I had an interesting blog debate with an ex-colleague and friend the other day about the role of social media in the events that have been playing out in the Arab countries of North Africa. The debate centred on social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, being a catalyst for these events. My view is that social media’s role is being overstated, as many of us have seen this type of thing happen before in our lives and a long time before social media became prominent. I remember the world watching in amazement as a similar domino effect played out in Eastern Europe in the late 80s and early 90s at a time when the web was just a twinkle in Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. More recently, it has been recognised that social media has been turned against the Iranian people following the Green Revolution a couple of years ago, so I really think we need to assess the catalysts and aftermath of these events with the benefit of hindsight. (note:- here is a very good ‘middle ground’ perspective on this found by John Goode, my sparring partner in this debate and also an interesting BBC piece on ‘How revolutions happen’ )
I get a sense though that even within the next couple of years, the spiritual home of the social media behemoths, like Twitter and Facebook, will experience such a degree of change that the current events in the Arab world will pale in comparison. What will be interesting is how the US people, empowered, as it is believed, by social media, react to the events as they unfold around them.
There is a growing undercurrent of comment about the perilous state of the US economy and what might happen when it can no longer print money to bail out its institutions from their massive, eye-watering debts. It’s only been able to do this so far because the US dollar is the world’s reserve currency. The rest of the world, however, has been openly and secretly seeking to change this for several years. Some now believe it is a question of when this will happen, not a question of if.
Should this happen anytime soon, the consequences will be dramatic and far-reaching, particularly for the American people. The majority of them have only known the time the US has been in a dominant financial position globally and they have benefitted immensely from this with prices for vital commodities such as food and fuel kept much lower than in the rest of the world. Should the US dollar lose its world status, the impact on US population is likely to be immediate, with fuel prices rising rapidly and leading to inflation throughout the economy.
Here though, we have a potentially dramatic catalyst for change that the American people will be powerless to stop. It is of their society’s and politicians making and the rest of the world will act in its own interests to protect itself from the fallout. In fact, one of the reasons some commentators believe this is inevitable is that the other significant power blocks in the world have already started to act to protect themselves and, in the face of this, US financial leaders and politicians are adopting a position of absolute denial. Historically, such a position has been followed by sudden currency devaluations that can wipe out a whole nations proportion of wealth virtually overnight. If we believe US consumers are already broke, then this will break them for sure and in a nation still so in love with its personal weaponry, I would be running for the hills at the first sign of a food or fuel riot.
My concern for the effect of social media in this scenario is that it has all the potential to make things worse rather than better. People often refer to environments like Twitter encouraging ‘mob rule’ and I have also witnessed on several occasions in the last year seemingly very smart and well-informed folks getting hopelessly misled as they jump on to the latest bandwagon or meme to hit the Twittersphere. That’s not so bad when it’s just some inflated egos that are bruised, but when things get more serious and lives are at stake, such propensity to mis-information and over-reactions could be fatal and devastating.
I’m sure there are many who think this can’t or won’t happen and I wish I could share their optimism or have such blind faith in our politicians. However, there are already too many examples after just one decade of the 21st Century where the ‘unthinkable’ has happened that I’m inclined to prepare for the worse.
Beyond 2020 Visions ... 
My blog article describes social media as a catalyst of change, a place where ideas are propagated and can quickly lead to backlash in the form of coordinated ideas and action.
I’m going to use this space to make come observations:
1. You have had a bit of an on/off relationship with Twitter. Currently off. I think this diminishes your position as a marketer beyond the point of Twitter skeptic.
2. I discovered this post because you linked to it from your Facebook account.
3. The comments you left on my blog could have been emailed but you used social media to make your points — an interesting choice given your skeptical position on social media. That said, I appreciated the comments and opportunity to more fully expand and clarify my ideas 🙂 .
Related articles in today’s news:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12400319
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12400690 HMIC report states “Use of social media tools increasing”
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Thanks for your comment John – I think it was put into ‘awaiting moderation’ because of the links you added, as normally non-spam comments post straight through unmoderated. It would be somewhat hypocritical of them not to given my recent post here http://2020visions.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/your-comment-is-awaiting-moderation/ 😉
One of the observations in that first news article actually reinforces the comments I have been making about the role of social media being overstated in this instance. I quote…
“Firstly, the fact that an internet and mobile phone blockade failed shows clearly that this movement is not based on the web.”
It goes on to say…
“It is important to understand that this movement builds on a legacy of protest by many different activist networks, most of which are not primarily organised online.”
