Social Media’s Antisocial Behavior

Holy Twitter

June 5, 2012 By Terry Heaton Leave a Comment

A New York Times article on religious broadcasters and Twitter misses a fairly big point while offering insight to “Twitter Dynamos, Offering Word of God’s Love.”

Joyce Meyer, Max Lucado and Andy Stanley were not well known inside Twitter’s offices. But they had all built loyal ranks of followers well beyond their social networks — they were evangelical Christian leaders whose inspirational messages of God’s love perform about 30 times as well as Twitter messages from pop culture powerhouses like Lady Gaga.

This may be a bulletin to the Times and the good folks at Twitter, but it shouldn’t be a surprise whatsoever to anybody.

Evangelical Christians have long been at the forefront of any technological means that furthers their evangelical ends. Two of the twelve transponders on RCA’s first (Satcom 1) satellite were owned by religious groups, including Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. The Christian Church is the penultimate one-to-many institution, whether it’s inside the worship hall or via the airwaves. Nobody “gets” mass marketing or the art of fundraising like these people do; it is their stock and trade.

This is the church.
This is the steeple,
Open it up
And see all the people.

When hologram transmission becomes a reality later this century, mark my words: Evangelicals will be right there.

The point that I want to note is that people who view Twitter or any form of social media completely as one-to-many miss its “social” reality. This is true of media, celebrities, politicos, athletes or, yes, the Evangelicals. It’s one thing to use it as a form of mass media, but the smart innovators know that who you follow is more important than who follows you. This is not, nor will it ever be what Evangelicals want or use Twitter for. It’s all about promoting their own ministries through blessing their followers with inspirational quotes.

“Pastors tell me, Twitter is just made for the Bible,” (Twitter’s) Ms. Díaz-Ortiz said.

It’s close. On average, verses in the King James Version are about 100 characters long, leaving room to slip in a #bible hashtag and still come in under the 140-character limit.

And proverbs are powerful draws on Twitter.

Religion, like every other institution in the West is being challenged by young (and older) people with a much more postmodern view than their parents’ generation practiced. Top-down or one-to-many fits Modernist thinking, which includes a God-to-us-through-the-church perspective. Postmodernists prefer the concept of God among us, the Holy Spirit. The term “postmodern” is often substituted as “postChristian,” and this is a part of the same cultural disruption that everyone is facing.

I’ve always been a fan of the question “What would Jesus do?” because the answers are rarely what the coiners of the phrase intended. Since Jesus’ ministry was in and among the suffering, the poor and the afflicted, one must ask whether the ministry of “blessing the saints” is what Twitter could or even should represent to Christians. Perhaps one day the New York Times will write about a new ministry that monitors Twitter for signs of distress or suffering among the people of the world — and then rushes in to provide relief.

No, wait. Along with a giant, corporate groan among all these folks, I also hear faint sounds of, cough-cough, well Terry, cough-cough, that’s just not my ministry.

Filed Under: Culture, Disruptions, Postmodernism, Social Media, Twitter

This bubble stuff feels eerily familiar

April 30, 2012 By Terry Heaton 1 Comment

I was sitting in a conference room at the hi-tech incubator BizTech in Huntsville, Alabama with hopeful eyes fixed on the TV. It was January 10, 2000, and on the screen was the press conference during which the AOL and Time Warner merger was announced. I remember it like it was yesterday. Here I was trying to raise a million dollars for my own start-up, ANSIR (A New Style In Relating), and these guys were talking about a merger valued at $350 billion. AOL itself was valued for the deal at $165 billion. It was then and remains the biggest merger in business history.

I remember the excitement and the wonder of it all. Little did we know it was all just part of a big market bubble, and I remember especially this provocative line from Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin, a very sane, important and knowledgeable businessman at the time.

“I accept that something profound is happening in the Internet space; I believe that. The new media stock-market valuations are real — not in every case, of course. But what AOL has done is get first position in this new world. Its valuation is real, and I am attesting to that.”

