Ketcheson.net

Over the last few weeks I’ve been trying to step back and look at the bigger picture around Web 2.0 / “social media” trends. I’ve been trying to get a better perspective on what all this means and where it is going.

The results are these 8 questions, a mixed bag of all the questions that I feel need to be answered or dealt with.

1 - Anti-social media: When can we stop using the term social media?

Please. Please. Please.

I’ve been following many of the discussions around the semantics of the term, and I have been unimpressed. Nothing has broken out for me and grabbed my attention.
We need a new term, and it should not be centred on media. And, while we are at it, the social piece isn’t that helpful either.

First, on social: Yes, we spend a lot of time interacting with others via trackbacks, links, shared networks, etc. But how social are we really being when we go to the basement to do it? Mainstream media production may not be very social, but its consumption can be. While “social media” production may be interactive, the consumption is invariably a solitary activity.

Now, on media:

The innovations that we are talking about involve changes in the consumption, production, sharing, mashing up, filtering, aggregation, disaggregation, tagging, atomization, intermediation, disintermediation, redisintermediation, and antiredisintermediationability of information. (Ok, I made the last one up).

This may be social, or it may be anti-social. It may be mainstream, or it may be microstream. It may be for mass consumption, microconsumption, or may be destroyed without every being consumed (i.e. an intermediary on the way to a new product, such as a Yahoo! Pipes building block). Anyway, “social media” is not the right term for this.

There are large swaths of innovation going on that will have an influence on PR/Communications that have no business being burdened with the word media. These include :

• Social networking – There is no ‘media’ connection to what happens with Meetups.
• Data-sharing - An organization posts up proprietary data and encourages people to mash it up, or a third-party combines various sets of data in a new and innovative way (i.e. MLS listings combined with Google Maps and census data).
• Wikipedia - It is a real stretch to call Wikipedia a social medium. It is a collaborative knowledge management repository.
• Rapid meme spreading and ad-hoc collaboration are characteristics of these new phenomenon that don’t really relate to the term “media”.

The other beef I have with the term “social media” is that it discounts the impact of the mainstream media. Much of what we call social media are just simply blog pickup of mainstream media stories. This is an interesting phenomenon, in that the blogosphere can amplify certain ideas that originate in the mainstream media. But, please, don’t suggest that the MSM is still not influential.
More reading on this:
http://www.socialmediaclub.org/2007/02/28/what-is-social-media-no-really-wtf
http://scobleizer.com/2007/02/16/what-is-social-media
http://blog.experiencecurve.com/archives/what-is-social-media
http://www.stoweboyd.com/message/2007/02/scoble_asks_wha.html

2 - Online video: Why does search suck?

When will Gootube videos get meaningful search? I want to full-text search the words/music in these videos. I want to tag the videos, I want to see everyone else’s tags, etc. C’mon, Google. You are the kings of findabilty. Make it happen.

3 - Metrics: When will we know blog readership numbers?

Some company that does quantitative metrics for mainstream media needs to step up and work on providing audited blog readership numbers. I am getting sick and tired of having no answer to the “Well, how many people read these blogs anyway?” question. My current response that “Small Dead Animals is important because 600 other blogs link there” is pretty weak and becomes great fodder for cynics.

Has anyone linked subscriber numbers to inbound link counts? More specifically, one could seek out a correlation between Feedburner subscriber numbers for feeds that have enabled the Awareness API Reference to inbound link references. The end-result (theoretically) would be a prediction of readership based on the number of inbound links a site receives. Is this a valid relationship?

4 - Media mix: Is there a detailed analysis of how the mix of media consumed by North Americans is changing?

I rest many of my statements about how these tools are changing the media landscape on the assumption that the mix of media being consumed by Canadians is moving away from radio/tv/print to online. I see it in my media consumption, and in the consumption of my friends. But, I want to know if there are any good stats out there to show this? (I’m sure I’d find it if I looked at Pew Internet long enough).

5 - Influence: To what extent are social media REALLY affecting the trajectory of news?

We spend so much time talking about the exceptions (Kryptonite locks, Gomery inquiry, Dell, Dean scream, Jetblue, etc.) that we ignore the fact that the trajectory of most media stories are unaffected. And, the impact on most brands is negligible.

While I absolutely still believe in the long-term impact of all this, what I want to know is how to communicate the significance of “social media” in the 90% of cases when brand impact is minimal.

Do blogs have influence? This was a question put to me by several very experienced journalists at a dinner party a couple of weeks ago, and I’m afraid I didn’t have any good answers. They just don’t see influence of blogs in day-to-day coverage of Canadian issues. Most of the arguments that I trot out in favour of blog influence are based on isolated cases used to prove a general rule. What I want to know is: Out of 100 news items to hit the wire, how many had their trajectory affected by “social media”?

More reading:
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/02/22/my-media-consumption-diet/
http://sambrook.typepad.com/sacredfacts/2007/02/so_where_does_t.html
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/_file_directory_/papers/344.pdf
http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2007/02/17/measuring-influence-using-inlinks/
http://datamining.typepad.com/data_mining/2006/10/the_end_of_infl.html

6 - Wikis: Am I the only one who gets frustrated?

Am I the only one who starts playing around with wiki software and then quickly gets annoyed with clunky interfaces? Although I like the ideas of wikis, and I get Wikipedia, I find wikis incredibly frustrating to edit and I generally give up in frustration.

Am I the only person who thinks that a behind the firewall wiki seem like a good idea that would just never get adopted? Yes, I know about Wikipatterns.com. But, I still just can’t envision my colleagues ever using a wiki. And, in a bureaucratic and tech-averse work environment, I’d get laughed out of the room for suggesting it.

7 -Innovation 1 : When can we experiment?

When will risk-averse IT/web gatekeepers realize that if they don’t let people experiment with new web-based tools in the open, then people will just go behind their back in the hopes that they can corporate acceptance and then confront the-powers-that-be with a tool that has gained widespread acceptance and the gatekeepers are powerless to stop? Oops. Sorry. That was rhetorical.
More reading:
http://theobvious.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/the_100_guarant.html

8 - Innovation 2 : Does easy failure lead to success?

Who said that one of the secrets of success of blogs is that they can fail so easily? The premise is that one of the secrets of “social media” tools (for lack of a better term) is that they require so little funds and time to start, resulting in the ability to fail with no risk and result in rapid, evolutionary iterations that lead to long-term success. This is in contrast to large-scale, “moon shot” style IT projects that must succeed, and thus have minimal capacity to evolve and adapt. I can’t find the reference to this quote.