Tag: Social Media Page 4 of 6

The Power of Social Taxonomy

On December 4, 2009

Revolutionary:

Ask the French about linguistic purity and you get the feeling that an attack on the language is an attack on the culture. Likewise, corporations arising from the industrial revolution communicate internal structure and processes through the use of a well protected internal taxonomy. This serves as both a means of storing knowledge across generations of workers, and as a means of encrypting the knowledge from those who would pillage the enterprise.

For example, some people who leave Boeing (a 94 year old company) have a very difficult time re-integrating into society because many of their professional skills and tools are articulated in a language that nobody outside Boeing understands. Ex-employees of many large corporations often find themselves professionally invisible through an extended period of re-adjustment.

Melting Pot Economics

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Freedom of Speech; Use it Wisely

By Admin

On December 3, 2009

In General Information

The recent Google quandary involving that most unfortunate rendering of Mrs. Obama led to many interesting articles about the invisible line between freedom of speech and profiting from indecency against another person (or group of persons).

Among the more intriguing conclusions is that those who exercise their freedom of speech should do so at the price of their anonymity. As such, the community can likewise exercise their freedom of speech in response…sort of a market incentive system, it seems.

So what exactly would happen if the offensive content were accompanied by the name, address, business, and email of the person who created it? How would their personal freedom be enhanced or restricted based on their contribution to the “self-discovery” of society? How does a social medium enhance or restrict the inalienable rights so preserved in our nation’s constitution by our infinitely wise founding fathers?

I suppose that the founding fathers also had an issue with anonymity. By virtue of their signature on the declaration of independence, they were willing to pay for their freedom of speech with their lives. This singular act is what empowered the document most. They bet their skin to preserve their oppressor’s freedom of speech regarding the same matter of independence. Today we call that courage but in most communities it is common practice:

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USocial = SUPER SPAM

By Admin

On December 1, 2009

In General Information

USocial is now going after YouTube. These clever guy and gals have figured out a way to bypass the democracy of social media to bring is a new form of merchant class capitalism…SUPER SPAM. For a small fee, you can get your message to the head of the line – in effect pushing the rest backwards. Presumably for a bigger fee, you can get ahead of those who paid a smaller fee, and so forth.

Once the bastion of lobbyists and special interest groups, anyone with a few bucks can now pull themselves up the ladder by pushing other people down the ladder. Once the domain of high powered PR firms and Marketing agents; just a few dollars cast among the USocial Gods delivers those long elusive eyeballs of the old radio/TV marketing paradigm.

Watch this one carefully kids. Social Media has long proven uncontainable. Saying that you can beat social media at its own game is like saying you can repair a credit score. Like a credit score, you can do more damage than good trying to steal what does not belong to you in an effort to boost your income.

Those eyeballs, those followers, and those “friends” do not belong to USocial and are therefore not theirs to sell. They belong to you and I and we control them – or we don’t play. If USocial keeps their client list secret, this would be the capital offense in social media space.

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Fattest Cat Bets Against Dollar (and what we can do about it)

By Admin

On November 25, 2009

In General Information

In 2006 John Paulson (of no relation to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson ) bet that the sub-prime mortgage market would tank and housing prices would fall on a national scale, according to a new book The Greatest Trade Ever by Greg Zuckerman. He cleaned up with 4 billion dollars in personal gains, 20 Billion for his firm.

Wonder where your money went?

“John Paulson took it,” wrote Peter Cohen of BloggingStocks. Want to know what Paulson is buying this year? Gold. Betting against the dollar is his latest ploy and so far seems to be working. Ummmm…this means that the rest of us are basically screwed, again.

Paulson’s investing lessons:

1. Don’t Rely on Experts
2. Bubble Trouble
3. Focus on Debt Markets
4. Master New investments
5. Insurance Pays
6. Experience Counts
7. Don’t Fall In Love
8. Luck Helps

Hey Kids, let’s learn from the master:

1. Don’t rely on Experts: They are the crooks. The Mexican Peso crisis was not caused by foreigners; it was caused by Mexican elite running away from their own currency and sparking a wider run. See Johnny Run….

2. Bubble Trouble: Further evidence is seen in speculative bubbles appearing in mundane fixed assets like land, minerals, and alternate currencies around the world.

3. Focus on Debt: If you have cash, you’ll lose it to inflation. But if you have debt, you’ll lose that too. If you have too much debt and you’ll go bankrupt. If you have too much cash and you’ll become equally broke. The trick is to hold just as much cash as you hold debt and when it’s all over, you’ll be no better or no worse off.

4. Master new investments: In the old system, if I trade a dollar for an apple, I lose the dollar but gain an apple. In the next economic paradigm, I share an idea but I still retain the idea; and currency multiplies – master the new investment!

5. Insurance Pays if you know how to play; if you can identify the peril, you know the probability that it will get you, and you know the consequences of the loss – you can “play” insurance. People must reorganize around an “insurance system” enabled by social networks that can influence these factors.

6. Experience Counts; While corporations are laying off older people, social media is capturing them in a knowledge inventory. We must develop, produce, and access this knowledge inventory.

7. Don’t Fall in Love: This means diversify and don’t be afraid to try new things. Innovation is the art of putting many different ideas, concepts or objects together and yielding new wealth creation. What better mechanism than social media.

