There’s No Such Thing as Social Media

A piece I’ve written for the Ixxus blog on why it’s unwise for organisations to ignore social media.

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It’s time we all accepted the inevitable: social media isn’t going to go away.  It is not a fad.  It is here to stay.  And – bear with me here, whilst I go out on a limb – it doesn’t really, actually, exist.  At least, not in any truly meaningful way.

Almost half of the internet-using population interact with social networking sites on a daily basis.  The biggest and most pervasive of these is Facebook, which has over 500 million active users and more than 30 billion pieces of content shared each month.  To put that into some context: if Facebook were a country, it would be the third-highest populated in the world (the first and second are China and India, with America trailing far behind at a measly 311 million).  On top of that, some 10 million users create 1500 new tweets every second, and the list of other social networking sites grows ever longer by the day; just last week, Google+ joined the ranks of Myspace, LinkedIn, Diaspora, Quora, Tumblr, Formspring, and all the innumerable others jostling for position.

Quite understandably, this new influx of user-generated content – a tidal onslaught of opinion, debate, humour and plain whimsy – has many organisations running scared; particularly those that have always relied on the more traditional forms of engagement and promotion.  And the picture is only going to get more complex: the rate of change and growth on the internet is getting faster all the time, with myriad new platforms and trends to keep an eye on if you want to stay ahead of the game.  As self-styled internet guru Clay Shirky puts it,  “The old models are breaking before the new ones can be put into place”.

Personally, I believe that the answer for organisations and businesses lies in embracing openness and the online; in particular the willingness to engage with and participate in discussion online rather than operating above it or in isolation.  Dipping your toes into the fast-flowing waters of social media can seem daunting in the extreme, and with good reason; but there’s one very important thing to bear in mind at all times – and it’s this:

Even if you think you don’t want your company to get involved with social media, it probably already is.

Chances are that someone, somewhere out there, is talking about you right now.  It’s up to you whether or not you decide to get involved in that conversation, but if you choose not to then don’t be surprised if you suddenly discover that people have been talking about you behind your back – and don’t be surprised if, lacking that valuable input from you, they’ve got the wrong impression about your company or services.

The digital generation is one that is mistrustful of authority and highly sensitive to corporate interest (Don Tapslock, Growing Up Digital), so new approaches must be found: it’s no longer enough to simply throw tired old imperatives and calls-to-action into people’s faces, no matter how persuasive your type-face might be.  Dictating to the digital generation what they should like, what they should buy, and who they should aspire to be may not go down as well as expected: online, anything too corporate, too staid or too sales-y is likely to be derided, torn apart or (perhaps worse) completely ignored.

If this all sounds like too much gloom and doom from a marketing perspective, there is an upside; and I’d argue that it’s an upside that leads to far better places that traditional models of marketing and promotion.  At a business level, social media gives companies the opportunity to communicate, engage and build relationships with customers and consumers like never before.  For perhaps the first time, we as businesses have a chance to be more than simple faceless entities and develop far more personal and human relationships online – whether that’s with customers, clients or consumers; whether that’s with potential partners, the public or the press.  Of course, creating long-lasting relationships is great news for brand loyalty – but it’s also great news for all of us, as living and breathing human beings.

And this is what I mean when I say that ‘social media’ doesn’t really exist, in the true sense of the word.  Wherever there are people, be it online or offline, they will always find ways to engage and interact and enthuse about the things that interest them.  The web has always been about communicating and socialising, ever since the early days of IRC and Usenet newsgroups – as time goes by, we simply find better and faster and more multimedia ways of doing it.  At the end of the day, it’s just people doing what they’ve always done.

‘Social media’ is just people, talking to other people – about the things that they like, and the things that they don’t like.  We ignore it at our peril.

Culture Vulture

A couple of my pieces have gone up today on Culture Vulture!

See here for my interview with transvestite Susan Platt on her views about cultural diversity in Leeds and here for my music round-up for October.

The Walls and Snickelways of York

I’ve never written this type of content before really and I can’t say I’m thoroughly comfortable with it (YET) but thought I’d give something a crack for Directory of York Blog since they were seeking submissions. You can see the post here.
The Walls and Snickelways of York

