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More Social Media

Steve Rubel has again called for the elimination of the label “social media.” And again I’ll disagree.

Rubel’s underlying premise is right:

“The fact is that everyone who is contributing to the dialogue - be it in video, text or photos - has earned the right to be called media.”

But I disagree with his rationale for eliminating the label:

“It’s like we’re a separate entity from the rest of the so-called “mainstream” journalists, filmmakers, photographers, etc. who do what we do and get paid more for it. We sit in a special dish like leftover meatloaf so we need a special name. If you use these phrases you're unintentionally perpetuating that myth.”

First of all, mainstream media and much of the public love (or have finally embraced) the social media phenomenon, so the “special dish” is clearly in the main course and there’s nothing “leftover” about it.

More important, we need the label to understand the phenomenon. We come to understand new things by looking at something we already understand (mainstream media) and explaining the differences (the social elements). For this reason, Rubel admits that “the phrases were helpful as the world began to take notice. But now, it’s different. We’ve arrived.” Well, Rubel has arrived. Mainstream media, Silicon Valley, and millions of people around the world have also arrived. But not everyone, and we certainly are not finished understanding how this arrival is changing the world. Imagine trying to write about how media is changing today without using “social media.” It can’t be done. The label is not a buzzword, and it will disappear from current usage slowly. And it will take up permanent residence in history books.

Meanwhile, I propose satisfying Rubel (I hope) by stating clearly that he and all bloggers are part of the media, without any limiting modifier. But I insist on saying that he got there by being very smart about and being a leader in the development of social media.

The End of Social Media?

The label that is. Steve Rubel calls for the end of the use of social media because: “In 2006 all media went social.” Continues Rubel: “So as we roll into 2007, it’s fair to say that ‘social media’ as a separate entity is dead. This will only accelerate as individual publishers add employees and build networks of sites that compete with the big boys. Need proof? Look at what Om Malik and Michael Arrington accomplished this year.”

Yes, there’s certainly less and less distinction between social media and mainstream media, but it’s hard to believe a label can become extinct so quickly. And I suspect we will keep it around for a while, even if it’s only to explain how media has changed so dramatically in the last couple of years and credit those who introduced, uh, social media.

The more interesting question is what happens from here as bloggers become business owners with advertising revenue to protect. One of the most interesting characteristics of social media so far has been the number of distinct voices beholden to no one and willing to challenge everything. Do they go mainstream and lose their punch? As the technology-fueled distinction between mainstream and social media disappears, the new distinction may be between mainstream media and independent voices, how individuals move from one to the other, and where we choose, if we choose, to place our trust.

Wikia’s Openserving: A Business Without a Model

You’ve got to love the honesty of Wikia’s CEO Gil Penchina on plans to launch openserving.com to provide free hosting of wiki-based collaborative websites:

“If we give away the bandwidth and the storage, and we get none of the advertising revenue, what's the business model? Well, I don't know yet.”

Wika just received additional funding from Amazon.com Inc., and I wonder how the investors are responding to the comment. But if it’s experiments we want, then this is a good one. It’s an opportunity for individuals or small groups who otherwise couldn’t to launch a content venture that might make some money and get some notoriety. It will be interesting to watch the adoption here. How much value? How much noise?  And will a sustainable business model follow?

The End As We Know It?

Last week, law professor Eric Goldman reiterated his prediction that “the very architecture of Wikipedia contains the seeds of its own destruction,” and that it will fail in four years due to the fact that “as Wikipedia traffic grows, it becomes a juicier target for marketers seeking to promote themselves” and “Wikipedia will enter a death spiral where the rate of junkiness will increase rapidly until the site becomes a wasteland.”

A lot of speculation and guesswork accompany the argument, but a marginalization of Wikipedia is certainly possible – sooner or later than four years and not necessarily as a result of marketers. It’s easy to forget that as entrenched in our psyches as Wikipedia is, it’s still very much an experiment in social media – along with Myspace.com, Second Life, YouTube, and many others – played out on a very large scale.

Myspace has its issues with predators and whether or not it can remain hip as monetization and regulation set in. Second Life has its woes with vandals as Don Clark notes in Virtual Vandalism on Second Life. And YouTube is still a phenomenon searching for an identity.

There’s always the possibility that one or more of these implodes from a variety of reasons having to do with technology or community, or witnesses the rise of a competing platform (remember CompuServe?) – some next big thing that draws current fans onto a grander adventure.