Thanks for your observations above. Yes, I use social media… and yes, I remain deeply skeptical – as is well publicised here http://2020visions.wordpress.com/category/social-media/
That skeptisism has arisen from front-line experience working for high-street brands over the last few years particularly and I would argue that it actually enhances my position as a web marketer rather than diminishes it, as I am less likely to get diverted by the ‘fad and fashion’ prevalent in the digital space and I will continue to question return on investment of social media activities against the conventional wisdom that it shouldn’t be questioned.
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Further weight to *my side* of this debate:
http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/12/23/5-ways-to-integrate-social-media-into-your-companys-dna/
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hmm – the problem is John, I have read that type of article from the likes of Mr Bullas endlessly over the last few years and he is the type of ‘social media evangelist’ who is likely to be invited in to pitch to a ‘web/social media naive’ Board, set all sorts of unrealistic expectations and then bugger off with a nice fat fee leaving schmucks like me with the unrealistic task of delivering – with fewer and fewer people and smaller and smaller budgets. In fact, it was the processes of testing the reality of the those ‘social media’ benefits he lists in that post that led me to writing this previous post… http://2020visions.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/filtering-out-the-noise/
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Just found this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12394181
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Thanks for the new link John. I guess ‘clicktivism’ is a slight step up from ‘slacktivism’ but you and I know none of this is new or that it’s needed the growth of Twitter and Facebook to enable it to happen. If I remember rightly, you were in the meeting at NTL Ivory Towers over 10 years ago when we agreed the stunningly original name for the company’s 0800 dial-up internet service – ‘ntlworld’ versus the equally original ‘myntl’. So, imagine ‘the management’s’ horror when less than a year later a bunch of disgruntled customers managed to artfully rename the ‘service’ nt’hell’world and also get coverage for their consumer lobby website in the Wall Street Journal. I’m always amused when I read the Dell Hell account quoted yet again in that Bullas article above because the nt’hell’ experiences pre-date it by 5 years and were as equally a valuable insight into the pros, cons and nuances of ‘social’ media before the likes of Zuckerberg were barely out of short trousers 🙂
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http://web.archive.org/web/20020924021417/62.253.167.55/
nthellworld — a *single issue politics* website that did indeed achieve it’s objectives of highlighting ntl’s poor customer service recorda but owing to its very nature long since dead.
Differences explored
nthellworld: people had to go to the webssite to obtain any information and to find an appropriate forum to leave a comment.
Twitter: it’s where the people are. Comments and links can be left at will and it’s up to organisations to act to protect their interests and those of their clients. In the example below where I’m experiencing difficulty in registering a Dyson machine, I simply write about the problem in less than 140 characters. Dyson picked up the comment and handled the issue.
Difficult to see how *none of this is new*?
Example:
Trying to resister my new Dyson on http://dyson.com/register. Serial number not accepted! Tried Chrome and FF3. SN starts BT6-UK-BNB
5 Feb via web
replies ↓
»
@johngoode Hi, it’s Ryan at Dyson. That is a UK serial number, so please visit http://www.dyson.co.uk or call us to register at 0800 298 0298.
7 Feb
»
@askdysonUS Problem resolved. I was trying to register a UK product on your .com website. #usabilityOrMyBad?
7 Feb
»
@askdysonUS Hi Ryan, thanks for the reply. #impressed. Just tried the s/n again, your website doesn’t accept it
7 Feb
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nthellworld is still alive and kicking 10 years on http://www.nthellworld.co.uk/home.php – despite the change to the Virgin Media brand.
Your Dyson experience illustrates my long standing point about focusing on getting the basics right.
Regardless of your comment on Twitter, you are still going to have to go back to the Dyson website repeatedly to register your product. If they’d got those very basic requirements right and are supporting the process adaquately on the site, you wouldn’t feel the need to blast your specific difficulty out to the whole world.
Organisations without the level of resources Dyson has will continue to struggle with the added overhead real-time commentary and real-time search brings to customer service but the shear noise level in the environment ultimately works in their favour.
There was a great comment in The Times yesterday around the current perceived rise in online activism, which aside from pointing out the big difference between clicking a mouse and actually taking to the streets, made the point that the ease with which it is possible to gain huge numbers of ‘virtual’ campaigners largely negates their value.
I particularly liked the example of an African children’s charity on Facebook that has 1.9 million supporters. Beyond the act of clicking the ‘support’ button, only $13,416 has been raised which constitutes less than a single cent of actual commitment per person.
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http://www.nthellworld.co.uk history here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nthellworld
You’re quite right, I did go back to the site and was willing to do so. Dyson fixed the issue in public and I praised their efforts in public.