Levin’s attestation would later be proven wrong, and he would be forced out as the merged company shriveled under the blended brand. It is now a case study in why what Levin said is a bad reason to take such an enormous gamble. Walt Disney built his empire with what he called “the plausible impossible,” and I suspect that was at work here. Logic is great, the old saying goes, unless you begin at the wrong spot. Believing the valuations was what grew the bubble. Turns out that if it seems unbelievable, it probably is.

I’m recalling this today, because I’m feeling the same vibe as Facebook is about to approach Wall Street with an IPO valued at $100 billion, a valuation that’s roughly 100 times its earnings from last year. It sounds and feels oh so familiar.

So are we in a bubble? The always astute Mathew Ingram has a nice overview of the subject today that’s worth a read, although his conclusion tends to support those who feel we’re not.

So while some venture funds may be doing their best to inflate expectations and cash in on high valuations, that appears to be causing problems only at the small end of the startup pool — for now. Without any obvious signs of a public-stock mania that puts individual shareholders at risk, it’s hard to argue that we are in a 1990s-style bubble yet (although some critics fear that the new crowdfunding bill could accelerate the problem). Whether Facebook’s IPO triggers a broader inflationary atmosphere remains to be seen.

Dave Winer says we’re “definitely” in a bubble, and I believe him. I mean, look at the evidence. AOL’s model was based on a pre-Internet business model, one we know of as mass marketing. They could make tons of money, if they could just keep people inside their walls, a “walled garden” as many would later call it. When the fickle public disagreed, a new garden called MySpace sprang up. This social network could make money the same way, and for awhile, things looked good, until a young guy named Mark Zuckerberg took over with his Facebook. So here we are again, and the whole thing still hinges on the same value proposition, that Facebook can somehow keep those people within its walls. Old school media value, after all, is about controlling the infrastructure for content, whether its made by the New York Times, Zuckerberg or Joe Blow.

And for the last few weeks, we’ve been treated to justification and rationalization that Facebook is somehow different than its predecessors. The company paid a billion dollars for Instagram in what most (myself included) feel was an overpriced grab at real estate Facebook needed to be inside its wall instead of outside. But is Facebook substantially different that previous walled-garden approaches? Get real. It may have a few more bells and whistles and connections, but the core competency is the same. Web research and consulting firm BIA/Kelsey is hosting a webinar on the topic this week to probe this specific issue:

…questions continue to swirl about its (Facebook’s) actual worth and whether any company can justify becoming public at such a high value. The prevailing question: How will Facebook support this valuation…?

I don’t believe it can be justified, although lots of smart people who’ve doubtless done their homework will try to explain that it is entirely justified.

I’m sure Mr. Levin had done his homework when he made that infamous statement back in January of 2000, but at some point in a gamble, you must consider that you could be wrong, partly or as the AOL Time Warner deal proved, utterly and completely. So in addition to homework, what say we also consider common sense. We could also ask a few teenagers.

“Everybody’s switching to Twitter,” a 17-year old family member told me. She used to be a pretty regular user of social media, but her activity has been shrinking for the last year or so. She doesn’t need Facebook anymore, and besides, “it’s pretty lame.” Think about that for a minute. It’s AOL all over again.

“To everything is a season,” we’re taught. I wouldn’t bet on Facebook’s future if you gave me the money with which to do it.

Filed Under: Culture, Economy, Facebook, MySpace, Social Media, Technology

Goodbye, Google; hello, Google+

July 6, 2011 By Terry Heaton 3 Comments

By now, you most likely have heard about Google+, Google’s new entry into the social networking phenomenon. I was fortunate enough to get an early invite, so I’ve spent the last week playing in the application. I think this has the potential to reshape Google’s entire business in ways that will be very, very hard to ignore. It all begins with the name, Google+. It’s not merely a new application, it represents a complete shift in the company’s strategic thrust. It’s THAT significant.

Check your company’s analytics, and you’ll see that, in 99% of cases, Google is the top referrer of eyeballs to your website. Why is that? It’s all about search, and Google owns search. Everything they do is important in that regard, and while most people are comparing G+ to Facebook and/or Twitter, I think that misses the point. Google+ is far more than “just another social network” or a “Facebook killer” (yeah, right), because it incorporates all that is Google.

