Is Social Media Really Social?

by Matt Ridings on Jul 21, 2010 Follow @techguerilla

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It’s a simple question, what makes something “social”? We group a lot of things into the social bucket these days. Yelp, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, FourSquare, you name it.

Yet the only thing these services truly have in common is the act of sharing. Sharing of status, sharing of content, sharing of location, sharing of opinion, etc. which begs the question “is sharing the same thing as being social”?

If I am walking past a homeless person and I share some of my lunch with them, am I being social? Altruistic certainly, unselfish definitely, but social? Does there not have to be socialization to be social? Does socialization not require interaction or dialog amongst participants in the shared experience?

Is Sharing Information Social?

If I walk to the nearest telephone pole and put up a flyer about a favorite band that will be coming to town am I being social? If I create a video about how much I love that band and have it play on the local cable station was I being social? I’m certainly sharing information and opinions but doubtful anyone would define those activities as “social”.

Are Comments Social?

Blogging (the act of content creation and publishing) is a broadcast of information, it is not a dialog. So is the fact that you allow comments on a blog what makes it social? While perhaps not exactly a dialog it is at least the ‘opportunity’ for asynchronous discussion. Does that also then mean that anything that allows comments/ratings is then social? Newspaper websites, Amazon, etc.

Is Community Social?

How about “community” then? It seems to me this is a much better word than social for the majority of the things we lump under the social media umbrella. Is it not the act of producing *something* which then contributes to the creation and growth of a persistent community of people? Twitter on the other hand certainly facilitates synchronous dialogs and interaction in a public forum, to a lesser degree Facebook does as well (Facebook is a closed forum for the most part).

Semantics?

You might ask, why bother trying to define it at all, or worry about whether something ‘technically’ meets the criteria of social? Great question. The truth is I could care less what we call it, or whether it meets some strict definition. What I *do* care about however, is ensuring that there is clarity when it comes to businesses trying to engage with what we are calling “social media”. We make these blanket statements and blanket articles about “social media”.

We write columns and give speeches on what it all means, how it works, how to do it, etc. Yet we are continuing to expand the size of the umbrella to include more and more companies, and many of the things we are adding now don’t actually fit what was written in those articles originally. Do you really think that following any of those articles would provide you the best practices for dealing with YouTube? How about Yelp? Foursquare?

In other words, my fear is that we are generalizing items into groups that should remain specific entities. In our attempt to make something be a part of the “hot” trend right now we are blurring the landscape to the point in which it is unrecognizable. It makes it difficult to explain, it makes it difficult to comprehend, and in turn makes it less likely for a company to engage.

Think of it this way, your dad just asked you to explain “social media” to him…does your explanation actually fit what these other companies do or are we trying to fit square pegs into round holes?

Don’t worry, it’s not your fault, this has been going on since the first attempts to define social media. Even the Wikipedia entry is completely schizophrenic on the topic. In one sentence it’s about user generated content, in another it’s about media to facilitate social interaction. Unfortunately one does not require the other so the definition does us no good.

Do I think we’ll all change our terminology? No.

What I do hope however is that we will all start referring to the specific mediums we are addressing vs. the generic moniker of “social media” unless our intention is to confuse others rather than provide clarity.

Post Author

Matt Ridings

As CEO for MSR Consulting, Matt has the privilege to consult for a variety of progressive organizations ranging from name brand enterprises to nascent startups while leveraging his background as a creative problem solver and strategic thinker. Matt... View Full Profile →

http://twitter.com/AshlynBrewer Ashlyn Montgomery

Interesting thoughts. I especially agree with the idea of getting more specific with the terminology instead of being generic – each medium has such different rules.

On the question “Is sharing information social?” — I think the point of social media tools is that they have the ability to be social that most traditional tools lack. For example – making a video of how much you love a band and having it run on a local cable station – you're right, that's not very “social.” BUT – if you post that video on YouTube, and someone posts a response video about how much they love the band, or how much they hate it – and then the comment section turns into a discussion or debate – that video is now definitively social.
Youtube, Twitter and Facebook – they're all tools. Social is a mindset. If you use those tools with a “broadcast” mindset – generic postings of events – it's hardly social. But the aptitude is there.
Summer Joy

Hmmm…lots to think about. Webster defines Social as an adjective first. Definition #3 was interesting:

3 : of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society <social institutions>

After reading that, I read the post again. Are all those things “social?” yeah, i think so. Is it all Semantics. totally.
http://www.techguerilla.com/ Matt Ridings – Techguerilla

Definitely all semantics, which is the underlying basis for the post. The problem (as I see it) is that we produce information, sales pitches, speeches, etc. about “social media” with the primary focus on the various “media” vs. the “social”. Engaging as a company in a “social” way should be a media agnostic strategy. You determine why you're going to do it, how you expect it to benefit you, how you will support your brands voice in the process, etc. At that point the world is your oyster as far as tools/mediums are concerned. Perhaps a “community” orientation is the way you want to go and you utilize forums, recognition programs, etc. Perhaps it's a desire to engage in a way that creates/supports brand recognition and you want to post videos a la Old Spice. Perhaps it's a loyalty program and you want to engage via good old email. Any and all of these things can be “social”, it was the objective that was important, the tools are secondary means of “achieving social” in my opinion.

