WTF is Social Media?
A few of us here from Team NM were at an industry-geek-bootcamp type event this weekend, where all the attendees had to participate by giving a talk or facilitating a discussion or a workshop on any subject they wanted. The sessions ranged from techie CSS & coding talks to one guy showing us how to do a magic trick that he had found youtube fame with, another discussing e-voting and Cliff Richard & someone giving great tips on how to work a 4 day week.
So naturally, having our heads in the world of Social Media and it being at the heart of our bizness and what really makes us tick, we wanted to pick our fellow geeks brains about it: What they understand it to be, what online social media ‘tools’ they use, what’s the social media tool of tomorrow, what is yesterdays news in the arena and so on.
We handed out surveys at breakfast for people to fill in their thoughts on the above, and invited people to our session in the afternoon for a discussion on the findings once we’d collated the results. It made for a lively discussion and to our surprise (and excitement) a heated debate on what “Social Media” actually is.
The audience here were industry folk - techies, developers, producers, all in the business of making software and websites and web apps and the like. And the majority of people in the room were uncomfortable with the term.
After breaking it down, deconstructing the language (getting philosophical even) as a group, what came out of the wash is that the tech community (or the majority of the small segment represented in the room) just couldn’t take the term seriously for a number of reasons: It has the word “Media” in it. Some felt that’s all a bit luvvie dahrling. Or that it conjured up a feeling of old-school ‘broadcasting’ media. It’s a buzz word. Some felt it doesn’t explain what it encompasses in the title.
We were asked, “How do you explain what Social Media is to your clients - you must have a definition you tell them, not just ‘oh a bit like Facebook, that sorta thing’?”. But interestingly, here at NM we are not only in the business of creating and delivering Social Media, but of translating it too, and we think sometimes the best way to understand something is to see examples of it in life. So by and large, we do a lot of our explaining around this subject by showing clients Social Media in action - del.icio.us, widgets on last.fm, companies who are blogging, inspiring case studies, work we are doing with other clients in this area, and yes, we even talk about Facebook sometimes.
When I ask myself honestly what I actually understand Social Media to be, without taking a sneaky peep at Wikipedia and reeling off a definition, I find myself thinking of it in the the following way:
- It’s a nice term that sums up a change in the way people, companies, organisations, in short, everyone is using the web now. It’s a social web, an honest web, a web where you just can’t get away with not being nice, real and open anymore as an individual or business
- It explains our new way of interacting with each other through the web
- It’s meaning is not necessarily in its name
- The opportunity it presents to get close to your audience or your customers is immense, and being close to your customers is so invaluable in business
- It’s exciting too - and fun - widgets, blogging, sharing photos, seeing what buzz there is around your brand in the ecosystem, networking… so much interactivity, conversation and information sharing
- And it’s ever changing and evolving - it has me totally hooked with the new possibilities it presents nearly everyday.
So what do you understand Social Media to be? Are you a marketer that is interested in it but your colleagues haven’t got a clue what you’re harping on about? Is your company embracing the opportunities to spread your brand virally, understand and get close to your customers, to set yourselves apart from your competition?
Over the next few weeks we will be publishing a guide to our top 50 Social Media websites - a series of blog posts which looks at popular and new emerging online sites, tools and applications and how they work, what they are good for (how they can work for your business) & why we love them.
And if you’re interested in finding out more about how Social Media can work for your business feel free to email me or call me on 01273 648311. Also check out our man Will McInnes’ new page - he’s available to speak on this subject and really is entertaining and engaging.
Anna wrote this on 12.09.07 –
It's filed in the Interesting, Social media box
On September 12th, 2007 at 2:55 pm, Helen Aspell responded:
To echo the comments on the term social media (surely all media is social in nature?), i was exposed to the term poly-media metaverse the other day. Now comeon what is that supposed to mean to people outside of a narrow niche. Suffice to say that this has joined my list of hates from pretentious web agencies - of which you are not one - oh digital gurus.
On September 13th, 2007 at 11:21 am, Luke Hay responded:
I think:
"It explains our new way of interacting with each other through the web"
Is a pretty good description of what Social Media is. I’ve also found people have negative opinions of the term.
It seems to be used a replacement for ‘Web 2.0′ which is another hated term for many people. For me it’s all about the web changing from a ‘read’ to read-write’ platform (if that doesnt sound too techy).