8. Luck helps: Social media is like a cloud. Nobody can control and the only way to engage with it is to talk to the cloud. After a while the cloud will deliver rain, and your garden will grow. John Paulson calls this luck, we call it inevitable.

We, the people, need to introduce a new economic paradigm – nobody will do it for us. We may lose the dollar as a currency but we must not lose our personal ability to produce and trade our ideas, plans, and actions for the things that our families need to grow. Wealth is created by sharing. The Next Economic Paradigm shows us how we, as a society, can reorganize ourselves around an economy built upon social media. Sounds far out but it can be done today if we move quickly to understand the power – near absolute – that people can have in social media. If John Paulson were really smart, he would bet on us not against us.

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Intellectual Property in Bloggerville

By Admin

On November 20, 2009

In General Information

Most bloggers invite you to share their content far and wide on any one of many aggregation sites. But some people get really upset if you post that article on your own aggregation blog (even with full credit and back links).

I am always amazed when I get that proverbial chest thumping quasi-barrister “cease and desist” letter, followed by remedial citation of copyright law, and always ending with some pathetic accusation of irreparable damages and criminal violation. They get upset if you change the content and they get upset if you don’t. The worst is when it comes from a self-proclaimed social media guru who touts all ‘dat social media Kool Aid in their consultancy propaganda.

Reality Check:

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Social Isolation Funnel

By Admin

On November 13, 2009

In General Information

You don’t stand a chance.

Social Influence Marketing (SIM) is becoming more sophisticated at finding you in your social space than you are in avoiding Social Influence Marketing (Advertising). A new set of theories and systems have been deployed on how to engage you in conversation, grab your response data, funnel you into the pitch, induce credit card labor, and draw out your social broadcast. Guess what, your social media sites are helping them….

Flirting with the enemy

The greatest problem that social media created for advertisers was to disperse the crowd from the once treasured “captive audience” of the radio/TV days to millions of individual affinity outlets. Blasting the message home is no longer a function of Ad spend. However, marketers are smart and social media sites are corporations too – now these forces are converging with unimaginable voracity.

They have you figured out.

In a quest for monetization, popular sites now provide “data services” to the brands. Such data empowers, once again, the advertiser over the viewer. Why not provide “data service” to the users about what the brands pay for and what information they are mining about users? If Brands are not comfortable with disclosing such information – should we be comfortable about teaching our “human nature” to them?

As social sites increasingly develop stickiness applications to retain the audience, new innovations are directed to that old business TV/Radio model rather than reinforcing the reason why social media emerged in the first place. At some point, it becomes the best interest of the social site to meet the Wall Street expectation of “tangible output” over the user expectation of increased productivity. In other words, keep people glued to the LCD and don’t empower them to enter their communities to innovate social change.

Once users lose the ability to reject a brand message, we’re all right back where we started from.

People need to meet each other in real life to do real things. The best way to retain the original power of social media is to disperse once again. Micro-social networks reflecting communities of interest need to form in proximity to each member. Each community of interest must combine with other highly local social networks to share ideas, create local innovation, and enforce social priorities.

Hide your data in your own data:

Each time a different affinity group meets with another affinity group, the demographic data changes – it becomes renewed, refreshed and remains in the possession of the community. This is where the value is, people can own it of they knew it’s theirs – and Brands can access far more value by supporting communities rather than by isolating communities.

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Is the Credit Score Obsolete?

By Admin

On November 12, 2009

In General Information

The Ingenesist Project prides itself in making certain predictions that often seem to manifest in some small way every day. One of our most enduring suggestions is that social media will begin to replace failing institutions of government and industry.

OK, that’s pretty far out, or is it?

The Wall street Journal reported recently that new bond issues – sort of like collateralized debt obligations – are being developed without consideration for the credit rating of the assets forming the bond. The justification is that credit rating did not predict or help avoid the last crisis, so what good are they?

Now here is the twist – a surprisingly “Social Media” style solution is proposed – and accepted by the market. The bankers put their personal and corporate reputations on the line. If you trust the banker, you can trust their bond.

Is the Credit Score Obsolete?

This sets up an interesting new game now that many bad banks are gone and public sentiment is turned against them. The new game is playing out in interesting ways.

The bank does not want to put their reputation in the hands of a 3rd party credit rating agency.
Investor wants to put their money into the hands of the person who actually hangs if the deal goes bad.
“Inside Information” has become so systematized; the banker knows things long before the rating agency.
A system had been built to “game” the credit agencies…lose the game and lose the risk?
Avoid government vetting regulation in favor of “social network” vetting.
Tactical advantage over corrupt competitors
It’s easier for everyone to understand – including the banker, investor, and bond asset.

This is a profound shift in thinking from only a few years ago and almost seems like a return to a bygone era; remember the old days when the banker was actually a member of the community where the bank invested their money?

There are some lessons to take home. If don’t need credit ratings for corporate bond issues, do they need credit ratings for people? What if all of these institutions adopt a social network based credit score? What would that look like? Social media by and large rewards high integrity and punishes low integrity. The value of social media includes a component of risk reduction. You would think that Banks, Insurance, and even homeland security would be all over this game.

Innovating Disruption:

What happens if your credit rating is divorced from your finances? What good is your social security number? How does this effect all the downstream users of credit ratings like insurance, employers, credit card companies, social security payments – if any? Much of what we’ll associate with the innovation economy is the disruption, if not outright destruction, of an impossibly unstable system of finance.

