I posted a
blog entry on January 18th about the challenge of social media marketing. In it, I claimed that social networks were uncharted territory for advertisers and merchants, because the medium had not been conceived for the purpose of generating revenue.
Behold the naïveté of youth!
My father, an extremely important insurance executive, retired Air Force colonel and inventor of the internet (that’s right, Al Gore), read my blog, and politely pointed out that there had, in fact, been such “uncharted territory” before. Social forums neither motivated by capitalism nor precipitated by commerce HAD previously existed…less than fifty years ago.
Two words:
Woodstock.
It was a head-slapping moment. Of course! The music festivals of the sixties and early seventies were cheap, non-commercialized gatherings of like-minded folks, created for the purpose of sharing music, art, ideas and experiences.
Sound familiar? Social networks are just like having super-sized, virtual, slightly-more-sober music festivals at work! Only YOU get to choose everyone who’s there. Love IN, my brothers and sisters!
And what was the fate of the music festival? Did it remain in its first incarnation as an affordable exchange of information and entertainment?
Of course not! It was bludgeoned to death by advertisers and merchants. From its carcass rose a revenue-generating machine, grimly rolling from town to town, swathed in logos, glutted with markups, bearing a greater resemblance to an overpriced swap meet than to a celebration of art.
Only the wealthy and spoiled can afford to attend the so-called festivals any more, much less purchase a bottle of water at the venue. The headliners are all proven-profitable standards, and the tents house up-and-coming studio acts, shoehorned into whichever genre is most popular with the kids that summer.
Where are the protest songs, poets and minstrels? Where are the free speech, free thought, and free water? Well, now they’re all on
Twitter! (Except for the water, but I’m sure that’s coming soon.) Social media is every bit as powerful a movement as anything put forth in the Sixties, but with a gazillion times the reach. It makes celebrities out of unremarkable people like
Guy Kawasaki and
Ana Marie Cox. It played an integral role in
getting our president elected, for pete’s sake! Do you think for one second that Capital “B” Business is going to ignore that kind of opportunity for megaphone-on-steroids exposure?
Of course not! And they haven’t. The advertisers and entrepreneurs of the world are chip, chip, chipping away at the pie-eyed purism that spawned social networking. The very creators of
Facebook,
YouTube and
MySpace have all sold their young to corporations who erode their authenticity from the inside out. Sure Crispin Porter + Bogusky got busted for their fake Burger King profile, but how much SPAM now recklessly dilutes, unchecked, the flow of real information and insight online?
Is social media headed for the same bleak destiny as the music festivals of the Sixties? Will idealism and societal evolution be drowned once again in a sea of corporate sponsorship? Is Dave Young correct in declaring that the pendulum is swinging back, and we won’t see this kind of revolution for another forty years?
Fortunately, my dad says, “Probably not.” He knows that social media is in its infancy, and that we have not yet begun to develop its potential applications. There is no reason why, as the social cybersphere is mapped out, that there cannot be room allotted for free exchange of thought and art, as well as venues for marketing and commerce. Each arm must support and, in fact, drive the other. Trade relies on communication. Communication relies on trade.
Instead of bellowing Cassandra-like about the impending demise of social media as we know it at the hands of Capitalism, let us take Woodstock as a cautionary tale, and proceed with greater thought and responsibility as we supplement social networks with social marketplaces. The Twits are counting on us.
—Lisa
