First off, thanks to everyone who made it out to the SFAMA event last night at Adaptive Path. We had a great turn out for our panelists Robert Scoble of Rackspace/Building 43, Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester , Kevin Marks of Google and Mark Silva of Real Branding.
The conversation was wide ranging, but there were a couple of things that jumped out for me. I’ll highlight those quickly below:
Wikiality
As social media changes marketing and the web experience in general, there are still some social phenomena that we just can’t kick. Namely, it’s still possible to use the media to perpetuate falsehoods through repetition. Here’s a funny site that coins the term Wikiality. In other words, just because we can talk back and start conversations does not mean we’re heading to a more accurate representation of reality.
Listening ≠ Innovation
Jeremiah commented that using social media to listen to communities can be misleading because they’re basing their input on past experience rather than what’s next. To make things worse, listening to social media quickly turns into listening to those with the loudest voices rather than those with the best ideas and can become a popularity contest.I think he’s put his finger on a real challenge for social media moving forward. How can social media be applied to strike a balance between community voice, business interest, and innovation?
This get’s back to the Henry Ford’s famous quote, ““If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” That said, I think it can be, and is being, done by companies like Proctor and Gamble who have developed a user-research program that addresses these concerns through the use of ethnography and other research methodologies in combination with social media.
Stop Asking For “Viral” Campaigns
Kevin made a great comment about how the term “viral” is a very poor choice to describe marketing campaigns. While it’s true that not all viruses cause disease, they are generally associated with doing so. Thus, Kevin proposed thinking about other biological metaphors to describe what we’re trying to do. For example, he suggested the metaphor of a seed within a tasty fruit. We carry the fruit with us so that we can eat it on our journeys and then transplant the seed elsewhere, by discarding it, thus spreading the population of the fruit in question. The metaphore that resonates best with me is that of the meme (which I talk about in this post)
Filtering Content With Profiles
Robert introduced the issue of filtering the content we consume through our network, rather than by using metrics. Kevin added fuel to this fire by talking about the way Technorati enables this. That said, I wonder if a hybrid approach won’t provide the best solution. Metrics are good for some kinds of filtering and not others. There are some companies out there, like the folks at RiseSmart, that are trying to combine people with algorithms to provide more relevant search.
The Top 100 Are Always Changing
Kevin brought up a good point that makes perfect sense, but that I’d never really thought about before. He said that the top 100 bloggers on Technorati are always changing, thus drawing attention to the fact that there is some consistent rate of change, or flow, between the long tail and the head. In other words, it’s not like those people at the top will be there forever. Though, I’m not sure I’ve really wrapped my head around what the effect of this really is. Perhaps it just prevents the consolidation of power?
Evolution Of Social Media
Several panelists talked about the evolution of social media and the fact that some of the original top bloggers are moving towards lifestreaming, Robert being one example. One effect of this is that we’re uploading more content than before. Kevin pointed out that the social media expereince may involve more uploading that downloading. My concern is that more content leads to more noise, which leads to more filtering, which may ultimately lead to more frustration unless filtering can keep up. We’ve seen this happen with the traditional broadcast approach to media where brands cranked up their megaphones so loudly that we can’t hear anything and we’ve lost a sense of trust. I hope that’s not where we’re headed.
Brands Need To Act Like People
Amen. Mark talked about this and I think pretty much everyone agrees that brands need act more like people. That doesn’t necessarily mean more transparency, but it does mean interacting in a human way. On the flip side, perhaps companies need to be held accountable in a more human way for their actions.
Another Summary
Louis Gray also did a nice live summary of the event.