It’s been an interesting week or so. I’ve again learned that my perception of social media is just one of many interpretations.
What is this socialization of media anyway but a simpler means of collaborating upon work with peers from differing backgrounds. Social media, really, is a movement and not technology. The technology and tools are simply enablers.
While we explorers of social media out on the Internet talk about transparency, and openness, businesses are struggling to figure out how to get involved but be able to balance all the parts that are important to them. Some will say this is the problem, that there are too many layers in your average corporation that get in the way.
That may be true, but we also have to remember all the parties involved in that corporation we like to lump in with so many others. The needs of the shareholders, the responsibilities to the consumer, proprietary technology or processes, responsibilities to it’s work force, legal liabilities, risk of damage to a valuable brand, and the need to be a good corporate citizen.
These are all things that an established organization needs to take into account, and it doesn’t even begin to touch on internal power struggles and political plays, or the resistance to change that the majority of corporate workers embrace. One look a the newspaper industry in the United States can give you a glimpse of the worst-case possibilities of all this. They recognized the need for change too late, but your average corporation isn’t quite as blind as that, they just have a lot to juggle to be able to come to the table to play the game.
So as we compare decades-old companies to a couple year old startup when it comes to participation in social media, it really comes down to perceptions of what’s right and what’s wrong.
What’s your perception as you work with older organizations under the theme of social media?
Spending a week with a different operating system on my laptop is like learning a new religion. It’s intensely interesting, insightful, a true learning experience! Ultimately it teaches one what they took for granted about the things they already knew and cherished.
So I spent a refreshing week on the linux side of the operating system fence last week. In the end, I had to come back to Windows. It wasn’t the operating system, it wasn’t the software, it wasn’t the stability, nor was it any of the big things that people run into when trying to run any flavor of linux.
Instead, it was the little things – very little things. Like not having the play/pause, and volume buttons on my laptop not work with the media player. Or the media player not playing WMA files by default without a trip to the command line to make it work – yeah it matters, I have 15GB of tunes in WMA that I’m not re-encoding.
I ran into a number of things that simply needed a little tweak or manual intervention. Any one of them nothing at all a real problem. All the really important things just simply worked. For example, I didn’t have to find one single driver for my laptop hardware for Ubuntu 8.10 – it all worked out of the box. My favorite Firefox plug-ins, and therefore my main work environment, were all set up in the same amount of time that it takes on Windows – and worked just as expected. Email was set up in Evolution quickly and, again, just worked.
No, it was all the little things that added up made me decide I still needed to be running Windows. I’m less a “techy†person than I have been in the past, and while it’s fun to try new things, and experiment, I need a system that I don’t have to think about or fight with. I need something that simply works on every level at any point, and for me, Windows is that system.
So I’ll test Windows 7 a bit and then go back to Windows Vista until Win7 is released later this year.
Since Twitter is the current social media darling, I thought I’d record a few thoughts I’ve had about one of my favorite online tools. I’ve had the privilege of using Twitter for two years, and each and every person I’ve followed or had follow me along the way has taught me something new. So here we go.
Twitter is…
a place for friends
a news outlet
a place to share your greatest failures & your most stunning achievements
an attention getter
a publishing platform
a customer service tool
a researcher’s dream
vulgar
the ace up your sleeve
brilliant
a new entertainment channel
a social network
a micro-blogging platform
a marketing tool
your community
overwhelming
24x7x365 (always on)
a level playing field for your ideas
a sounding board for your thoughts
a comment reel for your new book
your starting place for your online excursions
the place for your organization to learn about it’s customers
a multicasting instant messenger
a game changer
a PR tool
a messaging infrastructure
a simple way to share & trade information
can be inane
is faster to publish to than anything else
is where you go to learn
your online “water coolerâ€
a conduit into the lives of others
a conduit into the idea stream of smart people
I’ve got a lot more input on what Twitter is than I could fit in this post, so I’ll work on fitting that into another format of some type. What is Twitter to you? I mean, what has Twitter brought to your life that you can’t believe you lived without before you discovered it?