Is the Credit Score Obsolete?

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When Capitalists Are Really the Socialists

By Admin

On November 7, 2009

In General Information

Yikes…

Unemployment tops 10%. Add in the under-employed, part timers, young adults trying to enter the job market, the ones who have given up or otherwise marginalized, and we’re well into the 15-20% range.

Mediated Reality:

When will people come to the realization that a new financial system is needed to represent the new social order? When will people realize that they have in their possession the most important tool ever devised by humanity for the benefit of humanity? When will they shut off the TV and reject the barrage of mediated reality that blinds them with propaganda at every turn?

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Social Currency; History Matters

By Admin

On November 3, 2009

In General Information

History often provides clarity in the present. I was searching the term “Social Currency” and I found these two posts on a forum from all the way back in 2001. The authors are quite explicit in their expectations of social currency in their present and deep into the future.

A framework for the future:

I find such framework to be useful in grounding my own opinions, expectations, and aspirations in the social media space. The authors here are quite intimate in their views and we would all be remiss in not searching the hidden layers of our consciousness on the subject. Enjoy.

(I left all the links in hoping that this would suffice for credits back to the source http://everything2.com/title/social%2520currency)

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Social Currency 101

By Admin

On October 31, 2009

In General Information

Here is a very great video by Scott Stratten explaining social currency.

It is short, it is basic, and it states what should be obvious to everyone. It also states what many of us should repeat to ourselves every single day. It is one of those explanations that has a new and different meaning every time you watch it – if you let it.

I swiped this video because I’ll will be posting a series of articles and interpretations on the subject of social currency and it’s a great place to start. The reasons for organizing social currency are becoming more obvious everyday – as institutional and corporate currencies leave gaps in our communities, people will need to fill these voids with social currencies. Our job as Social Media Practitioners (because nobody else is going to do it) is to develop, construct, and deploy social institutions that support a real time, close proximity markets to exist trading social currency (ref: The Ingenesist Project).

Scott Stratten is the President of Un-Marketing and spends way too much time on Twitter.

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Can Twitter Fuel a Run On Banks?

By Admin

On October 30, 2009

In General Information

The Ingenesist Project is retained by corporate clients because we look at the world through a different set of filters. We are looking for possible disruptions on the horizon as far in advance as possible so that our clients can be aware of potential perils and modify their business plans accordingly.

One of our signature assertions is that Money is merely a social agreement – not a federal mandate of a democratic government. People will trade whatever currency they agree to trade. Increasingly, people, empowered by social media can impact the financial system far more that a bunch of Quants peddling CDOs.

People simply do not know how powerful they are.

Suppose someone puts together a Twitter/Facebook campaign for everyone the withdraw their money from a single financial institution who just handed out big bonuses? At best, those bonuses will have to be recalled to keep the doors open. At worst, people will find an alternate currency to store the “value” that is destroyed by a bank run. Virtual Currency? Admittedly, it’s far-out, but we need to keep our eyes on these trends because once started, they move very very fast. That’s why they call it a “Run”

Is this scenario really possible? Read on…..

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Banking on the Past

By Admin

On October 27, 2009

In General Information

I am writing a short series on the Banks of the past, present and future. Prediction what future of banking was the easiest piece. Identifying the current transition phase was a little tougher so I borrowed from another blogger’s post. Describing banking of the past was most difficult. Here is an example of what I’m talking about:

“The bifurcation of the credit loss piece is a key component of the revised rule,” says Larsen, “but the part that often gets missed when pundits talk [about the rule] on TV is that the trigger that starts the whole [measurement and recording exercise] is the realization that a loan is not going to be repaid. The rule addresses an impaired security, you still have to identify the fair value of that security, and all of the losses are disclosed on the balance sheet.”

Holy shit, did you understand any of that? Guess what – nobody else did either and bankers are wondering why nobody wants their “currency”. Currency is a conversation, a social agreement, a community organizer – if nobody know what it is, people are going to start trading something else.

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You’ll Know It When You See It

By Admin

On October 20, 2009

In General Information

I’ve been publishing my research freely all over the net, in the creative commons, and several blogs. I am passionate about this work and I want to tell everyone about it. It’s my playground.

Not unlike a playground

Then one day another kid comes over and says, “Hey, that’s an interesting game you are playing, what are the rules”?

So I tell him; “Well, it’s part economics, part innovation, and part social media. Now sprinkle in some differential calculus with finance theory and garnish with a modern analogy or two”.

The other kid responds, “Wow, I know someone you should talk to…..”

Boomerang effect

Unrelated, this morning I received a phone call from a major brand that wants to “innovate” everywhere in their business but are not quite sure where to start. They came across one of my blogs and essentially said “Hey, that’s an interesting game you are playing, what are the rules and where can I find a short course on innovation that meets my schedule?”

I offered my opinion: Innovation is defined essentially as “you know it when you see it”. As such, Innovation courses can only teach you to “know it when you see it”. By the way, the game I’m playing is part economics, part innovation, and part social media. Now sprinkle in some differential calculus with finance theory and garnish with a modern analogy or two”.

