What Social Media Means To Me
A few weeks back, the Social Media Club came to town, and a good discussion was had on the nature of social media. I love these kinds of discussions, mostly because I enjoy how my opinion changes as the conversation progresses (a sure sign I’m learning something). Towards the end of the night, I think I got what the phrase social media means (or, should mean, in contradistinction to other terms).
Many like to conflate social media with amateur media; because when we think of social media we think of blogs and YouTube, the inclination is to associate social media with media that is produced by non-established entities. I don’t think the origin of the media has anything to do with its social status. The social component of social media is in how the media is distributed and shared, not in how it is created. As an example, I can share a professionally produced, fully copyrighted video clip from The Daily Show on YouTube, or post a link to an O.A.R. single on my blog (I say I “can” do these things, to which I mean I can do them technically, not legally). If I were to buy this media as a CD or DVD, they wouldn’t be considered social media, but by posting them online, I’ve changed how I share them with others. People who find that content will be doing so outside of the traditional structures of media promotion (i.e. - they won’t be getting the content from a major network or radio station).
This has important ramifications to how we view social media. Social media is not an innovation in technology, although technology certainly facilitates it’s expedience. Instead, social media is a change in the areas of marketing and distribution. The reason why blogs, online video sharing and others are considered social media is not because the content is produced by amateurs, but because we become aware of what content is important and worth paying attention to in a social fashion. Despite the fact that we consider it an innovation, social media could be viewed as a technical formalization of much of what has been taking place in the word-of-mouth marketing and PR camps over the past several years (hence the overwhelming concentration of PR people at the Social Media Club), and on an even more basic level, the act of sharing something you like with a friend.
What reminded me to write this was Scott Karp’s recent post entitled “A Lot of User-Generated Content is Really User-Appropriated Content.” I think the term “user-generated content”, besides giving me a headache, has been misappropriated as the reason for the success of sites like YouTube. Never mind the fact that the professionally generated content created most of the draw, but the other aspect that made YouTube take off was the social nature of the content, the fact that it was shared and the members of the site helped determine what was worth paying attention to, not the marketing or PR departments.