Tag Archives: The Big Picture

Social Media – The Big Picture

If anyone remembers, earlier in the year, the UK’s Advertising Body (IPA) organised a conference around Social Media which caused a lot of negative reaction as people felt it totally missed the point. Fortunately the IPA realised the error of their ways and reached out to the Social Media Thinkers to get involved and do a follow up. One of them happens to be Mark Earls (the Herdmeister – if you have not read his book The Herd then do so) and here his first draft of the piece which aims to spell out how much social media is changing the overall landscape.

There is a lot of good stuff in there including some of the more important emergent stuff that connective technology seems to generate in human populations:
1. Connectedness encourages us to be less independent minded and to follow our peers instead
2. Connectedness diminishes deference
3. Connectedness changes power relationships between those in power and the rest of us.
4. Connectedness can lead to volatility and sudden shifts in market popularity and opinion
5. Connectedness enables self-organisation, collaboration and co-creativity.

The overall conclusion is that “Social Media” is not just another set of Media channels. Which is why we have to change: why we have to listen/understand the rules of this new playground – in particular, to accept it’s owned by the community and not us – rather than stumbling into the furniture. Anyway the full paper can be downloaded here. I recommend you read it.

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