You know it when you see it

Then we had an idea. I can find a University in Seattle that will sponsor a seminar and we’ll invite a group of known Seattle innovators and some corporate folks and we’ll all brainstorm for a few days. What better short course in innovation is there?

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Taxonomy for Knowledge Inventory

By Admin

On October 15, 2009

In General Information

The library district in Adams County Colorado became the first in the nation to ditch The Dewey Decimal System in favor of something called “WordThink” or commonly known as “The Bookstore Classification System”.

Given that a great deal of literacy is reflected in our conversations, it is not difficult to accept that much of what we say can be traced back to some book or classified publication. True, knowledge comes from experience, but knowledge is derived from information and information is classified by the Dewey system, WordThink, The Universal Decimal Classification System or any number of proprietary taxonomies.

The difference is that The Bookstore Classification system is attached to a huge multi-billion dollar marketing and production infrastructure. Think Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Borders, etc. Some would call it an egregious example of corporatism in the public library system. Others would call it an astonishing opportunity for corporate subsidization of knowledge asset development. I tend toward the latter.

Knowledge needs to be formatted to behave like a financial instrument. If this can be accomplished then entrepreneurs will innovate in the trade of knowledge assets. If you want to build an airplane, you need an inventory of parts. If you went to build a social media as a social infrastructure, then you will need an knowledge asset inventory. If you want to promote innovation, then you want to promote social media. First and foremost, knowledge assets must look like a buck, walk like a buck and quack like a buck – then they will trade like a buck.

Conversational Currency, The Relationship Economy, and The Ingenesist Project have published on this matter. But for now, let me leave you with the original article from the Denver Post (below).

Some say that WordThink dumbs it all down, others say it’s easier to browse – see article below for additional analysis. However, as you read the article suppose you are an entrepreneur not shopping for a book on SEO, but rather, shopping your neighborhood for a person that knows SEO. Then ask; what’ll it be; Dewey or WordThink?

Adams County libraries shelving Dewey Decimal

By Monte Whaley
The Denver Post

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The Greatest Threat To Social Media

By Admin

On October 14, 2009

In General Information

I taught an undergraduate class in International Business this weekend in Mexicali, Mexico as part of an international assignment as Associate Faculty for City University of Seattle. I first taught in Mexico 15 years ago as visiting faculty during the NAFTA era where I spent 3 years conducting research which eventually lead to The Ingenesist Project.

My first year in Mexico back in 1994, I thought to myself, “Wow, I can change everything”. The next year, I thought to myself, “Wow, I can’t change anything”. The third year, I thought to myself, “Wow, why would I want to change anything, Mexico is doing just fine the way it is”.

At that time, I was referring to the cohesiveness of community, family values, complex social structure, community interdependence, generosity, empathy and personal warmth – despite their “Cold War” classification as a “Third World” country – that the Mexican people held forward to each other as well as visitors.

I also remember the huge city-wide parties (imagine a million person party) after the country won a big soccer match, or after a popular political candidate won and election, or during New Years, Christmas, and Easter, etc. Wow – what a magnificent place.

Fast forward to this past weekend; I was explaining the implications of the financial crisis relative to the changes that have taken place since NAFTA. Today, thousands of Global Corporations now surround the city like an advancing army, proud people are now working for wages, Euro/America centric textbooks chart their course into modernization, and pending currency shifts loom unpredictable in their speed and scope – the effects will likely not be in the best interest of the people who actually produce things. So, I deviated from the course material – If I didn’t do it, nobody else would. I included material on how to use Social Media.

Mexico still has it, but they are losing it – often in spectacular ways. It seems so natural that Social Media can have a tremendous impact in countries where the fabric of community is still essentially intact. Unfortunately, when people are held below a certain economic threshold, they simply do not have the time or the energy to organize as a community to impact social change. This is the greatest threat to the great promise of social media in Mexico … and the United States.

The following video, A nine-minute history of corporatism, articulates the conflict that I felt when teaching the courses on International Business in Mexico. Please watch – it is that important.

Life Inc. The Movie from Douglas Rushkoff on Vimeo.

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Nobel Prize Goes to Social Media

By Admin

On October 12, 2009

In General Information

Well, not explicitly, but given the firestorm over the Nobel Peace Prize, the Economics Prize ought not go unnoticed. The Irony is that that just because we don’t know how to model some economic phenomena does not mean that the impact should be ignored. Whether you agree with the Peace Prize decision or not, clearly the impact of Social Media cannot be ignored.

Many Students of Social Media have long argued that the shortcomings of government and corporatism are more and more often becoming filled by innovation in Social Media. Likewise, the notable successes of Democratic Government and Corporatism should be preserved. Thereby, we form the basis of Social Capitalism.

Two American economists, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, who study economic governance and the way decisions are made outside the markets, were awarded Monday with the Nobel Prize in economics.

Ms. Ostrom, who teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., is the first woman to win the prize. The judges cited Ms. Ostrom’s “analysis of economic governance, especially the commons,” the way in which natural resources are managed as shared resources. Ms. Ostrom argues, “Over time, people often develop institutions, social networks and ways of interacting that solves the problem.” Even her critics agree that what’s important, is that Ms. Ostrom’s work points out the importance of the networks that many economists had ignored, in part, because they couldn’t come up with elegant models to describe how they worked.

