Let’s take a quick break from the serious topics today. In a recent conversation with a colleague of mine, I sat and watched as he struggled to come up with a new analogy for social media as a whole.
Of course, through those struggles, we both realized that it’s not quite the easiest thing to liken to another concept. At the same time, many people had already attempted to do so.
In honor of his struggles and our on-the-spot realization, I present to you the following possible analogies for social media. These all include citations if you wish to learn more about the thought process for yourself, and I’d welcome any commentary on whether you agree or disagree with my assessment of each.
Cocktail Party
Is Social Media like a cocktail party?
This is perhaps the most obvious, and as a result, the most quoted analogy for social media. Essentially, it posits that social media is a virtual party, and we are just participants in the festivities. While that is certainly a plausible comparison, it overlooks much of the additional value that social media can provide above and beyond that of a cocktail party or other type of party (the latter of which says your blog is your home…welcome to my humble abode!).
For a simplistic model, I suppose, this would suffice. But once you really “get” what social media is all about, it becomes clearly too low of a target.
High School
Wow, I really hope this doesn’t stick, because I have no desire in any shape or form to go back to that stage of my life! Collective Thoughts shared one interesting write up that presents the thought process behind this idea. They hit on everything from parties, to gossip, to clubs and cliques. This is actually a pretty decent comparison overall, but it still fails to hit the nail right on the head.
Give the original write up as linked above a read to see what you think. Since I personally have a mental block against the idea of spending my time dabbling with a return to high school, I’ll leave it at that.
A Plague
I included this one just to see if you are paying attention. (Clearly, if you are reading this, you are.)
That said, The Relationship Economy did a post on this topic, but it didn’t deliver on the promise. Great example of why your blog posts should be titled something that actually relates to the content it covers (might as well make something of this otherwise wasted space).
Fly Fishing
Cheers for Marketing Profs for first proposing this analogy. This analogy boils down to some key attributes of social media that also remain similar when fly fishing: Go where your target audience is (or where the fish swim), let go of the urge to control, focus on executing properly, and dig in because you can’t fish without getting wet.
I must say, this is perhaps the best analogy I was able to find referenced online. Give a read to the original blog post and see for yourself.
The Next Step in Human Evolution
Yes, I went there. This isn’t a commentary meant to elicit Orwellian fears of any sort. Back in 2007, a fellow named Arun Radhakrishnan gave his take on this viewpoint. I must say, he makes a compelling argument for why the development of language itself, long considered a key evolution point for homo sapiens as a whole, has striking similarities in impact to how social media is changing our communications reach, habits, etc.
Is Social Media just another step in human evolution?
While this looks to be just a clever brainstorm, it does raise the question for me…was Arun right? Is this the next logical step in human evolution, or just a shiny new toy? The biggest argument against this concept is that language actually originates and is mostly participated in by actual humans, without media involved. The written word, obviously, changed that detail, but it didn’t fundamentally change language. It extended our capabilities to use it, much like social media.
So I guess I might buy that social media is the next evolution of the written and/or recorded word. But certainly not of language or humankind.
A Symphony
CausePlanet.org was the first place I saw this analogy, and they made the best argument for it as an analogy that I have seen. They spun together a clever tale about how the various instruments and parts of the orchestra must be aligned much like your various customer touchpoints and social media (website, blog, social profiles, etc.).
While this is a great inside-out view of social media, it fails to take into account the impact of true interaction and relationship building. Good analogy, just not 100% real world.
Conclusion
There you have it…a handful of interesting and creative takes on how to explain social media to a “noob”.
Have you seen any other interesting analogies? Is there one out there that is far better than all of these? Do you have your own analogy that you’d be willing to share?
Please chime in below and let’s get a good conversation going here. Thanks for reading!
Read more posts from Return On Now about Social Media.
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I agree with Danny. Two thumbs up for you!
I vote for the Symphony. We live in a world with far too many narcissists that would eat up all that attention social media could bring them. So the image of harmonizing in a conducted orchestra of sorts gives me hope
Hi Sheila,
Excellent comments as always! I enjoy your feedback, because it gives me more than a typical submission. No worries about the length.
I am so honored and pleased that you find the content on here so useful. Please let your clients and trainees know that they are more than welcomed to engage with me on here with any question. The original objective of rolling out this site was to share my own insights and discuss others.
Your example of “IRL” relationship building and idea exchange is very similar to what the goal of Return On Now is, albeit online / virtual. Great observation!
Best Regards,
Tommy
Hi Tommy
I loved this article and am very grateful that you put it together because funnily enough I spent some time looking at a well known social networking tool today and was considering the many ‘cliches’ emerging within a group with regards to what social media is and if I’m honest, have to say I felt at times, truly disenchanted by some of the contents.
I think in business, people are used to creating their ‘pitch’ which can be executed within 90 seconds for the purpose of networking and sadly it often misses the point and ends up as an analogy with bits missing – thus as I have previously written – you get ‘Experts’ and ‘experts’ in social media who try to package it and it just won’t fit in any box in my mind – which is why it’s such a compelling space to work in.
I love your reference to the Symphony analogy and feel it is probably the closest to what social media is for me. However, I would also agree that it does not account for the genuine process of interaction and relationship building and the impact it has. It has to be true or it falls flat in my mind too.
I was running a training event in London yesterday and had a fabulous group of business people – all learning about social media, but most importantly interacting with each other, looking at each other’s websites and basically offering a critique of what they felt and saw on first impression. The idea being when we do this is that we bring out ‘people’ rather than sheer business tactics if you like.
They were hearty people and my ears pricked up when I heard one of them say ‘I’m passionate about what I do” because this is something I really believe inspires people to share the content that’s put out.
So, long response I know, but I wanted to let you know there was some resonance with this blog and my day. I also wanted to tell you that I now recommend your site to my clients and trainees alike as a portal for some really good social media commentary.
Sheila
Hi Rob,
Thanks to you as well for your thoughtful commentary. You are spot on about the complexity of using different tools by different people, and in fact, I was considering making my next post about what “I” think an appropriate analogy would be for each of the major social media services/websites/tools.
Another example of “Great minds…”!
Your imagination comment is also insightful, and I’d like to add the words intrigued, inspired, and even at times, dumbfounded. That’s what is so wonderful about watching this all unfold…every user reacts differently and uses it in a unique way.
Cheers!
Tommy
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Thanks for the pingback to Jeff Booth of BuldDirect’s post (‘other type of party’) – I get all the pingbacks around these parts.
I think any analogy of something so complex as social media is going to be flawed, with some more useful perhaps than others. Part of this is that there are so many different kinds of social media platforms, that serve different facets of what it actually is to users. For instance, I think the cocktail party idea works pretty well for Twitter, more or less. But, it doesn’t really apply to blogs. I don’t think it applies to Facebook or YouTube, either. Well, at least not in my experience.
And there’s another point – everyone seems to experience different platforms in different ways. And that’s a huge part of this phenomenon; it’s multi-directional, and by nature, allows room for multiple perspectives too. It’s hard to nail that kind of thing down to one analogy that works for everyone. Still, I think the real point of all of this is that social media has captured imaginations, and has allowed certain kinds of relationships, and the means of fostering them, in a way that wasn’t conceivable even two or three years ago.
Thanks for the post!
Rob.