On September 13th, 2007 at 11:24 am, Antony Mayfield responded:
Semantics is fun. We’re right to delve into these new terms. play with them, test ‘em out and debate over them.
When you get down to actually using them though, all i worry about is "does this word work now"? Do people understand what I’m talking about now?
Social media works for me, for now. But it’s always worth checking one’s assumptions on things like this.
On September 16th, 2007 at 7:12 pm, Will McInnes responded:
Love this conversation :)
I think language like this - technical terminology, categorisation, broad umbrella concepts - should be as universally useful as possible. But there’s also an element of ownership at play here - at the end of the day, if Nixon McInnes provides ’social media goodness’, then that’s our term, and the onus is on us, as the communicator, to help people understand WTF we’re on about.
When we were playing with these terms we were aware, and initially shy, of Social Media for all of the industry handwringing. But ultimately - if we’re happy with it (see Antony’s view) then we can own it, we can make that definition whatever we want, as long as we can confidently and easily communicate it.
That was what we decided. And so I think that Anna’s post here is the first in a series of Nixon McInnes creating it’s definition of social media, and communicating it. Onwards!
On September 16th, 2007 at 10:17 pm, Tom Hume responded:
Hmm… two observations:
The problem here might be that "social media" is a bit like user-generated content, in that it’s about taking stuff previously classified as conversation and calling it content.
As I proffered at BC, it’s a bit like porn in that we didn’t seem able to agree on a definition, but all knew we’d recognise it when we saw it.
On September 17th, 2007 at 8:48 am, Kelvin Newman responded:
While all people may not fully understand the intricacies of the term, it is, at least, something they are familar with.
While different understandings of the term exist, I would imagine there is a lot more of a consensus than a cosntruction like "poly-media metaverse"
On September 17th, 2007 at 5:06 pm, Jenni Lloyd responded:
I’d put myself in the camp of those who hate the phrase ‘web 2.0′, although it’s good shorthand amongst groups who get it. Social media is a broader, less web specific term. It’s still not ideal though - I’ve been toying with ‘participatory media’ (although it’s a bit of a mouthful!). I also like to think about ‘the social web’. But in the end you’ve usually got to use Facebook or TripAdvisor as an example before most people get what you mean.
On September 19th, 2007 at 8:52 am, Alistair Birch responded:
I guess the other issue is, who is the term for?
When we (ie the kind of folks in this conversation) talk about social media, we more or less know the kind of thing we’re referring to - even if we don’t like the term.
To create a more precise term, might end up with stuff that is technically more on the button, (Reciprocal Media, Two-Way Media ?! ugh), but sounds more opaque to the businesses we’re trying to communicate with. We’re surely looking for terms which are accessible, not those which require our secret, arcane knowledge to understand.
Consequently, if the term is to help clients understand the way that the world has changed, then I think ‘Social Media’ can do the job for us - the art is all in the explanation…
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.’
On December 6th, 2007 at 5:09 pm, Ash responded:
Whilst social media is a cool development, I still can’t help thinking that underlying the great web tools, social networking platforms and being able to keep up with what your friends are doing is the issue of data collection.
Things like Facebook can create very accurate personal data trees about the individual and what’s more, the more information you feed Facebook, the more they know about you, your demographics, your habits, your hobbies and also who your friends are and what they do.
I can’t help but feel that the real value of things like Facebook is for the people who own the data. This is what gives social-networking sites their enormous dollar value. It certainly isn’t banner advertising that generates revenues for these companies.
I’d be very interested to know what companies like Facebook are actually able to do with their collected data. Can they sell it on to marketing bodies, for example?
If this is the case, we need to be very careful about the information we willingly part with when playing with web 2.0 as the user. Conversely, as developers, we need to perhaps be slightly cynical in the preparation of such sites so that the data is easily collated and analysed.
In terms of selling 2.0 to clients, the fact that users willingly impart very personal information about themselves in order to participate in these exciting new ways of using the web can be a very important selling point. Clients can glean information about their customers that they may not be able to get through simple form-filling.
This all may seem slightly cynical, but believe me, sites like Facebook have an awful lot of information about you. Which if used incorrectly could compromise your privacy.
On January 27th, 2008 at 10:23 am, phil herborn » High level web design trends for 2008 responded:
[…] social media better, we’ll be experimenting still with how it works (and here and here) and what it is (and here and check this map). So any project team is going to be asking itself… Is it […]