Hashtags: bridges between communities

I had an interesting brief chat this morning at eDemocracyCamp with Peter Corbett.  We were talking about the power of hashtags.

Most people don’t yet understand that hashtags are an extremely strategic, powerful and valuable way to inform targeted communities about related concepts, events and topics.

For example, if I am attending eDemocracyCamp and hear or share something that may also be a valuable insight to those currently attending FooCamp, I can co-tag my “#edemcamp” tweet with “#foocamp” to share my comment with Foo Camp attendees.  This not only exposes another entire community to this information nugget, but potentially catalyzes discussion around this topic within that community.  This type of cross-pollination can yield unique and innovative solutions because it infuses a discussion with input from a tangentially-related community who have different assumptions, education and perspectives.

This also, however, brings up the interesting line between using hashtags for good and not for evil.  There is a fine line between informing and marketing.  Misuse of the power of hashtags = spam. Informing and enlightening with hashtags is valuable.  Marketing with hashtags dilutes their value.

New eMarketer Social Network Marketing Report

eMarketer just released a new report entitled, “Social Network Marketing: Slow Growth Ahead for Ad Spending.”  It’s an expensive for-pay report ($695), so I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing, but I just wanted to share with you the synopsis.   I agree with the overall premise that impactful social network marketing is not going to be about banner advertising.

The Social Network Marketing report analyzes why marketers have been unable to crack the code of social network advertising.

The declining US economy and slower-than-expected revenue growth at MySpace are two reasons for the lowered near-term social network ad forecasts.

Advertising is not the only way for marketers to participate in social networks, however.

Although social network advertising—banners, search ads and new ad formats—is not growing as expected, other forms of social network marketing—encompassing tactics such as customer communities and influencer outreach—are proliferating.

Marketers still need to be where their customers are, and consumers remain heavily involved in social networks.

It’s good to see that marketers are realizing that traditional advertising on social nets is not the way that social marketing works.  However, the last line, “Marketers still need to be where their customers are, and consumers remain heavily involved in social networks” keeps me wondering . . .

Showing up and being there is not only not enough, it misses the point: social networks are about engagement, participation  and collaboration.  Being where your customers are is like trying to pick up a gal at a bar through just by standing  in the corner and hoping she notices you.  Come on Romeo, roll up your sleeves, slick back your hair and buy the gal a drink!

Online communities versus social networks

This past Monday blogger, FastCompany journalist and social media expert Marcia Connor tweeted, “So what’s *your* theory on why online communities get little press while social networks get all the buzz?”  Her query was for an article or blog post that she’s working on.  Here’s my take on it.  In more than 140 characters.

Online communities get little press while social networks are all the rage because human beings are multidimensional.  This unique quality is reflected well by social networks and not so well by online communities.  Online communities tend to be vertically organized, calling upon a single facet of their participants, e.g. arthritis sufferer.  The richness of social networking is understanding your high school friend as an accomplished scientist and your boss as a dad.  Social media commands a single persona, but one which is surfaces the multidimensionality of each person.

Social networks also have the added dimension of crowdsourcing upon which tools like website discovery tool StumbleUpon are founded.  You learn about tangentially-related and even unrelated things that are of interest to you from like-minded members of your social networks.

Additionally, social networks blend online and offline (retrobuilt) relationships. Online communities tend to be founded either around a geographic area or around a vertical topic.  This blended mix adds texture and flavor that online communities don’t have.

Finally, the self-directed, unmoderated, “owned by the people” freedom of social networks increases members’ sense of ownership and thus, their connectedness to the network, itself.  Online communities tend to be moderated, or at least owned and run by an individual.

I can’t wait to read Marcia’s analysis of this question…!

Social networks amplify and strengthen their own values: for good… as well as for evil

Social networks amplify and strengthen their own values: openness breeds openness, transparency breeds transparency, truth breeds truth.  Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook and the others are so valuable because their members share the common value and goal of helping one another.  We believe that the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts; that working together on ideas and concepts will yield higher-evolved thinking.  I love social media and the intellectual discourse that it enables.

However, today I was reminded that there is another side to the power of information sharing.  I attended a presentation about the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict given by Rafal Rohozinski of The SecDev Group.  The photos, music videos, and other multimedia pieces that were virally spread by Hezbollah to tell its perspective and solidify its power among its followers were chilling.  This presentation reminded me that the power of social media cuts both ways: not only can it raise money for altruistic causes and expand intellectual dialogue and problem-solving, it can also–just as effectively–amplify the voices and strengthen the values of social networks founded upon evil and hatred.  Social media technologies are not inherently good or bad, they are neutral.  Like any tool–from a fork to a grenade–social networks can be extremely dangerous.

Microcasting yourself across social networks

So, I’ve been grappling with how to best manage my personal feed across social networks.  It seems silly to update my status separately on several social networks when services like Ping.fm exist to enable broadcast updates across networks.

A few weeks ago I did a test and linked my Facebook and Plaxo Pulse feeds to auto-update when I post updates on Twitter.  I then asked my contacts how they felt about receiving so many status updates from me.  I got some honest feedback: it was too much information. 

