - I saw this sometime ago actually, registering our domain name in March of 2006, watching it gain wider acceptance with each and every passing day since. While I appreciate Chris Saad’s perspective (most especially his insights around the importance of attention), I feel that Media 2.0 is a term that appeals to a technical audience more so than my grandmother, and is only practical because of the success of the meme for Web 2.0, not because it would stand on its own. It will work for some people and I am sure it will gain traction, which is fine, and the Media 2.0 Workgroup will be successfull (with such bright writers, it darn well should) but the reality is that the phrase Social Media ecompasses the key aspects of the deeper meaning we are speaking to, for the broadest group of people. It is a medium for communications between people - this is about bringing people together through communications and collaborations tools within the context of the different passions and interests they care most dearly about.

I came to the naming of Social Media Club through looking at the brilliant insights of branding shown by 37 signals and their approach to the symbolic use of language through widely understood terms, rather than nonsensical words which needed meaning created for them. BaseCamp, where we come together to prepare for our journey and organize our stuff. BackPack, where we keep our stuff to take with us wherever we go. CampFire, where we gather with colleagues for warmth and conversation. Wow - they are smart aren’t they!

In regards to whether or not this is a buzzword, or a meme with legs, I think it is here to stay. For some it replaces the use of the term Web 2.0 - for others it represents something completely different. David Blumenstein talked to me about Web 2.0 being the tools and technologies and Social Media being the content (can you please chime in here David). To an extent, it is the content produced within different forms of Social Software, but again it is so much more, and we could debate that term for quite some time as well, but let’s not just yet - after all, we do need to get some work done between these deep conversations from time to time…

Community Marketing could work well - but again, only to a degree and only for certain people. I am sure this will be discussed widely at the upcoming Community 2.0 Conference if you are interested in that conversation (BTW, I am speaking there and will be blogging there occasionally). In a sense it is related to the idea of using the word ‘audience’ to refer to people. It is the view of the world seen from inside an organization looking out, rather than looking at the world as a whole which is an important underpinning of this era - with the people inside organizations, participating in the communities, interacting with other people, realizing their common ground and working together for their collective benefit.

Besides, we also know that “Social Media” Club is adaptive once all media is digital, we live in a 3 screen world and have fully realized persasive connectivity with very rich read/write tools through integrated hardware/software solutions like that I imagined for sharing and annotating television programs in my post on Twitter from a few weeks ago. As the term Social Media loses prominence in a few years, the pronunciation merely changes to “Social” Media Club. The focus on media however, is a part of our roots and our desire to bring all media producers together to understand the Importance of Social Media.

What do you think? Am I on target here, are we going to be ok a year from now known as Social Media Club? Or is Jeremiah right, and we are still in need of a better term?

[update - just heard from Jeremiah, and we are in general agreement - he is merely responding to challenges he is getting from those against the usage of the phrase, with a challenge to them to find a better one]

This is the third of my weekly columns we are calling “A View From The Middle” - it is still in its birthing phase, so the format might change a bit, but they are generally deeper posts about the important things I see happening, not on the fringes, but in the middle with everyone else. You can subscribe to the feed for these posts here which will be my specific musings on Social Media, Social Software, Web 2.0 (uggghhh) and the broader socioeconomic transfromations that are underway.

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Most people want to ‘get it’: Are you willing to help?

I do get a kick out of the entire dustup over the social media release - very happy to hear people talking about it really, even if some don’t fully understand the deeper purpose and the broader implications. Those progressive, anti-establishment folks screaming that our efforts are co-opting social media are doing the exact thing I expected from them - attacking instead of offering help. This is exactly what I did back in 1994-96 when I launched an interactive agency. When any traditional agency would make a move into interactive, we would, to borrow a term from Stowe Boyd “skewer them”. If you have paid any attention to what I have been writing about the purpose for Social Media Club, you will know that this is one of the main points of what I am trying to accomplish - if you get it, share it. Not if you get it, scream at others who are trying to get it and ostracize them while calling them stoopid.

