Comments on: Death to Social Media

By: So what do I do now? « ASH-10

So what do I do now? « ASH-10 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:22:43 +0000

[...] Death to Social Media [...]

By: Just Blogging » What is Gov 2.0 ?

Just Blogging » What is Gov 2.0 ? — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 10:32:49 +0000

[...] from Pete Ashton’s blog post, explaining his interpretation of “What is Web 2.0?” – [...]

By: Money where my mouth is « ASH-10

Money where my mouth is « ASH-10 — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:24:14 +0000

[...] email address:Delivered by FeedBurner Recent Blog Comments They’re not the same, stupid! on Death to Social MediaDan FitzSimons on Puppies and the gatekeepers of miseryBenjamin Ellis on Death to Social MediaSandy [...]

By: They’re not the same, stupid!

They’re not the same, stupid! — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:02:57 +0000

[...] other day my friend Pete Ashton posted an article in which he declared he was no longer a Social Media Consultant. Sort [...]

By: Benjamin Ellis

Benjamin Ellis — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:03:00 +0000

Social Media is a tool (or rather a collection of tools). Tools are something we use, rather than something we do. And there-in lies the problem of labelling. The tools of social media let us do things that were not previously economical or even possible. I don’t think that we yet have a name for those things. For now social media will have to do – but I don’t think it will be for long.

By: Sandy Blair

Sandy Blair — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:56:35 +0000

Great article, what was most compelling to me was when you say “the process by which what was novel becomes mundane isn’t interesting to me.”.

I support the internal platforms in a large company and we are trying – and succeeding mostly- in bringing in social media things to our enterprise.

What has become clear is that it is a fascinating process to move from early adopters to mainstream usage and that it takes a lot of work, and fine tuning. It has never been a ‘build it and they will come’ process. That’s a poor general rule in the outside world too, but the edge cases where it succeeds often attract undue attention and can be misleading.

Especially inside an organisation, where the “critical mass” for adoption will be a much higher proportion of the total possible audience what you build has to work and if it doesn’t you have to fix it.

I’ve been thinking of this problem (in my head, because it would be easy to take it the wrong way) as ‘here come the normal people’. Obviously that’s a reference to Clay Shirky, but the difference of the attractive anecdotes his book and my own experience is one of scale, Shirky tells a story of someone finding a lost camera by using facebook, my problems is that I need to find the most efficient way to find all the lost cameras.

So in a way what I am trying to do is take the novel, make it mundane and work out how to make that journey… Its more interesting than you might think!

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:05:33 +0000

For many years I have heard technological terms used in hushed reverence, and usually misused; “we need a CD-ROM” when multimedia was meant, “we must have a Web portal” when an advertisement was what it was, and Web 2.0 & Social Media just replaced “I want a web site that’s cool”.

I agree that it’s important to identify that Web 2.0 is only a collection of published APIs that allow “interesting stuff” to be done, but like Social Media it is only the latest step in the long march of this technological & communications revolution. Linked Open Data (LOD) will be the next step to supersede Web 2.0, but what will replace the awful term Social Media – Linked Open People?

John Maeda tweeted today “Until you can serve pizza or drinks over the Web, a social media portal to foster true collaboration will be so-so.” Irreverent but he has a point – social media will not be the panacea to all your communication problems.

By: el_villano

el_villano — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:43:02 +0000

hang on, i can see a trend developping here.
i go shopping, i cook, i make a baby food & laugh, oh and i teach & translate………

By: el_villano

el_villano — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:40:08 +0000

you see what i did there – i used a label in my post rather than a name – even though i was asked for a name.
i have no idea why i used a “user-name” as opposed to the name i was given.
either society or the internet is to blame………….

By: el_villano

el_villano — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:37:04 +0000

excellent article & 2 marvellous responses above.
apart from the tech. aspect from this obviously very good “online comms expert” there is a very interesting sociological aspect to all of this.
labels. why we need them, when we don’t need them, why people need them in order to relate to us.
years ago you knew what you had before you in terms of sex, colour, class, maybe occupation almost in the time – as George Orwell put it – that you had before dropping or using the first “H” in your sentence.
these days we are all “Cultural Architects” in our lives and our jobs; it’s just that some – to hark back to Orwell, to a greater extent than others.

By: Manne

Manne — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:31:40 +0000

Thank you for this. One of the most interesting reads on the topic in a long time.

I herd cats.

By: Finkus Bripp

Finkus Bripp — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:36:59 +0000

Great Q!

Unfortunately wanting to put a title/label on everything is the norm and in my eyes, oh so mediocre. I’ve stopped asking myself “what do I do?” a long time ago.

When I got into the web game over 10 years ago I had various titles before the agency went bust. Then I started my own but wearing more than one hat “copywriter, photog, video, design, content development, project management, consultancy, etc.” therefore I went by the name of Creative Consultant. Then I decided to also become a sommelier – why? Because I wanted to. And now I also offer wine seminars and do my own online wine show (also using my skills accumulated over the years).

So now people ask even more – what is it exactly you do? My answer? Whatever the f%&k I want.

Keep on keepin’ ON!

By: Jon Hickman

Jon Hickman — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:03:26 +0000

Comments seem a little redundant as this post is about your personal feelings, so it’s all correct and irrefutable. All I would say is, we should commend this quote to the annals (If we have some. Can we get some annals in here?):

“I can decide what Social Media consultancy is in the context of me, irrespective of what the people who aren’t me are doing with it”

That’s a lovely sentiment, and is the sort of thing that anyone who attends a surgery, a training course, or even our MA need to take into the world with them.