Don’t pop the social media bubble!

Umair Haque recently advanced a hypothesis that social media is a bubble, and that when it bursts we will see that we were not brought meaningfully closer together by the growth of social communication.

I don’t want social media to be a bubble, because I like it.

First, let’s define a bubble. We mean an economics-style bubble, like the dot-com bubble or the housing bubble. In this sense, a bubble is “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”. So lots of new relationships that aren’t worth very much. I think Unmair was saying we’ve been placing undue value on the relationships generated by social media, both from a personal standpoint (these aren’t real friends) and a marketing standpoint (these aren’t very devoted ‘fans’).

Here are the reasons I feel the shiny, soapy dome of social media’s bubble should be left alone.

The flowering of human creativity

“Thin relationships” are not a new phenomena to society. If we rechristen these friends “acquaintances”, you might recognize them better. Aquaintances are certainly not without value.

Clay Shirky’s SXSW keynote touched on the evolutionary impetus to share and to cooperate, calling it “spiteful” not to pass on information when it’s very little effort for you to do so. This is the link economy in action.

It’s easy to share links to interesting content. It’s fun to add to the conversation by commenting on blogs and liking updates. It’s gratifying to contribute content to the collective by taking photos, writing essays (blog posts), illustrating, designing fonts and photoshop brushes, and shooting funny videos. It’s meaningful to lead culture and capture the zeitgeist by giving birth to memes, defining ideas, pushing for human thought development.

The more the merrier

Thin relationships, or “weak connections” make these upper-Maslow interactions possible. You don’t need a high level of investment in someone to trade ideas. Their input is valuable precisely because they come from a different perspective, and aren’t bound by politeness or concern for your ego. I’ve mentioned the findings that novel input from new friends sparks more innovative, creative solutions. The more the merrier.

Marketing soap

From a marketing standpoint, I hate to put the idea out there (there being Google search) that we’re overestimating the worth of social media and it’s practitioners. It could sour corporate decision makers who ponder how much to invest in newfangled media.

This isn’t about protecting our jobs, it’s about making them better. My firm belief is that all marketing, communication, PR, customer service and sales efforts (not to mention internal communications) can be enhanced and made more worthwhile and productive by conversing instead of broadcasting. I don’t think organizations have a choice, because public expectation of brands/services/orgs has changed.

This being a nascent revolution in the mainstream, still, I don’t want to throw the word b-word around. I want to work to show that teaming up with customers to get them what they want is going to succeed.

A wired Halloween

Were they out? Lazy? Afraid of H1N1? Trying to encourage H1N1? Photo by Winnipegger & social networking star Ken Bond.

Did anyone else have, like, a really communal experience on Halloween? Not being a religious or family-get-together-heavy holiday (ie one parent at least has to stay home and be on candy duty), a lot of my social network were online. In the days of yore when we lived with our extended families and knew all our neighbours, that might not have mattered so much (and also would have been impossible, because the days of yore didn’t have the internet). But the solo urban existence we’ve got going now can be kind of isolating. Facebook broke down that barrier for me this year. Read the rest of this entry »