I am not a prolific tweeter–I update 0-5 times per day.  Most of my tweets are observations or status updates, some are sharine interesting articles, blog posts or concepts.  So, why did this seemingly perfect concept of cross-social network updating not work in practice?

There are three reasons: the audience, the origin and the action.  Though all of my Facebook friends and Plaxo contacts are, by definition, participating in social media, the majority of them have not immersed themselves in it from a cultural perspective.  Just as most news publications use blogging as another article format, so do many social networkers use these tools primarily as another form of interpersonal communications, just as they use e-mail or IM.  In both cases, they have not made the big shift from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0: from a world of information exchange to a world of deep and meaningful collaboration. As I’ve already stood on my Web 2.0 soapbox, I’ll refrain from repeating myself here, except to say that embracing social media means adopting a single persona and believing that collaborative thinking is superior to self-promotion.

Second, Twitter (and not only Twitter, I should add) is of a different ilk than Facebook, Plaxo, LinkedIn and others.  Committed members of the Twitter community have made taken the plunge and are living by the tenets for Web 2.0: trust, transparency, openness and collaboration.  Furthermore, a large number of people who follow one another on Twitter met one another on Twitter.  This stands in stark contrast to networks like Facebook which are founded on the principle of retrobuilding existing networks.  Twitter enthusiasts want more detailed information more frequently because this interaction is the basis of their relationships. 

Finally, the action: on Facebook or Plaxo, a status update is a broadcast; on Twitter the action is micro-casting, not broadcasting.  Twitter followers find one another through keyword searches or threads based on topics of interest, geographic location, or social situation, e.g. being a mom.  Microcasting is Chris Anderson’s Long Tail in action: people building communities around niche areas of interest.

So, for now, I will keep my tweets separate from my status updates, but I have to say that at this particular point in my social network evolution, I feel a closer sense of community and am experiencing more meaningful collaboration with my Twitter followers and followees than with my real-life–albeit retrobuilt–network.

Fox News on Facebook: Web 1.0 or 2.0?

So, Fox News has launched its own Facebook page.  Fox News already has over 22,000 thousands of fans, so, I guess we can consider it pretty popular.  I am curious to learn how Fox News is defining and measuring the success of its Facebook page: number of friends, conversations sparked, clickthroughs to FoxNews.com, etc.  In short, I’m not convinced that a Facebook page is truly a Web 2.0 tactic for Fox News–or for any other corporation, media company, or organization, for that matter.

“Huh?” you might ask.  “It’s Facebook, how much more ‘Web 2.0′ can you get?”

I would imagine (though I don’t know) that Fox News, like many companies playing in the social media sandbox, utlimately views this social network as another broadcast venue–another way to drive traffic to its destination site.  

When corporations create individual “personas” on social networking sites, they are superimposing their Web 1.0 objectives onto Web 2.0.  Though they’ve shown up to the party, they’re not really participating in social media.  Being on a social networking site and not participating is–really by definition–not being part of the social network.

Another similar example that I was discussing with Mark Potts today at lunch is auto-RSS Twitter updates.  When a blogger does this to promote a new post to his/her followers, it’s well-received: a blogger–by definition–is already a respected participant in the conversation.  A blogger’s tweets spark conversation both as responses on the blog, itself, and on Twitter.  But when an organization sets TwitterFeed or other similar RSS auto-tweeting tool to post whenever its site is updated, it’s exploiting the medium and, thus, diluting the viral value of social media.

I understand why news outlets, corporations and organizations are creating presences on social networks: they want to be where their audiences are.  This is the first premise of social media.  However, being on social networks as a corporation and simply TwitterFeeding every site update violates the second premise of social media: authentically join the conversation.

Retrobuilding

So you’ve joined the social networking craze and now you receive daily requests be “LinkedIn” and to be “friends” on Facebook. You’re finding camp friends from 1982 and being found–stalked?–by girlfriends from 1993. It’s new, it’s exciting, it’s fun…it’s time consuming…it’s eating into your gym time…it’s an excuse to stay in on Friday nights. Hmmm…

Plus, aren’t you feeling a twinge of deja vu with all of this? I mean, you already know these people, or, if you’ve lost touch with them, maybe there was a good reason…. So what’s this all about? What are we DOING!?

Well, I’ve coined a term for this: we are “retrobuilding” our social networks. We are going back in time and piecing together our friends, acquaintances, college hook-ups, and former colleagues so that we can easily draw upon our social networks as needed.

In fact, the potential value of our social networks –if well retrobuilt –is so great that our numbers of LinkedIn “connections” and Facebook “friends” are becoming the new status symbols. You know how the the cocktail party conversation goes: “How many Facebook friends do you have? Oh, only 34. Well, you know, I’ve been on for 7 months now, so that’s why I have so many. You’ll get there…”

We’re moving from a world in which money = power to one in which influence potential = power. The values of our society are changing.

What’s interesting is that even though retrobuilding is a relatively new phenomenon, we will be the last generation to retrobuild. No, I don’t believe that social networking is going away, it’s just that Digital Natives have no need to retrobuild: they’ve only lived in a digital world. Their friends and contacts are already digitized. They are as connected to their friends on MySpace as they are in person at school, as they are via SMS.

So what will be the status symbols of the 21st century? I’d argue that influence is pretty high up there, so you’d better go get retrobuilding.