As yet another social network buzz is starting to die down…..
A recap on ‘what’s happened so far’
Various forms of electronic communication have been invented.
The key aspect to all of them. Asynchronous.
We only have one piece of attention to give at any one moment, and so, asynchronous technology gives us massive productivity benefits – conversations can be carried out over a period, whilst doing other things.
This is true of
- Email,
- IM,
- Blogs,
- Wikis,
- Social networks
Electronic conversations are also much more powerful because they’re written down, - searchable, discoverable, interactive whilst being less sensitive to time, (timefree)
BUT – the crucial piece is that none of this software truly yet delivers a full conversation electronically.
For all of the marketing sector telling us that they are having conversations with their audience with their blogs – the reality feels more like they are making a ‘presentation’.
A blog is like a presentation in that someone makes their point, and the audience can comment or ask questions afterwards and then leave the building.
This isn’t exactly an example of a roundtable asynchronous timefree conversation is it? I make a comment and then have to remember to come back to see the response, or other people’s questions?
It’s just not intuitive – where is the user interface for our conversations? All over the place on other people’s blogs, that’s where.
Conversations shouldn’t be kept by just one of the contributing parties, and marketers would probably like to continue the conversation with people even after they’ve left the building.
Solve that one and then we’ll enable it with unified communications.
Similar themes
There is a useful ‘zeitgeist’ post by hugh macleod over on his blog, gapingvoid. Echo’s are here at Stowe Boyd’s blog, and I have to agree with both Stowe and Hugh, running a blog is a powerful learning and communicative experience, not to be undersold.
However, it is clear from the comments on the gapingvoid that other people are also still looking for other tools to keep the conversation going, and I think I’m agreeing that there is still some stuff missing (as well as being all over the place).
It feels like it wouldn’t take much to link blogs, comments and conversations, and I’m wondering whether this linked article here at gigaom is alluding to something. Although it talks about identity and WordPress, the phrases “inside out social network”, and “the social graph” do resonate.
I completely agree with you here Matt. Maybe the key to “authenticity in conversation” is the degree to which they are messy? Structured question and response routines carried out in a private or semi-private mode, don’t give others the opportunity to overhear your conversation and thus make judgments on whether this is the kind of conversation they might like to be in or not, or what this conversation says about the company and how it treats its customers. So perhaps a good question might be, “how do you know you are in an authentic conversation”, and in what context might you wish to be in that kind of conversation?”. Sound a bit messy?:)
Yep, I get what you’re saying
The point of blogs almost is that they ARE like presentations, in as much as they are public and the floor is open to any question or comment, positive or negative. This has a transparency, and as you say authenticity…….I wonder if another word for authenticity is ‘karma’. Good companies might finally get the recognition, whilst bad companies might get what’s coming to them
You’re right, but I’m not sure how to continue the conversation – sending this email, or posting a response in the comments. I’ll do both for now.
Perhaps the right place is to look at the RSS possibilities.
I would love for whenever I leave a comment on a blog, for the RSS reader to update itself, in the right place of course, for comment update notification – or maybe more than notification, a consolidation. It almost demands for reader integration to the publishing platforms a few years hence.
In fact, I often think that RSS has a long way to fulfill its overall potential.
Placing an order would be great if the supplier ERP sent notifications of receipt, despatch and invoices to a self creating RSS folder in my reader. Machine based RSS should make it possible…..if only everyone in the world used them!
Matt
Nice article and couldnt agree more, nicely said.
“Electronic conversations are also much more powerful because they’re written down.”
Vincent
The World of Office, XP & Vista Tips and Tricks.