My search results, for example, are now personalized and presented within the plus framework. I like this very much, because the first organic result often reveals the website most recently visited by me that addresses the search query. This is incredibly useful for those “I read that somewhere” searches.

The two things I find most intriguing for news are both found in the service’s Android app (an iPhone app is coming, but I don’t know if it contains the same abilities as the Android app). One, I can set it so that any picture I take is immediately and automatically uploaded to a folder on my G+ account. This type of application — where a picture I take on earth is automatically distributed to the cloud — is game-changing for the real-time news industry, and I fully expect to see similar applications applied more broadly to the news business. However, G+ is first out-of-the-box with this, and it is powerful. Next will be video. You can count on it. Try to imagine online news with this feature. It will be amazing.

The second Android function involves the information stream of Google+ itself. Since every one you “follow,” gets placed immediately into a circle of your choice (friends, family, coworkers, etc.), you can choose what stream to follow at any given time. It’s a great way to use connectivity, and the infrastructure is all drag-and-drop simple. You can deliver posts to any group as well, including making them “public,” where anybody can see them. This is significant, for it mimics Twitter in that sense.

The mobile app allows you to make your location known to Google (it’s off by default) and then read a stream of posts “nearby.” This has staggering implications for spot news coverage, where geolocation is important. Want witnesses, photos, video? No hashtags necessary, if you’re on location, for if everybody’s using G+ (a big question), a simple swipe of your Android phone gives you everything automatically. This is another innovation that will expand beyond Google, but the reality is that it is Google that brought this to the table.

Jeff Jarvis admitted yesterday that his school, City University of New York (CUNY), is going to have to begin teaching Google+ in its journalism program, and I certainly agree. His views of G+ include many thoughts about its application for news, and I recommend reading this piece.

But the most important thing to note is that Google has the clout to actually force businesses (of their own free will) into its “plus” cavern, and that is a big game-changer. Firstly, Google has announced that Google+ for business is coming, and I’m sure it will incorporate everything of Google’s already stout toolkit for businesses. Secondly, everybody will need a Google profile in order to be fairly “seen” by the search engine. What business would turn that down? It’s free.

And if businesses will use it, we need to know everything about it.

Social media consultant Jay Baer wrote this week that Google’s history is entirely built around the ranking of “Pages” on the Web. It developed PageRank to provide searchers with the best possible results. However, personal publishing via social media has changed everything.

Philosophically, Pages with more and better other Pages linking to them must be better content, and each link counts as a “vote” for that Page. But when the dominant form of expression became something smaller than a Page, and our votes of content confidence became expressed by social sharing and other behaviors that differ from “I’m going to link to this website from my website,” Google found itself trying to play web page ranking poker with less than a full deck of cards. It was trying to do a very difficult job with incomplete information.

This explains, in part, why Google had to make a move like this. The world of information is simply changing, but Baer adds that it is the integration of G+ content into its search algorithms that makes it so potent, especially for businesses. Remember, he points out, Google owns the top two search engines in the world. YouTube is number two.

Google has inserted so many tentacles into so many crevices of our digital lives, that they can compel us to use Plus via integrations and reminders in (just a starter list):

Gmail

YouTube

Picasa

Maps

Android (the app for Plus is fantastic)

Chrome

Analytics

Blogger

…Here’s the scenario I see unfolding before the end of 2011, and possibly before Labor Day. Google opens up business pages on Plus to Adwords customers. Any clicks and +1 (Google’s version of Facebook “like”) your business content receives on Plus has a direct impact on your organic search engine rankings, while your Facebook activity continues to have no impact.

Go read Jay’s article, for it’s really quite good. Then, if you don’t already have one, create a Gmail account, which will lead to a Google profile, which will lead to Plus. The company has announced that the service will be completely open to everyone by July 29^th.

Most observers are writing about how Google+ will impact the news industry, and that’s important. I think its greater shock to the media ecosystem, however, is its potential to once again influence advertising, and that this is what should interest us most. It’s true that the two have always gone together for media companies, but they are increasingly disconnecting, and we must pay very close attention to what’s happening in this space.

