Tagged: social media revolution

Ad agency + social media = car crash in slow motion

Here is an excellent article that highlights one of the classic mistakes of social media.  This is the assumption that social media is just another channel you can use to reach a consumer, rather than a channel that consumers use to reach you.  This results in the misplaced belief that an ad agency, or even traditional digital agency, can therefore “do” social media.  They can’t – because their expertise and business model is rooted in the world of the 0ne-to-many mass message.

I suspect the Toyota example referred to in this article will be a painfull thing to watch play out – for all the reasons the article highlights.

The big question is this:  how many organisations are going to engineer these sorts of car crashes before they wake up to what social media is all about?  Quite a lot I would suspect.

In the meatime – I would suggest the following precautionary principle – never, ever, let an ad agency, or media agency anywhere near a social media initiative.  And also take special care when asking a digital agency to get involved – simply because digital agencies make money selling web sites / platforms / digital places.  The whole point of social media is to get out of digital places and operate in digital spaces (conversations).  Note – this particular car crash I spotted a while back was created by a digital agency, also for an automotive client.

Thinking the Unthinkable: Clay Shirky may be wrong (slightly)

Despite being one of the leading gurus on social media, Clay Shirky has only just started publishing his articles via a blog – and a very minimalist and basic blog it is too.  I might venture to say this illustrates my point that social media is about space rather than place – Shirky doesn’t need a fancy blog (place), all he needs is a launch pad to create and contribute to conversations (spaces). Continue reading →

The Rise of the Story or Why Social Media may Kill P&G

whats the story2(Warning – this post is 3,000 words, you may want to get a coffee)

Stories have always been a useful medium of communication – but the rise of social media has just made them essential.  If you haven’t got a good one, you could be in trouble.  Here’s why. Continue reading →

A Twitter tag is McLuhan’s light bulb

I have been working on-and-off over the last few days on a BIG POST about stories and how the social media revolution is putting the story at the centre of not just communications planning, but organisational management as well.

As part of this I was re-visting the ideas of Marshall McLuhan – author of ‘Understanding Media’  and originator of  ‘medium is the message’ idea – a phrase many use, but much less understand I suspect.  Continue reading →

Google’s Sidewiki has a sting in the tail

A couple of days ago Google announced something very interesting – Sidewiki. This creates an overlay on any website / url allowing a form of commenting and rating.  Because this is linked to the browser, the site owners themselves have no say here – you can’t opt-in or opt-out.  At one level this could be a move which forces every website into the social media space – whether they like it or not.

Powerful stuff – so I signed-up and at that point realised the sting in the tail.  In order to work, your browser has to send Google details of your browsing.  This gives Google the information it has been craving for a long time, largely without success thus far – identifiable data about individuals’ behaviour, not just anonymous links that come into a website.

As I understand it – Google’s strategy is based around accumulating as much data as possible about individuals in order to, in Google’s words “improve the quality of service we can offer”.  What this actually means is improve the quality of the data Google can offer advertisers.  Ultimately Google is looking to push this away from just computers into any digital device that individuals use – thus building up a complete picture of their digital life.

The flaw in this strategy is not a technical one – it is a social one.  People were happy with Google search because the results were based on collective behaviour, but each contribution was anonymous.  A shift to a form of output based on their identifiable behaviour as an individual, not their anonymous behaviour within a group – will not be seen as socially acceptable.  People will not trust Google enough to feel comfortable with them having this level of knowledge.   The key to making this strategy work therefore is to construct a big sugar coating around this particular pill – hence Sidewiki.   Perhaps a better name for it would be Big Sidebrother.

This is a shame – because attractive as this sugar coating is, the pill is still too bitter to swallow (that said, I haven’t de-enabled sidewiki yet!)

Has Twitter encouraged journalism?

A journalism student in Australia (@jadelemoigne) contacted me last week (through good old fashioned email) to ask questions about Twitter and whether it was encouraging journalism.

I thought I would also blog the answers I gave, since this is a good question.