On the other hand, Mr. Williamson, 77, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley argues that some decisions are [best meant to be made within the corporate structure. “What he found was that many economic decisions that standard theory said would be more efficiently left to the market place were actually better left within a firm.”]. In short, even competitors form tacit social networks to do what is in the best interest of markets.

The Nobel Committee Agreed, “Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent,” the Nobel judges said. “But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets.”

The bottom line is that just because you we don’t know how to model economic phenomena does not mean that their impact can be ignored. President Obama, whether you like him or not, has had a profound social and economic impact that is not yet clearly understood. The objective then is to at least try and understand the impact of social media.

Given the statements of the Norwegian committee that awards the prizes, Alfred Nobel would agree that the currency, therefore, is the conversation.

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1,000,000 More Become Invisible, Powerless, and Marginalized

By Admin

On October 8, 2009

In General Information

The September Job Numbers are out and the trends are disturbing. Millions upon millions of Americans are now wondering how they are going to safeguard the health and welfare of their families and property. As these people lose their “money” they become increasingly invisible, powerless, and marginalized – except for one single, solitary, beacon of earthly influence. Social Media.

Now, more than ever, we need to implement an alternate economy with an alternate currency. I am not pitching some “anti-dollar-therefore-anti-American” platform, I am talking about what the hell will millions of unemployed people and their families do if they don’t have a functional currency they can trade for basic needs and services.

These same people have tons of practical experience, diverse knowledge, and worthy intellect – but no money? It makes absolutely no sense that “productivity” should become so divorced from the value of a solitary currency.

We must come to the immediate conclusion that social media can be a fabric that binds the American economy. If done correctly, Social Media can become the basis of an economy that rewards social priorities over Wall Street Priorities. But ONLY if done correctly.

While the institutions around us falter, social media will increasingly duplicate – for all practical purposes – the functions of these institutions in our society. As this transition takes place, we must lead social media in specific and intentional directions. This cannot be a “traditional” market driven process – the market is what we’re trying to correct. This cannot be a random process or else it will become reactionary and feed on itself. Instead, Social Media needs to be organized in a manner that allows information, knowledge, and innovation – the basis of human productivity – to trade like a financial instrument.

What if I told you that it would be a lot easier than it sounds? What if I told you that almost all of the components needed to build this new economy already existed in the social media landscape? What if I told you that Government, Corporations, and Wall Street will not do this for us. What if I told you that the risk from not doing anything far outweighs the risk of trying to develop and implement an economy built on a social media platform.

Everyone must have a productive role in the next economic paradigm – employed, unemployed, communities, traditional media, even existing corporations and their advertising departments. All of the existing infrastructure is in place – it only needs to be rearranged a little bit. That is what The Ingenesist Project hopes to initiate. We may not be 100% correct and the process that actually arises may be substantially different, but we need to start somewhere.

Meanwhile, here are the Jobs stats for September;

Headlines: 263,000 “jobs lost” and unemployment rate up to 9.8%.

That’s not good – there goes the “second derivative” argument. Weekly earnings are also down by $1.54, which is bad news too. But the Household Data is VASTLY worse than reported. Here are the month-over-month changes, and they’re in the realm of frightening.

Civilian Labor Force: 154,879,000 to 153,617,000 this month.

Employed: 140,074,000 down to 139,079,000 this month.

That’s a loss of 995,000 jobs, not 263,000, and the labor force contracted by 1,262,000 people!

THE INVISIBLE PEOPLE: The people “not in the labor force” rose by a staggering 1,516,000 in the last month (”unemployed” who have given up and exited the labor force).

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Entrepreneurs or Social Media Riff Raff ?

By Admin

On October 7, 2009

In General Information

I am noticing a recent backlash at the social media experts that are not actually experts. In one such rant, a real social media expert proposes a few simple questions that can help separate the good from the not-so-good.

A few simple things:

Proof of experience and demonstrated results.
Business leadership, not necessarily thought leadership.
Dig deep into a consultant’s background and social media presence. Is he or she simply good at promoting him- or herself?

Bad Apples?

The chief complaint is that the bad ones are destroying the reputations of the good ones. It is no mystery that any fair and competitive market has a vetting mechanism and the hallmark of protectionism is in promoting the absence of such vetting… “except my own”.

Subjectivity or objectivity:

The Real Expert certainly means well, however, they are reflecting on the profession in their own image. This is entirely valid and correct, in fact, the CEO of the hiring firm is likely doing the same thing, saying to themselves: “Obviously, a social media consultant who is very good at promoting themselves would also be very good at promoting my company”. As such, the consultant that self-promotes is ironically casting the less selfish image.

A few not so simple things:

There is a dire shortage of social media consultants relative to the “adoption” rates needed to solve real problems.
Prices increase as demand increases and supply stays low.
There is too much social media work for the existing “good ones” to possibly do in their lifetimes.

What every expert should know:

Social Media is about engagement and sharing, inclusiveness, and empowerment.
Social media success is a function of critical mass – the more people doing it; the more social media consultants will be needed.
There are as many different levels of expertise as there are levels of need for such expertise. The ability to match the correct knowledge surplus to the correct knowledge deficit is the hallmark of an expert.
A social media expert for a construction company is a lot different than a social media expert for an advertising agency – and it is unlikely that either would think of the other to be an expert.
The world needs lots and lots of social media experts covering a wide range of disciplines real fast – no holes.

