Two years ago, I found myself taking a crash course on influence, advocacy and online behavior. We had taken in a family in need and leveraged the web, specifically Twitter, Paypal, a blog, and most importantly, our real social network, to raise nearly seventeen thousand dollars for the family.The velocity of the effort — nearly twelve thousand dollars was raised in less than twenty four hours — was amazing and made me realize that the old model of a few people controlling information and distribution is giving way to a new, highly distributed, individually empowering system that leverages social media. In this case, I had enough influence and trust with my core network to create a ripple effect that spread to other networks, which were transformed into advocates for the family. This is the new, emerging model of influence.
While it seems that many are tinkering around with measuring the ROI for their investments in social media, some have turned their attention to the waste associated with search. Naturally, just as the former eludes most of us, the latter is hard to avoid.
No matter. This slide deck redeems our favorite technosocial architect who not only sees the irony in not wanting to be labeled, but may well not give a tinker’s cuss if we do.
I remember watching Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us and feeling at the end that something profound had just happened. That was in 2007, not that long ago really. Around the same time I watched Shift Happens and was left similarly inspired by the rate at which my world was changing.
An interesting post on Social Media Explorer‘Deconstructing Second Life’ questions the value of Second Life based on a review of the virtual world’s demographics:
The demographics show 8.5 million users, but only 561,000 of those are “active.” While nearly 40 percent of the active ones are age 25-34, only 26 percent are from the United States (with Brazil a distant second a 8.5). The numbers show 57 percent of active users are male…
The sweet irony of unrequited love for my efforts to understand the recursive nature of blogs has not reached the point at which I realize my efforts might be better spent researching something else.
One of the benefits of chasing your tail is that in the process there is so much interesting stuff to discover and think about, all wonderful distractions from the bitter irony that if I am ever successful in my quest I’ll finish up kissing my ass good-bye.
And so I discovered Dr. Richard Barbrook who recently published what looks like a smashing book, Imaginary Futures. I am setting this aside to study more closely because the thesis is fascinating and there is something about the overall feel of the thing that resonates with me, something retro maybe?
