When I started speaking about social media in 2005, I used to joke that someday, conferences discussing social media will be about as relevant and 
well-attended as conferences on the business uses of the Fax machine.
I’m wondering if that day has come.
About a month ago I attended TC Disrupt, one of the biggest startup conferences and one dedicated to spotlighting companies that are likely to change the way we live and work. I noticed two terms that were never mentioned:
Web 2.0. Lots of us did not like the term to begin with, but it was needed to show the move from static sites into a new conversational web. Most of the world’s leading software developers have shifted their focus in this direction. We have entered a period where mobile apps are the focal point of innovation. It is no longer Web 2. It is just the web.
Social Media.I did not hear this term used once during the entire Disrupt conference. Yet every company presenting or exhibiting used social media as a vital component to their new companies. Some uses were unique and unprecedented. But social media has evolved as an obvious part of any app, certainly any mobile app.
Of course, I live in the San Francisco Bay area. I am exposed to early adopters wherever I turn. I have a focus on what’s new and what gets changed. Including social media has become obvious. What this enables has become far more relevant to the conversation.
However, this is Silicon Valley myopia. If you throw a rock into a large lake, where the rock plunks into the water is Silicon Valley. The ripples that roll out concentrically from that center are the rest of the world.
Much of the world is still struggling with social media issues, with how to shift from broadcast to conversational online engagement with customers, partners, investors and so on. This is certainly true in the parts of the world where everyday business has nothing to do with online conversations.
So social media is certainly not dead. Then neither is the fax machine. Both are essential to modern businesses, and in both cases the novelty has worn off. So has the disruption.
Social media has disrupted a great deal of everything in the last ten years. I call that the Decade of Disruption. Social media is now an essential ingredient to every modern marketplace. We have entered a new Age of Conversation. I think it will be around for a very long time.
But as for disruption and what’s new in the minds of the bright, irreverent, urgent culture that is Silicon Valley, I would turn attention to mobile apps and that is where I would look if I were a conference producer.
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I agree with the idea that social media has become integrated into what we do in ways that make it more transparent to many people. In the same way that when people now say, “I will look it up” they mean they will look it up on the internet, social media will be assumed as a way of connecting online or of marketing.
But Silicon Valley is not the world and a high percentage of businesses are either not using it because they don’t get what it is or how they can benefit from it, or they are using it like broadcast media.
It is not going to become like the fax because faxes probably will disappear. Social media will just become more commonly understood, more natural to use, more prevalent and less ghettoized as some strange, new phenomenon.
Shel- this is a tricky question. If you’re talking about “social media” as a form of strategy, tactics, etc, yes, it’s getting old-I’m sure it’s ancient in the Bay area (where I just moved from). Is there any PR or marketing firm that doesn’t profess to be social media specialists now? (clear sign it’s maturing). Much of this is just PR and marketing in disguise, not fundamental change however. I look it more broadly, as to how far we are in moving our companies to be more social, to transform the way they communicate..social businesses. Right now most still communicate the same way they always have, while adding “social media channels” to their marketing mix…at least the big guys (Fortune 1000). We’re not even to first base yet on this front and I think fax machines will be long gone when we finally say we’re turning the corner.
Mark, totally agree with you about social media practices being little more than a new channel for outbound marketing. I’ve found that having a focus on social media can help PR and traditional marketing work again, but it has to remain independent of them to be effective.
In the legal industry, where I practice, they’re still fixated on the fax machine. We use it daily in litigation.
Social media is only starting to appear on the horizons, meaning that I get invited to speak at plenty of well-attended conferences on social media in the law. The point being that a lot of this is still heavily industry specific.
Outside of law are we in an age of conversation? Without doubt. But the lawyers won’t get there until Silicon Valley has already moved on to something else.
Social media has gone the way of the fax machine only in the sense that it is a necessary communication tool that is constantly evolving. It’s no longer just for early adopter–it’s a very necessary business tool that many companies are still not adapting to very well.
Thanks for the refreshing post. I think it’s important to talk about social media but most conferences and events talk about the same vague, high level, “strategic” topics. Right now companies struggle with staffing and how to get started and policies, and other operational challenges. We keep talking to them about social media engagement, when what they need to figure out is how to make the change from a traditional marketing department to a new media marketing department…
Perhaps not irrelevancy but assumption is the better word. To switch gears into local government meetings, how many times do elected officials assume nobody cares about the gobbledygook they speak? So during a city council meeting last night when the topic of a $133,000 budget transfer was discussed, I rose and asked the mayor’s aide to explain to the listening public what we were discussing.
