The 08-08-08 08:08 post - a few potholes in the road to triumphalism

So I opened this post on the allotted time today (07-07-07 07:07 being far to early for a similar one last year ). At the time I was reading this article by Jeremiah Owyang - I was delighted, as after reading Jeff Jarvis's triumphalistic heralding of Google uber alles (see my last post) last night, I wondered if the centre could hold and we are destined to polarise between the Net Panglosses and the "Curmudgeons". That it is being defended by someone I previously thought of as a more a "triumphalist" is doubly heartening!

To summarise, Jeremiah notes that the road to the New New World has some potholes:

A current lack of profits - The social media space, a movement where anyone can participate has resulted in low or no revenues for most participants.

Some innovation spurred by funding –not revenues. Both a problem and an opportunity, investors (VCs) continue to inject money into this space –often funding unproven business models or one-off technology

Low barriers to entry make competition cut throat - Commodity software is always a concern, and when this occurs, there are so many entrants the market is confused –unable to determine who to purchase from, and competiors may eat into each others margins.

Excessive noise drowns out signal - With everyone able to create content and share the details of their personal lives in detailed minutia, the problem of excessive content becomes an issue.

Amateurism threatens professionalism - Nodding to Andrew Keen’s criticism of the dangers of amateurs creating less-than-professional (and sometimes incorrect) content then spreading it prolifically.

Marketers move in without community consideration - Wherever people move, marketers follow, while some do it smart and savvy, many will approach it from a different style. (or lack of it)

Corporate and personal brandjacking - Becoming more and more common, brands –and individuals– can easily be brandjacked as others take their user name, domains, and assert themselves as someone else.

Lack of standards causes disparate experiences - Although better than many industries, the open web still slowly moves towards common standards of logins, social graphs, and content types.

Cultural changes cause resistance - Without a doubt, this movement of self-publishing and connecting is a disruption to the marketplace, media, the buying cycle, and the marketing funnel.

Identifying true expertise challenging - In experienced industries, track records are defined by years and sometimes decades, in this burgeoning new industry, it’s often difficult to decipher who is a true expert

Difficulty measuring ROI - Despite many attempts to measure “engagement” or “ROI” there still is no industry standard to measure the efforts of social media at the personal –and corporate level.

To people who know this blog, this is the sort of stuff we would write - and as Jeremiah notes:

I realize this post could infuriate some social media purists, but I wanted to provide an objective view of what I’m seeing in order to map out danger spots on the map, so we can collectively overcome them.

Hmm...maybe the centre will hold after all, and it will be possible to point to issues without being labelled curmudgeonly