This is why my best advice for any media company is still this: don’t leave to geeks what rightly belongs to upper management, especially sales. There’s still far too much ignorance about all of this stuff at the upper management level. Google+ will be a critical element in local advertising downstream. Will people shift from Facebook or Twitter? That’s the wrong question, for in the end, it really doesn’t matter.

Like a great many other things, it’s all about the money. Money doesn’t require mass anymore, and nobody knows that better than Google.

Filed Under: Culture, Disruptions, Google, Social Media, Technology

LeBron James: A media company with a PR problem

June 15, 2011 By Terry Heaton Leave a Comment

We’re all media companies these days. Technology has given us that. It’s the “Great Horizontal” as tagged by Jay Rosen, that hyperconnected universe of individual publishers and broadcasters.

Famous people have taken notice and find that being their own media company has its benefits. Remember how Ashton Kutcher became the first celebrity to hit a million followers on Twitter in 2009? That’s a drop in the bucket these days. Ashton found that he could “talk” directly to his fans with Twitter, and he’s been very smart about it. Athletes, politicians, singers, musicians, artists, poets, authors, anybody can take advantage of the tools of personal media to get their word out, for free.

But as traditional media companies can tell you, there are certain responsibilities that come with the power to address a BIG group of people, because intentions don’t communicate, only behavior. This is especially true when people can react to that behavior and share it with everybody else. It may be easier to protect the stages of big media, but that begins with a very basic understanding about that stage’s responsibilities within the bigger picture in order to keep people coming to watch your production. Being a media company is a responsibility before it is a mouthpiece, because the audience is the one who makes the decision whether to accept the message or not.

This is why most media companies specialize in public relations. Hell, it’s the flip side of the coin of journalism, and we all know that’s true. We’re all selling something, be it a story, a point-of-view or — and perhaps especially — ourselves.

As athletes go, LeBron James is a pretty strong brand, but he has a serious personal image problem. He’s got natural gifts that we’ve never seen before in one package, and that has been hyped since he was a boy. Unfortunately, his image doesn’t match his behavior, and rather than work on that, James continues to make one foolish PR mistake after another.

There was promising championships for Cleveland and not delivering. There was “the decision,” which was so wrong in so many ways. There was the big stage presentation where he was “introduced” in Miami, sort of a celebration before the victory. There was the anticipointment generated by promising “not five, not six, not seven…” championships. What a boneheaded thing to say. He’s referred to himself as “King James” in text messages. Now there’s the haughty and condescending snub of basketball fans who had the temerity to criticize him during the NBA Finals.

“All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that.”

He’s about to enter unchartered waters in terms of forever screwing up the gifts he’s been given, and no course correction is going to help him. That’s because Life is the author of character, and in personal media — when it’s just you — you can’t turn to a “team LeBron member” for advice before opening your mouth. It’s either in you to say the right thing, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, don’t worry. Life will teach you, but only if you have a teachable spirit. You can’t play a role, read a book or take a course. Humility is its doorway, and that’s buried deep within the human soul.

As a huge fan of the Dallas Mavericks, I’ve watched as the national sports media has had a field day with James’ performance, while the superior basketball team picked apart the individual talents of the Miami Heat. Somebody wrote that James can’t experience failure, because he doesn’t know what it is. That’s an apt description of a character defect so enormous that it spills out into his efforts to control the message.

I teach my students that it’s all about your personal brand, and that to behave ethically these days demands a vast understanding of the big picture and their role within it. That includes responsibilities. There is no set of rules to memorize, absent, perhaps, the Golden Rule, that perfectly fits every situation, but we must always remember that everybody’s watching.

There are both benefits and opportunities in the Great Horizontal, but perhaps the most important thing is this: you simply cannot hide your real self, if you wish to play within this realm. There are no failures of talent, only character. My advice to LeBron is to work on that; the rest will happen automatically.

Thanks to Twitter follower TJ (@TJ2016) for the inspiration for this piece.

Filed Under: Personal Media, Social Media, Sports, The Great Horizontal

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