Will the Real Social Media Expert please stand up?

Where are the social media experts who are devising the curriculum, certification, structure and ascension plan for all the emerging consultants? After all, social media expertise is in itself the art and science of bringing mass quantities of people around a common goal, concern, message, or product, – quickly and efficiently using modern tools of mass influence – etc. What expert(s) is bringing together ALL social media “experts” under a vetting mechanism that serves market efficiencies not subjective efficiencies?

A kettle and a stove walk into a bar…

In other words, if they are so good, why haven’t they organized themselves?. The CEO says, “If they cannot organize their own “Social Network” industry, how can they organize mine?” Until then, the Riff Raff are entrepreneurs too and an essential ingredient in the development of innovations that will become standards that act in the best interest of the market, not necessarily in the best interest of the “real” Social Media expert.

Besides, who else would the Underdog go after?

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What If The Dollar Fails?

By Admin

On October 1, 2009

In General Information

I have been hearing a great deal about an inevitable collapse of the dollar. Not today or tomorrow, but more likely over the course of the next 10 years. The failure will probably not be a stupendous crash since politicians would avoid this as a means of self-preservation. Rather, it would simply be a slow and grinding inability to “afford” many important things using cash. Note that this has little or nothing to do with your human ability to produce important things.

Few people disagree that a 50 Trillion dollar debt obligation cannot be paid back without at least 50 Trillion dollars in increased human productivity. Traditional productivity usually means taking stuff out of the ground, air, ocean, or the forest and making things that eventually wind up back in the ground, air, ocean, or the forest. Today, we are encountering constraints on the planet’s resources. Something has got to give.

The ONLY technological change that is happening at anywhere near the rate that can conceivably deliver a substantial amount of “increased productivity” is Social Media. But how do we turn it into dollars? Maybe we shouldn’t.

Here is the problem; the trends for monetizing social media actually slow it down. People use social media only because of the prospect for increasing their long term productivity as relationships prosper. Entrepreneurs trying to get paid for their innovations invariably need to introduce “friction” by attempting to convert “short term” user productivity into cash. There is no business case on short term productivity making their innovation nonviable. Therefore, the monetization problem introduces a threshold over which most great innovations simply cannot reach.

The purpose of this article is to consider what people will use for trade if the currency becomes ineffective AND their productivity does not. If the dollar does fail, people will attempt to meet their daily needs until a financial system is corrected. Many countries that have experienced currency problems and the most common result are the emergence of a black market where Levi’s, Cigarettes, or other commodities serve as a de facto tax-free currency.

While on-line gaming industry is pioneering virtual tax-free currencies with extraordinary results, back in reality, people will begin trading services. Plumbers will find dentists, farmers will find laborers, and teachers will find landscapers. Matchmaking will become a financial instrument. People will use Facebook and Twitter, Linkedin and many others in new ways in order to keep the game in play.

In fact, perhaps they already are.

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Marketing in the Age of Social Capitalism

By Admin

On September 30, 2009

In General Information

Family Recipe?

The recipe for selling great products to great customers in the age of Social Media resides first in helping people find their highest talent and passion. Advertisers need to offer something to the community that they target. The best place to start is in understanding the challenges and opportunities that a modern community faces.

The great innovations of our time were created by people doing what they enjoyed most by using their talents to the highest potential. Disney, Boeing, Apple, Mattel, and nearly every other ground breaking venture had the secret sauce of people doing what they were best at and most passionate about – and it was not about collecting “stuff”

The passion play

Computer Enabled Society is in the midst of a struggle to reorganize itself outside of the construct of the traditional corporation. It seeks to develop methods and systems that allow for the reallocation of social capital, creative capital, and intellectual capital to match a person’s natural talents, passions, and abilities with those complementary to other people. This is as true for communities as it is for corporations. The result will be a profound new paradigm of Social Capitalism reflecting social priorities and community values.

Do no evil:

If marketers have the foresight and talent to “get ‘em while they’re young” or to “sell ‘em what they fear”, they certainly also have the foresight and methods to “develop ‘em to their highest potential”. Advertising agencies are full of real smart people who know how to deliver a hidden message – why not use that talent to empower people?

Instead, mass marketing pays mass money for mass audience from which to draw mass revenues – the message gets debased to play on mass fears, anxieties, and insecurities because this is the least common denominator. As a result, actual products are designed to be marketed, sold, and thrown away; not to be particularly useful, productive, or even healthy. Unnecessary innovation wastes human effort and natural resources while mass marketing of unnecessary innovation wastes the time and bandwidth of those for whom the product is irrelevant. Yes, the majority of advertising is just Spam.

Advertisers as community organizers?

Few realize that advertising can become a highly useful component of the Innovation Economy. In many professional practitioners look forward to hearing from vendors, educators, and fellow practitioners for trends, news, and developments that can strengthen their community. Bad products are rejected quickly and good ones are elevated quickly. This is how the great innovations are found. This is where the early adopters congregate. This is where brand loyalty is unyielding. This is where wealth is created. This is efficiency that society wants and needs. Social Media can deliver this audience but advertisers need to adapt by losing the CPM (cost per mille) model (more on that later).

Marketing to communities is fluid, dynamic, specific, and it takes some work. The dynamics of communities will replace the statics of demography and CPM. Fulfill those needs of a community and your products will win forever. It is not difficult to see the future, only to act on it. That is innovation.