Other councilors may (or may not) have looked at me weirdly, but I’m sure the listening public thanked me so they knew what I knew.
Perhaps these conference producers and other participants should step back and think of the people in the room.
Good for you Ari! Noam Chomsky writes of how corporations & politicians have been able to manipulate consent through controlled media. With ubiquitous, independent social media, the ability to do that is threatened. It scares them and they will continue to try to limit our ability to do what people lie you are doing. I’m not impressed that social media is now accepted as the latest tool for corporate manipulation of consumers to buy more stuff. For this reason, it is no yawn. Definitely more relevant than a fax machine.
I think the novelty had worn off in 2009 when us bloggers started seeing articles about the exciting world of Twitter. I think you are right – I find the conference topics rather dull and I don’t really understand where they are going with it. It’s like having a conference about the telephone many decades ago – it just sounds bonkers.
The best blogs and conferences share tips on what works in these communities and the best ways to make them manage themselves. Sadly, I don’t live in sunny California – I live in the north of the UK but I think the sentiment is the same. The novelty is wearing off now – so what is the next set of Emperor’s clothes.
Thanks for the compliment I am glad you like to the comments.I really wish u keep on giving these course with some new strategies.appreciate your work, keep it up…
I wish I could agree, but the only place that social media has become a passe term is within the social media industry. Based on what I’m seeing in many industries (semiconductor, embedded systems, banking, insurance to name a few) social media is still approached as a mass communications medium, only concerned with the shear traffic numbers. They still don’t know why they should engage, how to engage or what engagement is. I’m dealing with a billion-dollar corporation now that gets angry with me when I ask, how many people have actually created an account; what are the most popular articles; where are they coming from; and where are they going to?
On the other hand, when I talk with marketing executives from social media companies and point out that I still have to explain their value-add statements to companies asking me what services they should use, the execs say, “Well why don’t you just wait until they hire someone that does understand it.” The industry still has a long way to go before we reach general adoption. I think you can say we have crossed the chasm, but we are still on the uphill climb.
I’m not sure we disagree. My observation is that the term has become passe among early adopters. That very often indicates a trend–and an important one for those of us who call themselves social media consultants.
I couldn’t agree more with you, Shel, as well as with Rex and Jack. I would add that social media is what knowledge management wished to be, imo. For years, if not decades, KM people have been saying the vast majority of an organization’s useful knowledge existed (a la Peter Drucker) “between the ears” of its employees, yet we spent an inordinate amount of time and money working on managing our physical and digital libraries. Social media gives us the ability to connect the people with knowledge and, dare I say, wisdom, with those who have need of them, thereby growing the corporate or collective memory.
As someone working in the “hinterlands” here is Simi Valley, CA, I also have to agree with your ripple analogy. Although I am busily arming myself with knowledge of social/local/mobile for business communication, as well as marketing, most people around here are barely getting the “So” part and, all too frequently, it’s “So What?”. The ripples have lost a considerable amount of energy by the time they reach us down here. Onward and upward.
Well, it’s about time. I’ve been saying for years that new/social media is not new tools we need to learn to use, but a new environment in which we need to learn to live. By accepting social media as an integral part of life, human communication, and business we can get on with the business of normalization and the organizational changes that need to occur to become more efficient and effective in whatever is our line of business.
Here in Washington, DC we spend way too much time and effort in defining things versus learning and doing. As an example, a few weeks ago I was being interviewed for a study on the current state of social media in the public sector and the first question was: “How do define social media?” My response: “Communication medium that facilitates individual connections that can be cultivated into “collective intelligence” and community efforts.” The survey showed that the most respondents answered: “Facebook.”
Not that it should surprise anyone, but the lack of understanding that is still evident in some sectors is a bit troublesome and is disrupting the social media disruption.
Great point Jack. We have way too many teachers and strategists and not enough “doers” in this space. There’s only this much we can talk about ideas before we need to execute on them.
And regarding your Facebook observation – every month I get a call from a large agency that threw big money into a Facebook “campaign” and they wonder why it’s not working. Apparently Facebook is magic! ;)
There was “social media” long before there was a name for it…and there will be social media when people drop the anachronistic phrase: When there are dozens of “share this and that” buttons on every page of the web, all web media is social. I do, however, think there is a type of media that truly belongs to users that is totally separate from what marketers call “social media.” It’s where we all have the ability of create our own media — big company, small company, individuals. Sort of like “The Commons” idea in its classic sense.