Walk towards York city centre from the railway station, and you are immediately hit by the sight of York Minster, perching above the city and sailing majestically upwards, clad only in its occasional scaffolding and the clouds. But once inside the streets themselves you may find a more secret York, nestled in between the bustling streets and shopfronts: the walls and snickelways of York.
‘Snickelways’ is the name for the tiny, threading footpaths and alleyways that weave through the larger streets and throughout the city. These passages are found in towns all over the country, and go by many names; ‘snickelway’ is a term coined by local author Mark Jones and is a cross between the regional variants of ‘snicket’, ‘ginnel’ and ‘alleyway’. The reason the snickelways are so appealing to both young and old lies in their air of mystery; they are almost always dim, shadowy places with intriguing names such as ‘Mad Alice Lane’ and ‘Hole-in-the-Wall’. The darkness in them looks as though it could swallow you up; as though you could go down the rabbit hole like Alice did and find yourself in a whole other world. There is an element of danger to these dark holes: Where do they go? What’s on the other side? Will I come back? Of course you always do come back, but these ‘spaces in-between’ have a netherworldly, almost liminal feel; you are not quite in one place and yet not quite in another.
As a child, a favourite snickelway of mine was always the one found just off Swinegate, where many of the walls and gates along it were aptly decorated with pictures and statues of pigs. Now, most of the pigs are gone, but the snickelways remain, as curious as ever, interlacing their way through York’s higgledy-piggledy streets. Local author Mark Jones’ book, A Walk Around the Snickelways of York, takes in 50 of York’s hidden passageways and is now seen as the definitive route for any visitors wanting to get a real feel for the secret places and backstreets of York. The book is available to buy in many of York’s shops, or online from the Visit York e-shop or amazon.co.uk.
If you have loftier ideas than these mysterious paths, you may wish to turn your view skywards and venture up onto the walls of York instead. The walls were built originally in Roman times as a defense against potential threats, although little of the original stonework remains. Nowadays, the city is not completely encircled (there are no longer many threats from the outside world needing defending against!), and the walls run between four main ‘bars’ (or gates) and a couple of smaller bars (just to confuse matters, the streets are called ‘gates’, such as Mickelgate). The main bars interspersing the walls are known as Bootham Bar, Monk Bar, Walmgate Bar and Mickelgate Bar. The names of these gates and bars hark back to York’s Old Norse heritage, when it was once known as Jorvik, the country’s main Viking settlement.
Open from 8am until dusk, the walls offer a unique vantage point across York, as well as being a beautiful and historically important artifact in themselves. The walls are punctuated by information plaques to teach you about them, as well as an interactive multimedia station in Bootham Bar for the more technologically-minded of us. You can walk the walls of York as countless thousands have done throughout history, treading in the footsteps of those who long ago fought for the city. They are open every day of the year apart from Christmas day, weather allowing; in cases of ice or heavy snow, the walls are closed for obvious safety reasons.

Call for submissions

My very lovely and frazzly-haired friend Lizzie is seeking submissions for a new ‘zine on friendship that she’s going to be putting out in London later in the year (hence my effort here). Here are the deets for anyone interested.\par

Friends.

Instant friends, internet friends, soulmates, gangs of mates, house mates, holiday friends, friends who are more like family, family who are more like friends, friends who are lovers, friends who were lovers, old friends, new friends, school friends, work friends, ex-friends
This is a call out for submissions for a new collaborative zine (as yet unnamed- ideas welcomed) about friendship. I want to celebrate the important role that friendship plays in all our lives and provide a space where people can acknowledge it in all its glory and gritty reality - break-ups of friendships, the strength that friends bring, the amazing wetting-your-pants laughing fun, the collaborations and creativity that can emerge from friendship etc etc etc

Submissions can be in whatever form you want;  written/visual, the more variety the better! Anonymity if you like too.

Email submissions to: friendzine@gmail.com
Post submissions to: Friendzine, 19 Stockton House, Ellsworth Street, E2 0AY
Deadline: 15th October 2009

On friendship: A love letter.

I’ve sworn off best friends.

That sounds dreadful, I know. Or at least, dreadfully capitalist, as though they were just commodities you can give up for lent, like booze or chocolate. In some ways, they are actually quite similar, I suppose; you get great enjoyment from them, they make life infinitely more bearable and help you get through the bad times, and too much of them can be very bad for you.

My last two best friends have both, whether by coincidence or design, ripped the hinges off my bathroom door. And the door off the door frame. I can\rquote t help but see this as some obvious, cliched sort of metaphor for the trails of havoc and destruction they left sprawled through my life. The first time this sort of thing happens, you simply accept it as a moderately upsetting event. So you fix the door and you get on with things. But when the second set of hinges go, you start to question it. Is it my fault? Is it that I am drawn to unstable people? Or could it be that I, as a person, naturally evoke fits of passionate rage and destruction in others? And most importantly, ought I go for the hat trick, or might that be the hinge that breaks the camel’s back?

I suspect it is the former – that I am drawn to unstable people – and since I am more than a little wobbly myself, this evidently cannot lead to Things That Are Good. It’s like pushing someone with no sense of balance onto a broken up, wind-tossed rope bridge across a bottomless gorge and then trying to help them out by chucking someone equally inept and unsteady onto said bridge in order to stabilise things. The tumble into the ravine is inevitable; the darkness down there impenetrable. It’s neither’s fault. They just can’t hold on.

Which is not to say I regret either of them coming into my life; both are still capable of inciting in me the same fierce sentiment and rash pride as they ever did. Both invoke the same heady cocktail of joy, adoration, stale anger and loss (if I were a perfumist, I’d name it Reminiscence). Both are the full stops that punctuate my life before I begin the next sentence anew. Indeed (in the pilfered words of indie/hip hop band Why?) theirs is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere. But the toiling paths of bestfriendship are littered with pitfalls, insecurities and petty jealousies. You understand each other like no one else does. You know each other like the back of your hand – or any other part of yourself, for that matter. And like any other part of yourself is prey to episodes of self-destruction and self-loathing, so too are they, this time turned terribly outwards into the vessel you now see as an extension of yourself. You ask too much. You criticise too harshly. You see too clearly.

The results are vastly damaging to both parties, not to mention the peer groups surrounding them as a whole. So instead, from now on I am cultivating acquaintances, drinking partners, mates; anything but a best friend. My own nourishing little garden of fruits and vegetables to replace the contaminants of chocolate and wine. I go out with colleagues. I meet up with groups of people, instead, and flit in between without settling. I join internet forums. I converse. I coexist. I feel adrift – lest we forget, I am stuck on a metaphorical bridge above a ravine – but I feel stable, at the moment. I feel secure. This is a good thing.

I am determined this time. Alone, I can concentrate on just looking after myself. Alone, I can just about manage to keep my balance in this precarious world. Stable is how I will absolutely and resolutely stay, safe and protected and unharmed, all the way up until the next beautiful and inevitable disaster sets foot on my bridge and promises to share the abyss with me.

And I will take their hand.