With some age and experience, has come a bit of wisdom about economic realities and human behaviour. It is only natural to want to be combative and tear down the things we don’t understand or dislike - or to throw out an entire barrel of apples for want of getting rid of a few bad ones. The funny thing is that many ‘pro-people, anti-organization’ folks are completely disregarding the fact that these organizations are made up of PEOPLE! People who want to do the right thing, people who want our help, people who want to get it and make things right.

Regardless, this is finally the beginning of the manifestation of the cluetrain principles in our society, with companies entering the conversation in a real and meaningful way. Yes many will stumble and make big mistakes (which can hopefully serve as lessons not to be repeated by others). Personally, I expected such an uprising long ago - this sort of confrontational approach is what lead to the fall of netiquette and the tighter embrace of greed over good sense. It lead to all sorts of problems with people not getting the point, nor being open to new ways of thinking, because those who really understood what it was all about were dismissive of anyone trying to figure it out - especially those older than themselves. Worse, it limited the potential for having meaningful conversations and made management harden their position rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue and understanding why things were different and how they could engage properly. It made management dismissive of those PEOPLE who really wanted to change inside their organizations rather than supportive of them.

From my perspective, this is about more than whether or not the press release is evolving into the social media release, it is about whether or not people want to find ways to help each other do things right, or if they want to find conflict and enjoy the fight. The dust will perhaps not settle for a long time, but in standing for progress and seeking what is best for the whole of society, I will continue to support the golden rule and do my personal best to stay true to The Four Agreements.

There are a lot of good points on both sides of the argument, but the finger pointing about ‘you don’t get it’, or ‘getting social media all wrong’ is not going to be helpful for anyone. There is much to be learned on both sides though, and that is the purpose I have for bringing communications professionals together with bloggers, podcasters, journalists, students, non profits and for profits - to learn together, from each other. Yes, there are many who do not understand that the very nature of how we relate to one another as human beings is changing and continue to do things the wrong way. Are these people going to learn more if you call them names and disparage them, or are they going to learn more if you appreciate that they are PEOPLE and give them the respect that they deserve for being human while trying to help them understand how they can do things differently?

I am not going to get into a tit for tat on every post and every point in this discussion because we have a lot of important unfinished business that must be addressed first, but please know where I am coming from and that my goal is to serve as a catalyst for the good cause. Transforming society through the economic engine of business and technology and communications is no easy task, and I am sure there are things I will get wrong, as will each of us, but our intentions are clear and our objectives are probably pretty similar to yours, even when our tactics and approach may seem diametrically opposed.

In the end, ‘getting it’ is an internal shift that we can not easily force on anyone - people have to want to change for themselves - it is an internal realization that what has worked in the past is no longer working. You can bludgeon people into submission to your way of thinking or you can engage in respectful dialogue and make inroads by helping them along the way. In the end, how you choose to approach this world changing mission is your own. In the end, this is my noble pursuit.

This is the second of my weekly columns we are calling “A View From The Middle” - it is still in its birthing phase, so the format might change a bit, but they are generally deeper posts about the important things I see happening, not on the fringes, but in the middle with everyone else. 

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Beyond IM: Welcome to the EM era

Instant Messaging (IM) is not dead or even dying, but EM is about to change everything. While IM emphasizes the immediacy of the communication, EM can represent the value of the communication. Then again, like any communications channel, what gets transmitted can also be pure drivel. EM, however, has tremendous potential for solving some of the biggest problems I face on a daily basis, and have been thinking about for over a decade, most especially the idea of annotating the world around us and sharing key insytes about what is happening and what I see as the important matters of the day.

What is EM? EM is “Everywhere Messaging” - in particular, Text-Web-IM-Blog/Site. Some may think the distinctions I am going to make are not important enough to consider it a separate category, but as we explore this topic further, it will become apparent that EM is game changing. When this idea struck me the other day, I did a search to see if anyone else was talking about EM yet and found little on the subject. In fact, only 470 results on Google and only 2 on Technorati, none of which talking about EM in the way that I am thinking about it. The #1 result on Google is a great paper on ACM from 2000 which is informative and visionary, but still thinking of it as a communications tool, and not within the context I imagine it as an annotation tool, a publishing tool, a personal journal, an instant feedback mechanism AND a communications tool.

