Download PDFGreg and I have recently compared notes on a growing trend by various pundits. They are using the term Social Media as an overarching category that includes all things social: social networks, social commerce, and so on.
This is confusing, and, I think, just plain wrong.
Social media is a term that is used to characterize the web-based tools (and the techniques to use them) that we, the edglings, are using to publish our observations about the world to each other. Wikipedia defines it this way:
Social media describes the online tools and platforms that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social media can take many different forms, including text, images, audio, and video. Popular social mediums include blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs.
And, of course, social media can occur within the context of other sorts of social applications. For example, the Last.fm, the social music network, includes a blogging capability, well-integrated to the music context. And Facebook allows users to pull “notes” from RSS streams generated external to the app. Flickr incorporates a social media architecture, but could equally well be considered a social photo network.
I may seem to be splitting hairs, but my purpose here is to simply clarify things. The most general category is social tools, social software, or social applications. For all intents and purposes these are synonyms. These tools are characterized by a variety of features: reliance on social media principles and techniques, tags, an emphasis on the individual rather than membership in organizations or groups, and a sharing model derives from social networking principles.
So the topology of social computing — which is the best term to denote the activity of building and using these tools — is like a moebius strip: the applications are characterized by features which are themselves categories used to characterize the apps.
In a fractal way, I can say that Flickr is a social photo network, and its primary characteristic is social networking of its participants through photo sharing, based on a social media architecture.
I am a stong advocate of the term social architecture, which I have defined as the emerging natural structure of all successful applications in the future. For a fuller examination of this idea, see The Revolution Will Be Socialized: Social Architecture and The Future Of Online Markets. The basic notion is that there are three (possible) tiers in socially architected applications: individuals come first, our aggregations into networks of contacts comes second, and third, individuals participate in markets via networks. I made some bold claims, which I think will be borne out:
The Revolution Will Be Socialized
So (and with a nod to the Last Poets), the revolution will be socialized!
- The social architecture I have handwaved at here will come to underlie all the successful applications of our day, and the earlier apps will rapidly adapt to this model or be eclipsed by other apps that do.
- In the near future, all ecommerce will be socialized: where a user’s transaction will feel as if it is taking place in the context of some social interaction — like reading a review at a blog about a camera, or a vacation — rather than the online catalog or classified experience supported by Amazon and eBay.
- All truly significant applications will span all three tiers of the social architecture model, and will demonstrate their worth directly by the creation of a market that brings buyers and sellers of some critical resource together in a new way.
As I tell entrepreneurs in my advisory capital work, if your business idea doesn’t create — or subvert — a market worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, why build it? There are so many underserved niches, so many walks of life, so many needs and wants, why build another social bookmarking tool, or another blog metrics system, or yet another RSS reader? But this approach allows you to gauge — at least conceptually — whether some new idea is worth the trouble, whether you will ever make a business from it, and if so, how.
And, of course, money is just one way to measure value. You might be interested in fostering world peace, for example, in which case you might use another metric, such as the numbers of people using the app everyday. But in the commercial sector, we measure markets by the financial value.
At any rate, at some point in the future we may have progressed to the point that we will simply drop the adjective “social” in the places that it is so prominent now. Once all media is socialized, we may just say “media.” In the future, I think all e-commerce will be socialized, and we might drop the “social” from “social commerce.” But in this transitional period — which may last decades — the word social has real value in differentiating what we are doing now from what proceeded it.
tags: social+tools, social+applications, social+software, social+media, social+architecture, social+computing, social+networking
January 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 pm
[…] So, while Stowe is redefining terms after his fracas with PR in the new world, I thought I’d go ahead and start publishing some of the notes I’ve been making towards a book on all this. The working title is Edgework: making and marketing things in a hackable, hyperconnected world. You can think of it as Small Pieces, Loosely Joined for marketers. Ok, it’s all microchunked and scattered to the four corners; now what? (Don’t tell me that’s what the Cluetrain was. Cluetrain was akin to a shared late-night brainjam session where you and your stoned friends see the face of God for just a bit. Then you try to recollect it the next day and it pales when compared to the epiphany. See also: Tribute.) […]
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:08 pm
[…] There’s quite a lot of discussion these days about social media, the, um, New Big Revolution in marketing. In reality, it’s more like a stepping stone on the evolutionary path that continues to define and redefine the relationship between businesses and markets. It wasn’t too long ago that we were talking frothily about “Customer Centricity”, and before that personalization, one-to-one marketing, and on the trail leads into the misty past. And this is about Unica What’s changed today is that technologies have emerged that allow market participants to network–to share ideas and opinions that in ways that blunt the prepackaged and broadcast messages marketers have relied on since the development of mass media to position and sell products. […]
January 24th, 2007 at 12:53 am
Among those types of social media mentioned above…podcasting? Really???
As a podcaster, I have to say that most podcasts are just looking to be another MASS media vehicle. Nothing about the technology of podcasting is particularly social, if you are serious about defining social media as a many-to-many paradigm. Blogs, forums, other social applications, these allow for interaction and a way of fostering conversation and connection, but podcasts (defined as audio/video distributed via an RSS feed) are inherently one-to-many pulpits, and without a blog to capture comments about a podcast (a hopelessly decontextualized experience, and quite messy in terms of true podcast integration) it is just another distribution mechanism for getting content to the nameless, faceless great unwashed. Besides, a blog does not a podcast make.
Perhaps I’m ill-advised, and I’ll raise the ire of a good many folks by asking this, but what exactly qualifies podcasting, at least the way it is practiced by virtually every podcaster, as “social media”?
January 24th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Carter,
I think you raise an intersting question, but it seems to make an assumption. I don’t think that podcasting is trying to be a Mass Media Vehicle any more than say blogging is (or has become).