I’ve been wondering, has social media done anything really special for you?
Has it brought in more readers?
Has it increased your earnings?
Has it simplified your life?
Has it generated more sales leads?
Has it improved your customer service rating?
Has it save you more time?
Those are the questions I (and others) have about social media. The intangibles indicate yes on multiple fronts. The trick is how to measure that, and it’s different for everybody and every business.
Of course it’s worth the effort, but for you and your organization to succeed in your work, accurate metrics are needed. What have you found that works for you?
Sorry, but that’s the truth. If you’re afraid of sharing your opinion and letting the online world catalog and categorize you, then you’ve already lost the edge. The realities of future (read: today) is that you need to be an active part of your industry or genre, or you lose out. Want that corner office? Then get out there and prove to folks that you’re the person for it.
To be an active participant and be considered for advancement as we move into the future, folks are going to be looking to find out about you. If they perform several searches online for you and find nothing… well, what does that speak of your accomplishments? Yes, references and a call to previous employers is important, and prudent. However, if folks just can’t find out about you outside of work, or what your passions are, or what your opinions are – it does allow them to form an opinion about you.
Is the era of traditional broadcast media nearing an end? You’ve heard and read that question and the supporting arguments for the last few years. You’ve also heard the rebuttals and talking points from either side of this intriguing debate.
What I posit is that these are simply “after the fact†arguments and that this particular corner was turned a few years ago.
It’s called convergence, and it usually occurs without much fanfare at the time of the actual change. Its usually afterward when people, companies, heck even governments, belatedly realize that they are no longer of any relative value to what they used to be.
Many new tings happening in the economy are pointing to the reality that we’re smack-dab in the middle of the re-adjustment to this new business environment. The number of companies looking into social media, and realizing the parallels to previous challenges. Exploring the new tools to old problems and the possibilities they offer to those willing to invest the time and money with open minds to the change that is occurring.
The recent NYTimes article $200 Laptops Break a Business Model is a great example of the awakening to this new reality. Consumers have change – and not just any consumer. The next big wave of consumers after the baby boomers. The consumers that are even now shaping the future economy has they have recent politics.
The future is much different from a consumers perspective. The tried and true models don’t always apply, especially where consumer electronics and consumable services are concerned. The challenge is to recognize that you’re business model is hopelessly stuck in the 20th century, look at how people are consuming your product, and adjust to meet them there.
I’ve argued, like many, that the recording industry (hey they make it easy to pick on them), should drop any pretense of rights management and offer every music track at $.25 (U.S.), make them so much ridiculously easy to buy that it’s too much work to pirate. Make them available in every format and simply realize profits through sheer volume rather than maintaining some false price-point per CD that they believe they need to hit. Turn around and make the CD-ROM a premium product that I would seek out for something special. Like the 1986 Bruce Springsteen album Live ‘75 to ‘85 boxed set – make it worth spending money on the extras, because whether you like it or not you can find all the tracks online.
Like many I often wonder if I even need a television any longer. Sure I veg out in front of an HD CSI:Miami marathon like anyone else might. However, I also am finding more and more of the media I REALLY want to watch online. From movies to TV shows, to music, and of course books, magazines, blogs, etc… All I really need is a big, fast, fat pipe into the Internet. Everything else just gets in the way.
To this end, big, fast, expensive computers are overkill for the needs of the average person who just wants to consume and participate in online media. The changes aren’t over either, but the biggest of them are now a matter of history that we can debate as we all like to do.
My apologies for the long, somewhat redundant post, but I’m working my way back to a regular blogging schedule. This and several upcoming posts are part of that process. Things that I’ve needed to write about for months are just now coming out. Some are timely, some a bit behind the times, but all relevant to me. Thanks for reading.