I started thinking about the idea of EM the other day when I finally gave in to peer pressure and began to use my Twitter account. As you may know, it takes a lot to get me (and most people) to change behavioural patterns and make a new service a part of my daily life and routine. The value proposition must be compelling, it must be easy to use and it must ‘feel good’ to use. While Dodgeball seemingly has all these characteristics as well, I never fully embraced it enough to change my ongoing behaviour - even when other members of my community became addicts. Why is this? Well I believe the key difference was found by removing the prescribed context of physical proximity from the usage of the tool. The use of Twitter is not ‘artificially restricted’ by the instructions of use or the social purpose for which it is prescribed.

The reason for making this very big distinction between IM and EM is that the purpose and usage is quite different. I primarily use IM for communicating with another person - whether that is texting or IM’ing from my laptop does not really matter. One might argue that IM is on mobile phones, making it ‘everywhere’ you are, and rendering this distinction moot, but that is missing the point. With Twitter and other EM services, the purpose is not about communicating with another person instantly. While I could send a direct message to someone over an EM channel, it is probably not something that has a time imperative on it - ie, it is more about sharing something with someone at some point in time than about conversing with them right now.

Most importantly, with EM, I believe the message is more about me, my needs and my desire to be heard - it can also be more self serving along the same lines that social bookmarking is - to help me find something later. EM can just as easily be a tool for publishing (start following my Twitter account or check in on my personal Blog sidebar if you want to see this in action) as it is a tool for communicating with those I trust, or those that want to know what I am doing or thinking. As a tool for publishing, it can also be a tool for annotating and sharing.

For instance this morning I was watching a little TV while waiting for breakfast and happened across the Sundance Channel’s Iconoclast series - this was the pairing of Dave Chapelle and Maya Angelou. The connection the two of them built in front of my eyes, together with the depths and poignancy of their insytes actually brought me to tears - it was so moving. Now there have been many other experiences with media and the world around me that has really touched me in a way that inspired me to think differently, or to simply recognize the value and want to share it. More often than not, this moment passes without being captured because of more pressing matters - in other words, not having enough time to note the source, add my insytes and share it with you.

This morning, I Twittered this update “touched deeply by iconoclasts with maya angelou and dave chapelle“. While such a short statement does not have the depth of a blog post, I was able to apply the OHIO principle (Only Handle It Once) and publish the key information, instead of doing nothing. A whole new world of connectivity and knowledge sharing will soon open up through EM.

Of course, at this stage Twitter is really only a feature, a robust one, but it is not a complete solution within the contexts I envision it will be. As such, I expect to see numerous new uses of ‘Twitter like’ functionality in many other products, for many other communities very soon (if it is not happening already). The real interesting things happen when people can begin to use EM together with TagSpaces and other intelligent routing. It would be really great if Twitter would know that I have Direct TV and combined that understanding with some basic short codes such that I could have had a link to the show automatically appear in the message. This could look like “CH549:Inspired by Maya’s wisdom and Dave’s soulfullness, a must watch show”. The backend would see that I am on DirectTV, that channel 549 was Sundance and the time was 910am, at which time the Iconoclasts show was on air. Take this a step further with the ability to link directly to the video clip that preceded my EM and now things get really interesting…

Of course, there are many other potential uses we should consider beyond annotation and sharing key insytes. I have seen Twitter used to simply share a state of mind, which in an odd ways makes me feel more connected and less alone, even when there are no physical ears upon which my feelings land in my immediate surroundings. It can also be used for quick reviews, promoting something/someone and publishing just about anything else. I could even see where a TagSpace could hold all of a given community’s insights on a given issue or topic, where it could spark a conversation, be included in a Wiki, or even be used as a polling mechanism.

Once EM evolves to include audio/video, to enable tagging by others and other intelligent backend functionality, the importance of this evolutionary product will be clear to all. As with most game changing innovations, you can’t fully understand it without experiencing it. After you do, it will be great to hear back from you on other ways we might be able to use it or improve it. So go ahead and try it, you might like it!

So the big question is, what do you think of EM and some of the uses I propose here? Does this make sense?

This is the first of my weekly columns we are calling “A View From The Middle” - it is still in its birthing phase, so the format might change a bit. We will be announcing and starting a few other interesting things later this week.

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