Thx for the feedback, always appreciated.
http://twitter.com/justinkistner justinkistner

At one point a few of us tried to clean up the social media article on Wikipedia, but it was difficult because the term itself is flawed. At best, it is a commonly used term to describe a related set of trends in platforms, interaction models, and features that leverage the web to facilitate many to many interaction.

I think we'll develop a better understanding of social media after we have more context from transitioning into the next wave of innovation on the web.

The market's interest is mostly focused on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and FourSquare. I've been starting to say platform marketing as a way to refer to the social media channels.
http://www.techguerilla.com/ Matt Ridings – Techguerilla

I don't envy anyone trying to put a formal definition together for the hodgepodge we currently call Social Media. Do you try and be inclusive of existing standards therefore are stuck with conflicting definitions, or do you try and apply logical traits and therefore exclude much of what we currently consider “under the social umbrella”.
http://jasonkeath.com jakrose

My personal definition of social media when talking with clients and training groups has always been “interacting with other people online as opposed to static information and media”. So yes, the comments and ratings are what make Youtube and Blogs and Yelp social. And sometimes simple distribution of the media is what makes it social, the “sharing” piece. So if you reccomend a blog post or reccomend a Youtube video, it is social. And the simple act of publishing, as long as there are other people that are there to consume the information or media, is also social.

At the end of the day it is indeed semantics, but I choose this definition because I think some of these smaller social acts, sharing media or rating restaurants, get overlooked as social media often but they can be big drivers of business.

Thanks for the conversation Matt.
http://www.techguerilla.com/ Matt Ridings – Techguerilla

I particularly like the statement that “Social is a mindset”, it doesn't help in clarifying social media to a business but it certainly captures the spirit of how it should be approached.
http://www.techguerilla.com/ Matt Ridings – Techguerilla

As we've established, it's definitely semantics. The only reason I might disagree with the notion of “publish and consume” being social is that it requires some very subtle explanations to occur in regards to differentiating that from all other 'broadcast' applications. Whereas you and I might understand it to mean that once a relationship has been established and a certain amount of effort put forth to establish it the sharing of information takes on another layer of meaning. For example, if I know you have certain traits, likes/dislikes, personality commonalities, etc. then when you share something I can apply that knowledge to gain a deeper understanding of whether or not it is something I would relate to, how worthwhile it might be, etc…basically the relationship becomes a pre-filter for the sharing process. But it was the relationship creation & maintenance that was social, not the sharing. A business without that context however might see it as a valid argument for being able to broadcast information without the relationship component. In some cases they might be right (a coupon twitter account that is only followed so that ppl can consume the coupon, they don't want a 'relationship') but it wouldn't be “social” to me.
http://michaeldaehn.com/ michaeldaehn

I used to say I was a Social Media guy. Then everyone said they were social media experts so I decided to not use that term anymore. The problem is that the general public has heard the term and is curious so you kind of have to use it in conversations. It's tough to get away from.

I had the same problem discussing marketing in the past. To most people marketing is a TV ad or a brochure. Those are marketing tools, but effective marketing has a message to communicate and chooses the right channels to get it across. People wanted a website but could not tell me their competitive advantage.

I think there are degrees of socialness or at least depth of relationships. I question how social you can be using any of these tools. Most people only have a few close relationships in their lives. That's why we have 300 Facebook friends but really only talk to a few of them.

These platforms allow us to open up channels of two way communication that did not exist in the past. While we may be able to converse with scores of people, the depth of most of those relationships is shallow.

It is possible to have meaningful conversations, but difficult to pull off on such a massive scale. How deep are your relationships when you have thousands of followers on Twitter?
http://twitter.com/personified Shauna

“Social is a mindset” …
http://twitter.com/personified Shauna

I enjoy the term 'new media': media, or mediums that we're using, and they're new (if you want to get technical here). :) New media places a high reliance on being social, but that as we know it is only a piece of the puzzle. So much of what we do is far from social. 'Social' is what transpires as a result of our efforts to be more connected, to build communities and to develop presence and awareness.

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