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Unspoken Communication and the Bottom Line

By Admin

On September 23, 2009

In General Information

As a community developer for several websites, I go through lots of different information sources. I am looking for stories and nuance that demonstrate how conversation behaves like a currency. The more I look, the more I see. The strength of the analogy is quite remarkable.

Unspoken Values

I can also see how the unspoken communication stores as much value as the spoken communication. In the U.S. , there are race troubles, financial troubles, trust troubles, and confidence troubles. Many fears and anxieties can be accelerated by Social Media in unpredictable ways. First, information riles people up quicker than facts can follow, and second, the shelf life is much shorter as issues are dissipated by new ones. Much is left unprocessed.

The Micro-Trauma

What happens when important issues in life go unresolved? The life of a soldier may offer some clues where events can happen faster than the mind can process them. Perhaps the life of a child offers some clues where every day brings so much new information that all new events are processed in terms of basic necessity. Perhaps any traumatic event such as a divorce, loss of a family member, or victimization places us in the realm of the unspoken communication. This is a protection mechanism, not a delivery system.

As the World Churns

Billions of people hustle off to work and spend their day producing stuff in order to earn imaginary money so they can spend imaginary money. This helps things move from the forests to the dumps. They have no idea the sophistication of the micro-trauma delivery system that acts on how they process information.

The unspeakable drives our fears, interests and concern and influences how we process future information. I am amazed at how two people will arrive at opposite conclusions from the same data and the inability for those two people to speak to each other rationally. Advertisers, politicians. PR firms, and traditional media can deliver bits of information and dissipate them quickly leaving an unprocessed data-packets behind.

Opting Out:

I just closed my land line, canceled cable TV and purchase a subscription to on-line music radio that I play constantly. I “hide” the fringe mongers on my FaceBook, and get my news from Google alerts, feeds, and sources that align with what I am able to process mentally and emotionally. What I cannot process, I have a network of trusted friends who can process the information and guide me through the issues. I am quite happy, in fact, as many areas of my life are improving; health, friends, family, productivity, and finances…etc.

There is a tremendous opportunity available in delivering the right information to the right people with the intent of helping them to successfully and completely process information. This is more work up front, but the loyalty in the long-run is exactly what politicians, marketers, and news sources are competing for. Instead they are killing the patient to cure the disease.

In order to monetize in the new economic paradigm, help the unspoken communication become speakable and then listen to your friends.

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Gnomedex 9.0 Seattle

By Admin

On September 16, 2009

In General Information

I attended the Gnomedex 9.0 Social Media Conference in Seattle. While it was wonderfully informative and every single person that I met was engaged, interesting, and accomplished in some productive way related to social media, I was left with some troubling observations as well as some very inspiring moments.

Observation:

1. Trillions upon trillions of dollars are being transferred to Social Media with the persistent extinction of old media dinosaurs – does anyone care?

2. Advertising concerns, print media, corporate HR, were strikingly absent from the corporate vendors on site and in among the sponsors – they should have been hovering over in helicopters.

3. There were ONLY a few hundred people in attendance – there should have been a few hundred thousand (6619 Tweets sent).

4. This event should have been gold plated – it was not, which leads me to some of the inspiring moments.

Inspiring Moments:

1. Many of the presentations reflected social priorities like the environment, using social media to empower yourself and the people around you, and empowering less developed nations.

2. Relative absence of commercialization

3. Gnomedex 9.0, means that 9 have occurred and this is what it has “evolved to”. As a worthy social experiment in itself, this shows us what social media WILL evolve to

4. Building trust was a predominant theme

Read Between the lines:

Social media reflects social priorities, not Wall Street Priorities – in fact, the table has turned. For example: Twitter will be charging Corporations to view social media – after corporations failed to get people to pay them to view social media.

Every single business transaction is subject to a similar “reversal” relative to social media space. The World has no idea what’s coming down the tracks.

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Set the Data Free, Please

By Admin

On September 11, 2009

In General Information

The following commentary was posted last week in Wall Street Journal Op Ed. This is an opportunity to consider the term “Conversational Currency” at it’s most literal meaning. People pay money to talk to each other. Other people want to control how when and how much people can talk to each other. The battlefront is technology, like rockem-sockem robots, technologies duke it out in this trillion dollar struggle to control our conversations.

Who benefits … shareholders?

The irony is that each and every titan is the beneficiary of conversation. The 135 year old Alexander Graham Bell era is about to End. Will patricide or scionism prevail? Will unified voice systems integrate all mediums and devices into a single channel? Will the elimination of conversation “frictions” also eliminate innovation “frictions” (you know, all those things that make innovation impossible to capitalize by regular people; Patents, risk, velocity, market intel, 1000% VC, etc.).

It’s about the data, stupid

Mr. Kessler proposes a National Data policy – after all, voice, text, video, etc., are simply different forms of data and should be treated as such. Any device should work on any network and data should flow freely. What’s with owning airwaves? Who came up with that idea ? – it creates more interference than it is touted to solve. Ditto for exclusivity contracts – who needs them, except those who stifle innovation. And finally, the mother of all frictions, restricting speed and bandwidth. Sure, I like driving with the emergency brake on – it improves my eligibility for “cash for clunkers”.