You’re alternative strategy of building perfect websites for people that don’t make mistakes (it was my mistake in the Dyson issue cited) will be an expensive chore. So for me, social media worked. It works for my mental models of the world and the way the world works.
As for the effectiveness of virtual campaigns/charities etc — that’s a different topic.
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hmm – ok John – and monitoring social media in order to respond to every customer who makes a mistake is not an ‘expensive chore’? As I said, I’m sure organisations like Dyson have the resources to do so but that is not the case for the vast majority of organisations and so they clearly need to prioritise their efforts. For me, responding to the directly generated emails from the organisation’s overall web presence remains the absolute priority, as described here… http://2020visions.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/filtering-out-the-noise/
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Your chosen route: *engage with us using our preferred channels*
I advocate: *mingle in the market. Listen. Help wherever and whenever we can*
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I’m sure in your own business operations you advocate your own service orientated people responding to the customer/client emails generated in day-to-day business as the absolute priority. If they’re off mingling in the market I’m not sure they will be much help to the majority of your customer base at all.
Anyway, I like the opinion you’ve just tweeted on Facebook hype http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/01/07/rushkoff.facebook.myspace/
I very much agree with the observation made in that article about the same pattern playing out endlessly right back to the days of Compuserve. It reinforces the point I made earlier that when you analyse it, particularly in the way Rushkoff has, then none of this is new. The perception of newness however is what makes the likes of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street tick – until it it all falls down around their ears again – the big bosses walk off with a fortune and the poor investors are left scratching their heads again wondering how something so big could fail so dramatically. Hey ho – I’m putting all the money I don’t have into gold – it’s the only safe bet these days 😉
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I’m sure you’ll agree that we’re a responsive organisation and you’re absolutely right, email, ticketing system and Basecamp is our primary focus. But then we’re dealing with a 100 or so B2B’s. That’s an appropriate model.
Our clients are typically organisations that have thousands or even millions of consumers, some are global. Responding to emails is one of many channels for these organisations and doesn’t exclude their social media activities or ambitions.
The other thing to be aware of is the amount of automation being introduced into the listening and front-end work flow processes. Being a social media skeptic is an understandable position. To write-it-off as hype/seen it before/haven’t got time/don’t have the budget may be a step towards isolation and lack of competitive advantage.
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So, what was NTL’s solution to the rather nasty problem of customer service they had 10 years ago? I’ll tell you – automating the listening and front-end workflow processes using http://www.kana.com/- Did that address the core issues in the business that created the volume of customer complaints in the first place? – errr, no – Did they go bankrupt? errr, yes…
I’m not writing anything off John – just making an effort to counter the ridiculous level of hype that is bombarding front-line practitioners these days.
It’s sounding like you’ve been assimilated into the Alterian ‘engagement borg’ and I fear for you 😉
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Wrong assumption.
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Further to your wrong assumption about my using/backing/believing-in Alterian’s SM2 product I’d like to point out that ntl did not file chapter 11 because it used Kana. And I’m not suggesting that should an organisation find itself in a similar situation today that social media is *the answer*.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/misleading-vividness.html
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You’re absolutely right John – It wasn’t the technology that made NTL bankrupt, it was the arrogance, greed and delusions of its senior management who mistakingly believed that what they were creating was too big to fail – the exact same point made by the Rushkoff article you linked to yesterday. It is also, incidentally, the topic of this particular post where 10 years on from the NTL debacle, the US as a whole faces the prospect of bankruptcy for very much the same reasons.
Thanks also for the free psychotherapy 😉
I’ll summarise your findings as…
1. Diminished as a marketer
2. Isolated and uncompetitive
3. Assumptive
4. Over-active, vivid imagination
Shall I add these to http://threewords.me/jameshoskins or will you? 😉
An interesting exchange, but also a complete distraction from what I should be doing which is finishing off that EPiServer site with that brilliant team of yours 🙂
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Hi James, this is an interesting article and certainly supports many of your views — especially the need to focus/recognise on the value of email: http://www.reachthepublic.com/2011/01/the-problem-with-social-media-dont-believe-the-hype.html
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Thanks for highlighting this John. It’s great to see this type of in-depth analysis from front-line practitioners. It certainly reflects my less scientific findings from social media experimentation with high street brands in recent years (even in high SM usage countries like the US) and the advice about treating the promotion of alternative comms channels in a planned and structured way is also very sound. It is a constantly evolving environment but big shifts in comms channel usage across the population as a whole take a long time to filter through and therefore the majority of practitioners need to be mindful of where they focus their efforts and priorities.
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