Social Media Fight Club

Over the last two evenings I went to 2 different Social media sessions, one at NMK's Beers and Innovation session which I have blogged about here, hypothesizing about Beer as a Social Medium.

Last night I went along to my first Social Media Club London meeting hosted by the genial Hayley Allman and chaired (cat-herded?) by the tres formidable Jackie Danicki . Thanks to both of you.

Lots of beer there too, confirming my Beer-is-the-oil-of-social-mediums hypothesis (see the picture in the above link). The beer was cold and the discussion was heated, what more could one want?

Ged Carroll and Umair Haque have already done great writeups of what was discussed, and some of their thoughts on the issues. For what its worth, here is my 2 pence (or is that 6 Linden $):

1. RSS Fatigue

Many of us in the room were Post-RSS, I have blogged before on my own experience, with Rivers of Data swamping me with Floods of Cr*p. Seems like I Am Not Alone. Most of our solutions were to use various forms of our own trusted social networks to filter the stuff - using social media to mediate the social medium as it were.

2. The Parameters of Social Media Quality

There was an interesting debate about what made for high quality social media messages - is it heartfelt authenticity, high quality production values, beautifully groomed messages, trusted advocates or what?

Two corollaries to this were raised - firstly, the issue around Social Media-ocrity - i.e. if you are only talking to your In Crowd, it can become very insular and thus probably lower quality world; and secondly, the need for a Serendipity Switch - how do you inject valuable "new stuff" from outside your social circle - Editors used to do this, how does the the Social Media Editor function, especially as the Wisdom of Crowds is increasingly gamed (eg Digg, Google)?

There was also an interesting debate about absolute quality of media. I used to be believe in absolute, I now believe in relative by watching those pioneers of new media, my kids - who will sit entranced by crappy quality YouTube videos made on grainy webcams by complete amateurs, but with content that is absolutely relevant to them (like, oh, singing Pokemon songs and pulling faces). One kid's meat....

Stepping back and getting all strategic here (I am a consultant after all) it seems that we need to look at the shifting economics of each piece of the digital value chain to think this one through:

- cost of content search and production - going down
- cost of editing media (via social mediation etc) - going down
- cost of producing and distributing said media - going down
- cost of consuming the media - going down
- value pie available (time available and $ to spend) - staying the same - the "attention constant"

In other words, the cost of entry is lower but the boundaries of the game are the same, so is the New Stuff a more efficient approach than the Old? If yes, it will stick, replacing older media. If not, it won't. Right now the New Media 2.0 is in high growth, becoming significant, but in general these things are S curve shaped.

History also suggests that there will be a period of extreme experimentation with Social media, the New Media will then find its unique (and optimal) voice, and take its place alongside the Old Medias (Medii?), shuffling them along the bench a space.

3. The Economics of Marketing in a Socially Mediated world

This was a multi strand but key discussion, Umair has already had a go at reflecting on this in his post, I quote:

....what is the economic point of marketing in the post-network economy?

Is it "facilitating" of discussion? Is it as shapers of messages? Is it "engagement"? What economic meaning do these fuzzy concepts have (if any)? Etc...

The point here is that the economic rationale for marketing is undergoing tectonic shifts (and these shifts are only going to accelerate). These shifts point to the simple fact that the yesterday's economic rationale for marketing is, today, less and less valid.

Ged also comes at this from another angle here:

What is participation? - What would be considered to be consumption patterns in old media (like reading a newspaper or watching television) was considered to be participation in new media. Many of the participants didn't see the contradiction, which I found to be an curious viewpoint

Taking Ged's point first - in a digital world you leave digital footprints, so merely by tracking what, where and when you are consuming, data has been created that is valuable - think of Google as a darn big Nectar Card scheme.

If I may be so bold as to build on Umair's point by quoting myself in an earlier post I wrote today (is that bad manners?). Re Advertising:

....there is one thing that has totally changed since 2002 - and it changes everything - it is the sheer number of people connected to the internet today compared to 5 years ago. In 2001 the 'Net was a minority sport, now it is mainstream, and big bandwidth.

This means that it is almost inevitable that a large amount of Ad money still being spent in (declining) traditional media will move to the Online world. The current Online Ad spend is still tiny as a % of all Ad spend, and the basics of human behaviour - we want better stuff than what we are prepared to pay for it - will stay the same, so Ads will make up that spending gap.

As well as the demand side shifting, the supply side has some major shifts too. This is essentially because Online Ads are a darn site more efficient.

The Old Media system has high costs throughout the supply chain, and it delivers a product that "only half works, and I don't know which half". The overall value in this supply chain is under threat because:

- Costs of production and distribution are much lower online - the reason we have spam is that it is so cheap to do, and Google's ads are essentially the old "back of magazine" local classified ads moving onto the glossy front (web) pages.

- Online ads are more targeted, the analytics of the real-time feedback loops allows much higher levels of efficient iteration between campaigns (in fact it is now a continual campaign in effect).

- Social Media - ie services connecting our wisdom of crowds - can now efficiently carry out some of the roles that Advertising took on in a Broadcast world. Ditto Search, ditto Webservice analytics.

Do I have an answer yet to where this will end up...as I said last night, no...but I leave you with a heretical thought - will New Media, due to the reasons above, actually shrink the Advertising Pie? Is Advertising today just a construct of the Industrial, Broadcast grade world that is largely uneccessary in an interactive Social Medium?

I look forward to the next session..........