Resistance is futile

The truth cannot be hidden by economic tyranny. Noble institutions like journalism, education, and entrepreneurship are being sacrificed in the name of shareholder value. People communicate freely and freely they shall communicate. These are the profound questions of our era that play out every day in the news. Please read this and our other posts at CC with great optimism that a new paradigm is arising where an innovation economy will be built on a social media platform outside the construct of corporations:

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You Can’t Eat Gold

By Admin

On September 3, 2009

In General Information

The following is a question and answer that I responded to on a Linkedin economics forum. This question still occurs in so many forms when it is also abundantly obvious that Social Media is driving so much value in so many directions. The irony is that the question is asked within the currency that it fails to recognize.

Art credit

Question:

Fiat money is the cause or always the main cause of financial crisis. Reverting back to gold standard can give stability. How can this be implemented?

Answer:

It cannot. Everyone agrees that money needs to be backed by something tangible. However, gold has a host of problems as well that are discussed extensively on-line and cannot be ignored.

A successful and stable currency must be backed by the productivity of the [citizens of a country] users. So these two words should be interchangeable; i.e., a country spends productivity to fight a war. A country spends productivity to fund universal health care, etc.

The cause of financial crisis is when the money becomes divorced from the productivity. Debt is a transaction that exchanges current productivity for future productivity – assuming that productivity will increase at least by the so-called ‘risk’. CDOs and other exotic financial instruments further obscure true productivity until money becomes driven irrationality and emotions completely separated from productivity.

If people lose trust in the currency, they will no longer trade it – they will find something else. Your hope is that they will find Gold.

Note clearly that innovation is also a transaction that exchanges current productivity with future productivity (due to the innovation). As such, a currency backed by innovation is of the same species as a currency backed by debt. Therefore, the entire financial system does not need to be torn down and rebuilt to serve a new non-debt backed currency.

The answer to your question is to look toward the places where extraordinary innovation is occurring today, right now. It is clear that social media is developing this new currency. The problem now is fairly simple; making human knowledge tangible. This is where the innovation is. Here are some resources of people working on this problem:

http://ingenesist.com

http://relationship-economy.com

http://conversationalcurrency.com

Our deepest concern should be to feed the Goose what’s been so good to the Gander all these years. Of course one argument in favor of gold is it’s scarcity. However, it is difficult to imagine that in an era of scarcity of so many resources, the basis of a currency ought to be more scarcity. Knowledge, conversation, and innovation are scarce relative to the problems that they must be deployed to solve. We’re in this together.

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When The Kids Arrive – from MySpace

By Admin

On August 29, 2009

In General Information

Several articles have come out refuting the death of MySpace as researchers try to make sense of the continued persistence of what many people consider last-year’s news. Here is an interesting article by Misiek Piskorski from Harvard Business Review answering the question “Where are all those My Space Users”?

“Both traditional and social media have declared MySpace dead. Even a brief scan of articles reveals that media mavens “don’t know anybody who uses MySpace anymore,” which reportedly is not a huge loss as the site “is ridden by spammers” and “its atrocious HTML, bLiNgY graphics, and horrific backgrounds” are offensive. Many of you reading this post probably do not know anyone who uses the site either.

Yet MySpace is the 11th most visited site in the world, with unique 60 to 70 million U.S. visitors every month. Even though the site is not growing, it is a far cry from “dead” if you ask me.”

But wait!

Notice how the “Media Centers” Los Angeles, Chicago, New York are in Facebook territory. Also note how the technology power centers; Silicon Valley, Seattle, and Boston are also in the Facebook territory. Academics from Harvard, Yale, Stanford are taken by surprise in Facebookville. The great financial centers; Wall Street, LA, SF and Chicago are all Facebook. Maybe the prognosis for the future of social media is skewed by the proximity to major media, academic, and financial centers. Centralized power is the antithesis of social media, Right?

Looking for Disassociation.

Here at The Ingenesist Project we have long been looking for a disassociation between main stream media and social media. MySpace may be the social experiment that indicates a deeper and most promising trend. Is it a requirement that a social media analyst be located in Silicon Valley? Do celebrity endorsements really mean anything tangible? Does editorialized news always provide what people need?

MySpace Demographics:

The resulting sample is representative of the MySpace population. 53% of users identify themselves as women. Of all users below the age of 50, half are 21 years old or younger, and 30% are between the ages of 22 and 30. Everyone knows that Kids don’t Tweet and late adopters to Social Media are also later-in-lifers. The population of the world is finite, so when will Facebook level off as Twitter has?

Looking for reversal:

Next, we are looking for a reversal where Social Media drives s0-called traditional media – not the other way around. Can a blogger in Arizona drive the great branding strategies of the future? Can a Webinar from Montana introduce the next age of enlightenment? Can Nashville become the next great Venture Capital hub? Can a community of children in Florida band together to sustain the next great social movement. Will democracy, voting, and public opinion be driven by youth culture? Will corporate innovation respond to social priorities rather than Wall Street Priorities?

Ideas whose times are coming:

There are many examples of the above miracles of social media, however, a disassociation and reversal with traditional media will be an event of flip-floponomics of great significance – a watershed moment in the history of the next economic paradigm. Traditional media, understandably, may inadvertently be assigning a premature death to many great ideas yet to come.

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