The demise of a popular social media site in favor of a replacement or because the community model can’t be sustained should not be surprising. We are very much at the beginning of these experiments and we have much to learn as both providers and users.

Trust and Deception

In 2003, the prescient William Gibson published Pattern Recognition, a novel about a group obsessing over and trying to discover the source of some mysterious video clips trickling out onto the Internet. This year, the Lonely Girl video series appeared on YouTube, causing a similar frenzy and turning out to be the work of a screenwriter, filmmaker, and hired actress. We also had the fake Wal-Mart blog and the fake Beer Ape commercial.  And the Jason Fortuny and Craigslist episode – publishing the responses to a fake personals ad – raised further questions about credibility, deception, privacy and abuse on the net.

So how long before algorithm-controlled deceptions actually destroy a company or bring down a candidate – or get one elected? In a world where you can’t believe what you read or watch, how do we make informed decisions? 

Even in pre-Internet/pre-digital photo days, documents and photos could be faked, personal information could be stolen, and private letters could be photocopied and passed around to create a scandal. And a well-placed lie could always be spread to harm candidates and companies. We used to trust (not always with good reason) our local newspaper editors and favorite newscasters to sort out the truth, and brick-and-mortar stores that had longevity not to cheat us.

But today, the problem is on a much larger scale, much faster, and more complicated. So now we seek trusted sources on the net.  Many of us rely on the online versions of our trusted off-line resources for both news and shopping. But how do we develop trust in valuable online resources, from auction and travel sites to bloggers, that have no offline equivalents?

Does it depend on personal time spent and testing the waters? Does it come from the type of community formed? Word-of-mouth? How have you developed trust? We’re curious. Let us know.

Click Fraud and the Golden Age of PR

Check out Steve Rubel’s post on Click Fraud and the source article in BusinessWeek. According to the article, click fraud is “a dizzying collection of scams and deceptions that inflate advertising bills for thousands of companies of all sizes. The spreading scourge poses the single biggest threat to the Internet’s advertising gold mine and is the most nettlesome question facing Google and Yahoo, whose digital empires depend on all that gold.”

Says Rubel: “My take on all of this is that advertising is clearly at a major crossroads. The old model of throwing stuff up there and seeing what sticks is dying. Search engine marketing, while certainly effective, can have its challenges too and clearly can be gamed. Over time, people are going to say “enough.” They’re going to want companies to engage them in conversation before they are convinced they should buy. This is why I believe we’re about to enter the golden age of PR.”

Rubel is right. Unless Google, Yahoo, and others change their practices, the click advertising model is likely to collapse in upon itself. It’s not just about scammed advertisers abandoning the model. Search for an item, say ping pong tables, and you get more links to more tables from more sellers than you can possibly assimilate. It’s unpleasant and intimidating—unless you are already dealing with a select group of trusted retailers.

Which is why Rubel is right that relying purely on search engines will likely be replaced with something more conversational, which paves the way for trust. Still, the “golden age” of PR may be a bit further off than we hope. While many of the experiments in community—and Eastwick is involved in several—are extremely successful and point us in the right direction, companies need to be more tech savvy and invest more time and money to create a community. And while large retailers and tech companies will move more quickly to adopt new models and reap the benefits, new tools and partnerships will be needed to help smaller retailers and non-tech companies to participate.

 

Tesla launches

One of the smartest ways to launch a product is to tell the world as much as you can before the launch, while retaining a great deal of mystery about key features.  In the case of the Tesla Roadster -- the first high-performance, long-range electric car -- the big mystery was, "OK, but what does it look like?"  The Silicon Valley company took off the wraps last night, and here it is. 

I had the pleasure of meeting CEO Martin Eberhard at a small dinner a short while ago, so I knew the basics -- 0-60 mph in about four seconds, 250 miles per charge, lithium-ion batteries (the kind that power laptops) -- but I was still pretty anxious to get a look at the car.  Next step is to get behind the wheel.  Wish me luck -- investors include the founders of Google and Paypal who I am sure have first dibs.  Car goes on the market next summer.  And unlike the late, great EV-1 -- the subject of the summer documentary hit "Who Killed the Electric Car?" -- you can actually buy this car (the EV-1 could only be leased).  Prediction:  a big back-order from Silicon Valley, where lots of locals are going to feel proud of this smart-looking, high-performing, eco-friendly product.