So I follow a bunch of people on twitter, and occasionally I find a nugget so stellar that all of those tweets about what so&so is having for lunch or what airport security line is faster today are transformed into a worthwhile investment of my eyeball time (tm). One of the most valuable (more signal than noise) twitterers I follow is RedMonk analyst James Governor (@monkchips), who recently posted this reference to a very insightful blog post. Actually, he was relaying something that @discredittech had posted, which was a retweet of an excerpt of said blogpost from @higgis, who I don't follow because he tends to have a lot of open conversations in his twitter feed. Long backstory, I know, but it highlights why I use twitter as I do and limit the number of people that I follow.
Anyway, Web 2.0/Social Media: Really guys, it's pretty simple is one of the funniest posts on the subject and simultaneously contains the most salient points on social media I've read. Author John Welch is, no doubt, probably a pretty angry guy. Just saying. But here are a couple of excerpts if you aren't yet convinced that you should read his whole post:
"Social Media is people talking to each other"
That's really all it is. You can put all the fucking spin, weasel words, and supercaptaincoolguy terminology you want, but it's like painting a diamond. In the end, what's inside is far more valuable than the coating.
All this shit, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, DoucheBlog, all of it, is just people talking to each other, in a fairly direct way. It's analgous to a telephone. You don't really think much about the phone system, it's only there to allow you to talk to someone far away. Same thing for online shit. It can be a one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many, or all of the above, but it's just people talking to each other.
If you make it more complicated than that as a concept, stop. You're about to go off the cliff into New Media Douchebaggery, and you don't want that. Ever.
Interjecting here: I've met a lot of douchebags. He's right. And:
When you're talking about monologues, like traditional media, coupons, fliers, television commercials, what have you, you can easily manage the message. You're the only source. It's easy. However, when everything becomes a dialogue, you can't do it, and if you try, you'll look like a pack of asses. Only stupider.
So what do you do when you're faced with someone who is ranting and raving, probably in an obscene fashion about your product or company? Talk To Them
Pretty angry for the rest of the post; absolutely spot on throughout. Sure, there are principles to adhere to for all the combinations of one->many, many->many, etc, but no matter what a constant loop of conversation is the most valuable thing, and many social media strategists altogether lose on that point.
Thing is, I don't think I can clean this up enough to distribute it at work - it would lose impact like a cleaned up Die Hard airing on TNT. Luckily, we're not engaging in much douchebaggery. But oh... I've got this great blogpost to circulate if we go that way. (And if said douchebaggery makes me as angry as this guy.)