Dear Jade,

First off – its very difficult to separate Twitter from the rest of social media – it’s just one piece of the whole new information ecology that is transforming the way we access information. In general terms this shift is making traditional institutionalised media (and with it the journalists they employed) less relevant and creating processes that allow individuals to share with each other the information they need about the world.

Therefore – within my answers you could effectively substitute the term social media for Twitter. That said… Continue reading →

Google v Facebook is a battle for today’s internet, not the internet of the future

Wired has just published an excellent article on the battle between Facebook and Google.  It covers the key issues concisely and is well worth a read.

However, I think both companies (and possibly Wired) are wrong to think that this is a battle for future of the internet.  Instead it is a battle for today’s internet.  In my view neither Google nor Facebook will win the battle for the future of the internet because both are fighting in the wrong space.  Both organisations are basing their strategies on the assumption that the future lies in an ad-driven, data capture, real estate model of the internet – and this is a 1.0, traditional institutionalised communications model.

Advertising is a creation of the world of traditional institutionalised information.  No one is suggesting that advertising is still not incredibly important – but it is a pot that is shrinking as distribution-based communication itself shrinks.  And while some of it is moving on-line, the on-line opportunity is never going to be as big as the current total pot and ultimately will disappear altogether.

Here’s why.  Continue reading →

Andrew Keen’s head – and the shift from institutions to processes

A recent blog post by Andrew Keen has finally prompted me to write a post dedicated to the idea that Big Thing in social media is the shift from institutions to processes as a source of trusted information.  I have referred to this many times in previous posts, but when I get to say “as I have said many times before” I realise I haven’t actually got one place purely dedicated to the saying of it.  Well no more.

Also, the fact that Andrew Keen, of all people, has identified what he calls the emergence of a new inchoate discource and is writing a post about media streams and agreeing with the likes of Clay Shirky about the essential ‘differentness’ of what may replace traditional media has also shown it is time to pull my finger out on this one. Continue reading →

Nik Gowing on crises and social media

Here is some worthwhile weekend reading.  It is a report by the broadcast journalist, Nik Gowing, published this week by Oxford University’s Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Entitled “Skyful of Lies and Black Swans” it looks at how technological changes and the emergence of what he calls ‘information doers’ (essentially social media) is changing the balance of power between institutions and individuals, with this shift being most evident at moments of crisis.

The paper tends to focus on government and politics in terms of the examples it highlights, rather than corporations and boardrooms.  It is also more on the observational and assertive side of things and rather light on analysis, in terms of really exposing the key new dynamics of the social media space.  However, this is to be expected given that Gowing is a journalist, not an analyst or academic.

I also sense that Gowing himself has not fully grasped the implications of the social media revolution, seeing it as simply an evolution of technology rather than recognising the fundamental breakdown in the relationship between content and distribution that social media represents.  He identifies the effects, but not yet fully appreciates the cause.  He recognises instances of institutional impotence, but not the fundamental shift from institutions to processes inherent in social media.

It is also a shame that the report itself is not more social media optimised – Gowing doesn’t appear to be available to discuss this on twitter, or have a blog for example and there are no links embedded in the pdf.  The opportunity to use this to create a conversation has clearly not been identified! (Update: he is on twitter @NikGowing but not exactly active)

However, minor gripes aside, the real value in this paper is the force with which it makes the point about the level of institutional denial (in governments and boardrooms) about what is happening, together with an identification of the fact that vastly increased speed of response is what crisis management is now all about.  Gowing calls this the Tyranny of the Time Line.

Read it and think about your own crisis management preparation and/or level of institutional denial.

Three lessons from #LRNY

As you can see from the previous two posts (and also if you check-out the #LRNY tag) the recent Land Rover hashtag campaign has caught my attention.  Initially I thought it was a very good idea – I have been supporting the concept of what I call TagSpaces for a while – but on closer investigation the campaign turns out to be a bit of a disappointment.

I don’t want to beat-up on Wunderman, the agency responsible, or especially Land Rover because I think they deserve congratulation for having the courage to experiment with this sort of thing.  However, I think there are some very valuable lessons that can be learnt – and it is this I would like to focus on. Continue reading →