Month: February 2008

Children born between 1982 and 1998 are now beginning to enter the workforce; while they’ve been called many things, I continue to use the term Generation M. [And that’s not because of any personal pride in coming up with the term; rather, the characteristics that define this generation seem to have a lot of “M” about them — mobile, multimedia, multitasking, multichannel and so on.

The Netxplorateur Forum invited me to speak to them about Generation M a few days ago; as part of my preparation, I trawled through my bookmarked items to see what had changed since mid-December, the last time I’d spoken about the subject (also in Paris, as it turned out, at Le Web 3). Which meant I had an excuse to re-read the excellent Pew Internet report on Teens and Social Media, published just before Christmas last year.

Read it if you get the chance, it’s worth it.

Four things stand out for me in the report:

Generation M is faced with a vast array of choices when it comes down to communications. They really use this vast array. [We never had this choice, so we should not judge them. Things are different, and we have to live with the differences.]
A segment of Generation M, termed super communicators, use the array more extensively than others. And they defy their critics by meeting their friends in person far more often than other teens. [Putting paid to the myth that these kids spend all their time online and have no “life”]
Those that belong to social network sites are the most active content creators, the most active contributors of social objects, the most active participants in the conversations around the social objects. [These are the people that marketers would do well to understand, because they are the new marketers, the viral recommenders who are adept at creating and using social objects.]
While all this is happening, the landline continues to be important. [This is probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, restricted to the developed world, and will prove completely false in India, China, Africa and maybe even Russia and South America. Nevertheless it is of interest to me, and not just because of where I work!]

The relevant charts from the report are given below for your convenience.

Ever since Hugh first explained to me precisely what he meant by the term “social object”, I’ve been fascinated by the concept. More recently, he’s been writing more about social objects, building on his original thoughts.

I thought he was really on to something, and I told him so. But that was quite some time ago. Now, having passed up the opportunity to repent at leisure, it’s time to share why.

If markets are conversations, then marketing is about the things that conversations are about. Not about placing those things or promoting those things, but about the things themselves.

In the past, as Hugh explains so well, things entered the conversation space via mass media. Centralised. Broadcast. Controlled. Any colour you like as long as it’s black.

Now things are different. To understand how they are different, I’ve been playing with some ideas. See what you think about them, and let me know what you think.

You can have a conversation without a social object. You cannot have a social object without a conversation. It is the conversation that makes the object “social”.

Conversations grow around social objects, much like pearls grow around microscopic dust. Social objects are about growth, they are “live”.

If you try and “inject” a social object into a conversation, then what you get, at best, is a cultured pearl. That’s what mass media did. Mass media tried to farm conversations. And created cultured pearls. Social objects are natural, not artificial.

The Cluetrain guys got this, and were amongst the earliest to understand that the web represented an incredible opportunity. An opportunity to get back to natural conversations, to the mollusks that matter, rather than to farmed or cultured conversations. And the Hughtrain understood Cluetrain. Social objects are about renaissance, about our rediscovering something we used to have before.

A successful social object is one that has layer upon layer of conversation created around it; as the number of participants increases, social objects enjoy network effects. Social objects are about participation and participants.

Conversations, like molluscs, can be closed. In which case there’s no social object, no microscopic dust. And no pearls. Social objects are open.

As with pearls, conversations behave differently in fresh water and salt water, in rough seas and in protected lagoons. The colour and lustre and shape of conversations is influenced by the environment, the participants, the openness, the ability to grow. Well-rounded conversations are rare, as are the social objects that help achieve this rounding. Good social objects are rare.

Unlike the microscopic dust in natural pearls, social objects are not necessarily irritants. But they can be. Social objects can be irritants.

Similar to the microscopic dust in natural pearls, social objects are unique. Not cookie-cutter. Not assembly-line. Social objects are about long-tail, about diversity.

My thanks to wikipedia for the pearl illustration.

I don’t know whether it’s driven by innate curiosity, or whether I’m just wired that way: I learn best by watching someone do something. And, because of that bias, I believe in using examples wherever possible, stories, analogies, screenshots, whatever. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a picture with a few supporting words could be worth ten thousand.

Most readers of this blog are by now well aware of Google Maps, of mashups, of Twitter, maybe even of Twittervision, some less than others. No matter. As long as you’re curious about what these terms mean, and, more importantly, what they can mean for you. How you can derive value from them, as a person, as an enterprise.

Well, thanks to Super Tuesday, here’s your chance. Go here and see what’s happening; if your timezone permits you, and if you’re interested, watch the activity from 8pm EST, as the polls close and the results start pouring in. It will give you an idea of three things:

The power of combination, of “mashing”: how “static” data (like a map) can be overlaid with “volatile” data (like conversations)
The power of context, of “enrichment” : how it is possible to take a “firehose” of information and break it down to capillary size, just by using tools that embed the information in context
The power of collaboration, of “many”: how individuals operating with modern tools can provide us with detailed information as it happens

Here’s a screenshot of what’s happening now, but to get the real value, take a look at the site after 8pm EST. An aside. Some people hold the opinion that CNN made its bones on Desert Storm. It may well be that Twitter makes its bones on this election. The tool could not have been timed better.