Social Media Is a Child’s Toy
Posted by heatherrast on October 21st, 2008I learn most effectively when I can make associations between topics or concepts. Sometimes the relationships or analogies I make have my husband raising an eyebrow, but hey, I say if finding (or making) connections between two subjects (alright, maybe even seemingly disparate subjects) helps me understand, then I’ll stick with it, thankyouverymuch.
The truth is, I call these connections “bunny trails” and get a perverse kind of pleasure out of taking twists and turns and finally hooking Tab A into Slot B. This thing I do, this seeing what others may not, might even be a talent or a skill–I recently had a professor/lecturer make a complimentary remark to me after I continually pelted him with questions and suggestions throughout a class (yes, I suppose he could have just been testing out a strategy to shut me up, but I prefer to think positive).
Anyway, this leads me to my point. I’m thinking about social media A LOT lately–beyond the fact that the term is practically the cure-all for every marketing, advertising, and communications quandry (or so you might think by reading the trade rags), how social media tactics will skyrocket as the economy plummets, etc. I’m simply still mulling things over.
Part of connecting the bunny trails involves finding or creating visuals or pictures that convey an idea. I’ve found some interesting visuals communicating one author’s social media spectrum. I’ve seen another visual that may categorize every single social media tool/technology out there...today. And I’ve seen a “common sense” video tutorial on what social media means, a scenario application. These are each very interesting, thought-provoking, and thorough insights.
But what I’m noodling around is what social media looks like. If you think about a newcomer, someone who is participating Web searcher and visits sites and blogs, if you think about how they get from “there” (a mainstreamer, or “Spectator” maybe on the Forrester Technographics ladder) to “here,” someone who shares on Twitter, posts their own blog, reads/comments on others’, shares via FriendFeed, actively bookmarks, etc…just how would you show that to someone? How would you help them get that picture?
Well, I’m thinking that the tried-and-true, child’s building toy called TinkerToy is a great way to help illustrate (or demonstrate) how social media behaves, and the relationships between people and technology that are created and solidified.
Think about it…there are wooden pegs or sticks (those represent relationships, and also paths or channels). And there are wooden wheels with slots that accommodate the pegs (those represent the technologies or platforms).
If a user thinks of themself (or maybe their blog) as a wheel–then their Facebook page could be another wheel. An RSS feed could be the peg that links the blog wheel to the Facebook wheel, which of course enables the Facebook page to reflect the recent content of the blog. Another wheel could be Twitter, and when the blog wheel has a new post, TwitterFeed (serving as a peg) could update the Twitter timeline…and so much more.
Long story short, I think a pictorial way to show how social media looks is to sit down with a barrel of Tinkertoys and start building! A connection here, a reach in that direction there, and angle over this way, and pretty soon you have lots of hubs and connectors and that makes everything interrelated, even if by 7 degrees or so…That’s a 3-dimensional picture of social media.
I’m not attempting to touch in the meaning of social media, nor its implications or even its premise. Just what it might look like if you had to make a visual.
What would you do instead? What does social media look like to you?
Tags: building, bunny trails, Connections, participating, Social Media, TinkerToy
