Once again, the use of the term Social Media is under scrutiny by some of the loudest voices in the blogosphere. Robert Scoble's post "what is social media" seems to have reignited a thread that Jeremiah Owyang started a couple of weeks ago that I responded to with my post, Is It Really Called Social Media, Yes!. Yes Dare Obasanjo is right, the Social Media entry in Wikipedia is woefully lacking, and there are many other very insightful points to consider in that conversation which point out reasons to be vigilant. Rather than diving in to a tit for tat on everyone's points which would take me all day, I had a great conversation with Brian Solis this morning about a post he is writing which lead me to write this comment for Robert's blog, which I decided to post here as well...
Many early adopters are worried that the very idea of authentic human engagement, based on trust and conversations between individual's via the Internet will be corrupted in the way that the original spirit of netiquette was corrupted by spammers - that real world social problems like greed and predatory behaviour will infect our idealistic utopia, ruining it for everyone. They surely have reason to be concerned, even though they are not being completely practical - nor are many focusing their anger at the right people. As Brian Solis pointed out to me this morning "most of the people that need to hear these things, are not even participants in this conversation, and therein lies the problem." Worse, those other people will see many of the angriest voices as indicative of a more serious problem with how things are today and won't ever respond in a way that will let them really understand why it is important.
This is why we need to come together, acting like paramedia, in groups like ours and others with their different and overlapping interests, to illuminate what is right and and to point out what is wrong - to have conversations like this in our global neighborhood around the question of why things are and how we think they should really be. To hold up those who really 'get it' as examples to be followed and analyze things like WalMarting Across America for why it is so wrong.
We need not throw out the term Social Media for the mere fact that some people will sour its intention and purpose during the course of socializing the deeper understanding of what is happening and what it means. The worst of the arguments I see against the term is seemingly inspired by a desire to be a part of a select group of early adopters associated with a phrase that is only being used on the edge by the cool kids - ie, our clique has no room for all you 'squares'. There is much value in this bath water, and I think our baby on this journey across the chasm is called Social Media.
Let's stand up for what is right about "social media" rather than tearing it down just because a few misguided folks are misappropriating the meme. Better still, let's not get all caught up in trying to control the message around the phrase - isn't that part of what many are fighting against anyway - the right of people in the world to choose how they tell the story? Kind of ironic that so many 'defenders' of the spirit of what we are doing are in fact engaging with the same controlling mindset as those they are attacking. We can get all caught up in the semantic analysis and attempt to create a taxonomy for "social media" or we can stop trying to control it all and watch what emerges, accelerating the good bits and putting the kebosh on the bad. The world is often grey and mushy, especially when it comes to emergent memes such as this...
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