The distinction of social media is applied not so much to the aspirations of the media so much as the form and mechanics of its creation. In today’s world, even the most accidental of things can be spread to the world at large.
I happen to know a lot of podcasters - I was one very early on in the podcasting movement. Most podcasters I know definitely see the potential for revenue in their efforts - moreso than bloggers? Possibly. It doesn’t change the nature of their relationship with their listeners, viewers, what have you. It’s the dynamic, highly interactive and influential nature of that relationship - the potential and often, desire, for a two-way dialogue that makes it quite social.
The lack of established, formalized controls and the ever-decreasing costs of production also contribute to the inclusion of podcasting as a social media. The enablement of millions of individuals formerly unable to license the airwaves is truly a phenomenal sea change in the endless ocean of media.
One other comment you made is that podcasts are mostly 1:1. I might argue that this is the case with most blogs - if not entirely true for all except group blogs. The general pattern is 1) initiate (a thought) 2) receive (commentary) 3) react (to comments). I think that the lack of these more formal responses in podcasts seems like a key difference - I simply see it as a lack of technology. There are a number of companies attacking this problem from all angles. Soon enough, we’ll see those pieces of the puzzle brought to market and the nature of the dialogue will change once again.
I hope this provides some insight into why we might consider podcasting a part of the social media landscape.
January 24th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Hi Greg, thanks for responding. These are great observations, and I’d like to continue the discussion a bit further.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a part of a company very involved and interested in bringing interactive/conversational podcasting technologies to market, so my earlier question is framed by that side of my experience (in addition to my disillusionment as a blogger-turned-podcaster, who had hoped for a multimedia extension of my blog conversations, but instead found precious few relational transactions occurring, and virtually no way to get to know my audience outside of the blog I used to publish the podcast). I’m not self-promoting here; I’m interested in the conversation, so I’ll leave my company out of the discussion.
Perhaps this is all semantic gene-splitting, but the post had as its goal a clarification of the term social media.
My primary argument for the exclusion of the current podcasting model from the umbrella of social media really does boil down to the fact that within the current technology and practice, there is just not a way of interacting in-kind. Podcasters, or some of them, DO want to know who is represented in their download statistics, but they have to rely on the blog’s mechanisms to do that. Blog comments are really what make a blog part of the social media; without that, it’s just another website (albeit much easier for broadcasting thoughts and publishing ideas).
But podcasting itself (the form and mechanics) lacks this social component, and as a podcaster, I’m sure you’ve thought about how someone listening to your podcast must behave in order to interact with you.
1. discover podcast on iTunes or podcast directory.
2. Download to computer or portable player.
3. Listen.
4. At some point during listening, the podcast sparks the desire to respond to an idea, concept or discussion.
5. If the listener is listening on a portable device, then he must make a note of where within the podcast the comment-worthy material occurs.
6. Listener must sustain his interest long enough to get to a computer, and find the blog and then the post associated with the podcast.
7,8,9,10,11,12,etc… What follows is usually something like cueing the podcast to the relevant point, transcribing/paraphrasing what was said so that the listener (now a blog commenter) can respond in context for the benefit of the host and others that might read the comment, and finally - with no small effort in the cause - leaving the comment.
From there, the podcaster might pick up the comment and read it on the next podcast episode (and well he should, after all the work the blessed listener endured just to interact!)
Notice that at no time was podcasting used to reciprocate during this transaction. Interaction took place using blogging technology. In the same way, any number of radio and television networks are distributing via mass media and communicating with viewers and listeners via podcast feeds, blogs and websites. Does this mean radio and TV content (the actual content itself) has joined the ranks of social media? And what about these networks that take last week’s show and redistribute it via itunes - it’s the same content, but is it now social, simply because it arrived via RSS? A lot of us yelled back at our TV screens during the State of the Union speech last night, does that count TV as a many-to-many social technology?
I was amazed to discover that a major podcast network launched their new brand recently, and there was not a single mechanism on the site for capturing user feedback or comments about the episodes they distributed. Still isn’t, I just checked. And they claim to be all about “conversations”! Smells like Mass Media, if you ask me.
You might have inadvertently quoted me as saying that I thought podcasting was 1:1, but I’d like to correct that here, if I may. Podcasting is inherently one-to-many, which is another way of saying mass, because there is no way for the many to communicate in-kind with the one. One-to-one would be interpersonal, where two people engage in a dialog only meant for the two of them. Many-to-many, which is often used to describe the nature of social media, is capable of including as many participants as would care to join in, all talking in turns with the other individuals. Some participate, some merely audit, but the form and mechanics of it allow for this interplay to occur.
I agree that the latent potential of podcasting would eventually place it squarely in the camp of social media. But potential is much different than practice.
I hope this is the place to discuss this, but I am thoroughly enjoying the discussion, and would be happy to continue it via another means, if you feel it is not in the spirit of the blog or the post. You can reach me via email (carter at innertoob dot com).
January 25th, 2007 at 8:00 am
[…] In the end? I say, “Who cares”. If the SMPR is of use, it will be adopted. If not, oh well. And social media will continue to evolve. I don’t think anyone has the right or ability to define it or tell us what language we’re allowed to use when discussing it. It’s mine, too, remember? You can listen to a podcast of the panel discussion that started the whole thing here. […]
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:09 am
Doc Searls and Robert Scoble on What’s Wrong with…
In my opinion, Social Media is more of description in order to frame media in a socialized context. Chances are, that the people lambasting it are not the ones defining or creating it….
July 23rd, 2007 at 9:19 am
[…] Social Media Isn’t Everything - Blue Whale Labs - Jan 2007 Some of the teacup tempest over terms (tags: socialmedia define) […]