Social media is cool. I love myspace and facebook and I spend a fair bit of time (too much according to RescueTime) on these, various web fora and the like. I find developments like Twitter, last.fm, brightkite and socialthing very exciting. I like the idea that I can converge my online social life with my meatspace one. They are closely linked anyway, but converging my various friend streams, meeting new people and understanding this emerging social arena are all things I want to get involved with.
Many techfirms understand that they need publicity. Myspace shows that it is not a snazzy design or wonderful user interface that gets the users in, it is people following the cool kids - a trend. As Seth Godin points out, it is the Otaku, the fanatical superfan, who will sell your idea to the masses for you. He or she will get your message out there and help build the anticipation that is so important. For networks that depend on scale for a lot of their success, it is vital that people are talking about the service, hunting for beta invites and ready to join the moment the curtain goes up. think of it like a web version of a blue cross sale. The firms want that crush at the doors come opening time, and more importantly, so do their investors.
To drive this many firms use Evangelists. Interesting, charming and likeable, these professional cool kids are hired to help create that buzz. Their job is to get people to care about the product, to investigate more and to entice the first waves of users. They are there to provide both the knowledge of the new service and a positive association of it and someone you think is rather cool. Like the guy who always knew the next new trend at school, or the girl who was into that hip new indie band before everyone else, and then sold the idea on.
Closely linked to this are the people who talk to more traditional companies about how to leverage these new developments. Jennifer Van Grove is one such consultant, and she has, it seems, spotted a flaw in the way many operate. They are talking to each other, and excluding the very people they are supposed to be enthusing.
A lot of people not really involved in social media struggle to understand how they can leverage it to really add value to their lives. They get that using google maps to find directions is useful. They get that online banking helps them out and they see the fun, for a while at least, in IM, facebook or myspace. But things like socialthing, twitter or brightkite leave many people cold, and yet the only places I see evangelists for such things are on twitter. I spend the majority of my day online in one shape or another and a great many of my friends do as well. I was at a BBQ on Saturday night and after a 3 hours people were sloping off to check their email. When my friends go to the pub it is the free wi-fi rather than the cheap beer that is the main draw. They are a fairly net-savvy bunch and yet most do not know, or really care about many of the newer services. Either they have not heard about them, or if they can they do not care. I was plugging brightkite, twitter and the like on a web forum the other day and the only comment was from someone who was confused about what twitter offered over IM.
It is, perhaps, understandable that the evangelists talk to each other. They are the online cool kids after all, and they are also the first people to inhabit the new services. This is also necessary. For the evangelists and consultants to really do their work they have to understand and care about what they are selling. Authentic enthusiasm is what is needed and to build this they need to be all over the new service, enjoying it as the mainstream user will a year or so down the line.
However Jennifer is right. Many of the tech elite are intimidating. I recall going to my one and only blog meet-up in London back in ‘05/’06 and there were 2 groups - the table in the corner held the organisers and their friends. The rest of us were kind of clustered around the bar. It was a good night, but the earnestly cool new media kids in the corner were unapproachable and distant. Hardly conducive to building enthusiasm, and certainly not welcoming. Was this deliberate? I very much doubt it, these gys were just hanging with their friends, unaware of the impression that was giving. However if your job is to bring people into the world you are selling then you have to help them. Extend a hand and show them exactly why the new service fits their lifestyle. Why it is fun and exciting and not just something for the geeks or the hipsters.
