Social!

I recently attended a fantastic conference on the topic of social media. What made it fantastic? Instead of the usual conference where you show up and listen to people pontificate, it turned into more of an idea-sharing forum. While we were not all presenters in a technical sense, we all ended up participating in the discussion, not just watching and taking notes.

Anyhow, a few random observations:

• One day, Facebook, or a similar as-yet-unknown site, is going to hit a gold mine in that it will begin to assign relevancy to members of your network. Doesn't it suck to sign on and all the updates you see are from that kid you knew in first grade but don't care about now? Of course it does. Because it buries the friends you really care about way down the line. Soon, someone will find a way to change this. And it doesn't take much to see where that could lead...

• In my business, a lot of people want to post online videos. I mean, all the kids, you know, they're on the YouTubes and stuff. And all of the people who say that, think they need an incredibly funny video to make it work. The truth, though... online video simply needs to be worth watching. Think about it... funny or not, was something worth sitting there for 1-3 minutes of your life. If the answer is yes, chances are it was done the right way.

• More than ever, people can tell when you're forcing it. In fact, the best way to use "social media" is to concentrate on the social part, not the specific channel. We're all enamored with Twitter, but that doesn't mean every company should just jump on Twitter. Especially if the audiences it wants to reach could care less about Twitter.
  

I could go on and on. But the prospects of how this will play out are exciting. And the result should be better understanding among companies and their audiences. And I'm sure we'll get a bunch of new case studies on what not to do. :-)