The Circle Club - What Is Social Media For

The Circle Club - What Is Social Media For, originally uploaded by loscuadernosdejulia.

I know I vowed some time ago not to post "proper" Social Media articles, and I certainly wouldn't want to make this a post about marketing, advertising, "Twitter potential", "campaign velocity", and whatever jargonism you may like to think of. Instead I'll be very straight to the point and address the main problem I often notice at the debates like this one.

For me, The Circle Club debate of the subject of "What Is Social Media For?" was a last-minute discovery. I nonetheless registered and went to Barton Arcade in Manchester where I saw a few familiar faces. Two of the speakers were well-known to me, namely Dr Paul Taylor and Prof Ben Light; Gary Copitch I am less familiar with, but it was great to see and hear all three of them speaking about Social Media...

...and never actually giving any definition to the term. This is the first problem I find about debates like this: it throws a topic at you, and you have to pretend that you had a lovely time listening to a cacophony of opinions. Better yet, sometimes we're invited to think, in what may be presumed to be the "true" spirit of Social Media, that we have arrived to a consensus, made the proverbial Facebook friends with each other, created a dialogue, and built a community. I am very sure that the truth is often the exact opposite of this.

Because no definition is given to a term, it is assumed that all people share the same view of things. This couldn't be further from the truth. By definition, Social Media means one thing to a web developer, another thing to an advertiser, and a totally different thing to an average user. In fact, an average user may not even realise that the sites or tools they are using are called "Social Media". In case with The Circle Club debate, my criticism is that it lagged significantly behind the developments in the field of Social Media. Whatever we may want to make of it, these social tools are not limited to community journalism.

This was a deja-vu moment for me, as I felt like being taken as far as back in time as 2006 when I was at CSV Media Clubhouse, doing "community radio journalism". Back in April 2006 I already attended a similar debate at Cornerhouse that focused precisely on connecting people and giving them the voice. Cornerhouse's gallery space was connected with a studio in Tijuana in Mexica, and we talked about communities, people TV, and citizen journalism.

You can easily put yourself in my shoes: three years later I am listening to the same talk about "empowering the community", and how good Social Media is for this. I cannot disagree: citizen journalism is about empowering the community, and Social Media as tools or means are paramount in giving the community a voice. But the facts that three years later communities are still not exactly heard, and that the leading organisations are still extremely elitist and centrist, raise doubts about how really empowering Social Media is.

Or maybe it takes us back to the original question - what is Social Media? What do people who vow to give voice to communities know about the very tools they try to use to this end? I'm all for the benefits of Social Media, it can yield you great results. Think of Susan Boyle's YouTube success, or take yours truly for an example: I was interviewed on the radio three months after I started writing this blog in 2006. Suffices to say, neither Susan, nor I expected those things to happen. But it is precisely the years of using various tools that sobered my enthusiasm and ultimately made it clear that instant success stories are few in the Internet world. Not only the whole Social Media effort involves much hard graft, the positive outcome is usually impossible without advertising.

I promised not to speak about advertising, but the point I want to make concerns its promotional side, rather than monetisation. Now and again, especially when we talk of charities, non-profits and arts organisations, we see this desire to conceal the fact of promotion. It's almost like not admitting that you receive money for your work: somehow we prefer to dispell what is actually of outmost importance.

The question I asked at the debate was about a person actually being heard in the online world. It's great to talk about broad definitions of empowering people, building communities, that "content is king", blah-blah-blah. But if social equals "me first" (to quote Stowe Boyd), then who is REALLY listening to their neighbour? I was told that clicks or views were not important, that readership could come later, and from a different direction... which is all fine by me... except that in the response to the next question the same speaker was talking about distribution of content - and this is already a form of advertising. This leaves one wondering what is happening here. Is this the case of answering a challenging question by making an idealistic statement? Or does the statement attempt to disguise the fact that distribution depends largely on the network and strategic vision?

Speaking for myself, there are many problems I have with Social Media these days, and its being poorly understood and used doesn't help. "Me first" is fine, as long as it goes along with some humanly possible humility - but when it's merely bragging about yourself, then it's rather annoying. Lastly, there is too much ado about Facebook and Twitter, and again this makes my heart sink, especially as I'm writing this post by way of blogging a photo straight from Flickr.

I went to the debate with no idea of what I was going to hear or take away with me. Sadly, I have to say, I have left with no such idea, and you would agree that this isn't great. The debate was good for me because it made me think of different things, but if I was one of those people who are thinking of how to give voice to their community, then I honestly wouldn't get any closer to the understanding thereof.

The conclusion? I'll once again get back to the point of lagging behind the developments. In his keynote at Futuresonic 2009 Social Technologies Summit, Stowe Boyd showed a screen grab of his last email newsletter he wrote in 1999 before switching to blogging. It was in 1999 that he coined the term "social tools", although I suspect that many a young Social Media enthusiast today has no idea where the notion came from. At the turn of 2008/2009 I came across at least ten articles that all, like one, uttered the phrase "2009 is the year of Social Media". Add to this the 10th anniversary of LiveJournal that is increasingly rarely used and isn't even considered a blogging platform by some - despite the fact that it has the deeply embedded community functions. What this means is that it has taken 10 years to properly wake up to the call of what was announced in 1999. It is taking years for Manchester communities to find the means to forge the voice, the presence, and the impact. They tried online radio and TV, now they're turning to blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. And on top of this, The Circle Club that is known for organising some really good debates somehow manages to make this one appear as if Social Media was only incepted a week ago.

So, what is Social Media for, then?

Related reading:

Content, Value, and Valuable Content: What Is It That You Need?