Ryan Anderson dot ca

We call Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and the like “online communities,” but many people find that label hard to swallow.  After all, communities care for one another, support each other and are brought together by something deeper than shared interests or geography.

If nothing else was going to convince you that these services are more than just tools, and that your “friends” are more than just connections in a network, The success of Twestival would have to do it.  If you haven’t heard of it yet, Twestival is a world-wide charitable collaboration for charity:water, a charity that is dedicated to digging wells in developing parts of the world with no access to clean water.  There’s one in your city.  Seriously – go look.

Building one well can cost between $4,000 and $12,000, so it’s not an inexpensive endeavour.  So, rather than paying for expensive television ads, or paying people to stand on the street with binders, charity:water took to the web, and organized a global, one-day event in support of their cause that brought over 185 organizers together from every continent around the world to donate their time and money to raise funds for a single charity.

So far, they’ve raised $1,000,000, and the event isn’t until Thursday.

I’m involved with the Ottawa event, as is @bitpakkit and @sassymonkey from Overlay.TV (the event’s sponsor), and @kevinwaghorn – the producer of the Ottawa Fringe Festival, and a wicked event manager locally. What I’ve seen in the few short weeks we’ve been working on this is the dedication of both the local and global Twitter community to give of their time, their money and their influence, simply because it was a cause they could believe in.

Multiply that by 185 cities around the world, and you see the real power of social networking.  The building of connections that would be impossible through any medium we’ve ever seen – television, advertising, telephone – not even the internet in and of itself.  What it took to connect the world was 140 characters and a cause.  Next time someone asks you what the point of Twitter is, you’ve got an answer for them.

If you’re in Ottawa, the event is February 12 at Suite 34 in the Market. Details are at http://ottawa.twestival.com, and you can buy tickets at http://www.amiando.com/twestivalottawa.html.  If you can’t come, please spread the word, tell some friends, donate something to the silent auction – any little bit helps.  I don’t take the word community lightly, but I hope you will join ours in making the world a little better place.

Regardless of the field you work or live in, ignorance of what you do or the community you participate is maddening, depressing and disheartening.  It’s what causes rifts in organizations, and is why communicators don’t get along with lawyers, why creatives don’t get along with suits, and why engineers don’t get along with… well, anyone.

Even more infuriating than ignorance, however, is when that ignorance is coupled with opinion and backed up with insistence.  For some reason, I’ve been coming across this type of person more often recently.  Any rational argument I could respond to with examples or statistics, but the ignorant insister doesn’t deal in such sundry as data and proof.  This is the type of person whose line of argument is based on unsupported opinion and anecdote.

“Social media doesn’t work.”

This phrase is like nails on a blackboard to me, because it’s the first warning that I’m going to have to have a conversation with someone who doesn’t understand the first thing about the thing that they want to argue about.

Usually, when I dig deeper as to the meaning behind this broad generalized statement, that lack of understanding comes out very quickly.  First of all, to say that social media “doesn’t work” shows that they’ve already missed the point, fully and completely.  Social media works by virtue of the fact that I’m writing this and you’re reading it – that I’m connected with like-minded people on Twitter and that I make plans with friends on Facebook.  What they mean to say, of course, is that social media isn’t an effective way of creating value for a company, and once I can guide them to this much more rational thought, it’s much easier to point out why they’re wrong.

More often than not, their reasoning is based on one of two things.  Either a) they don’t use social media, and therefore believe that no one else does, or b) they’ve heard people complain about being spammed on Facebook or something of the like, and have extrapolated that to mean that everyone hates every kind of social media campaign through any technology.

As social media “early adopters,” it is, of course, our duty to educate others on community, technology and the culture that pervades it, but sometimes, when faced with a case like the ones I’m describing, it’s best just to walk away.  Sadly, I lack whatever gene it is that would allow me to walk away from a baseless argument, and it causes me to engage in more angering conversations than I care to admit.  Call it a character flaw.

In many way, these arguments are like someone who walked through Chinatown in the summer on garbage day and then spent the rest of his life convinced that the Chinese are “a smelly people.”  As human beings, it’s in our nature to make snap judgements based on little information.  If cro-magnon man spent too much time wondering if the sabre tooth tiger was an enemy or a friendly kitty we probably wouldn’t have made the cut for natural selection.

Of course, it goes both ways.  Assuming that a social approach is key for every business because of your own personal success or affinity for blogging is of equal ignorance.  The wise man knows what he does not know.  The people I have the most respect for are those who admit their lack of knowledge and approach social media from a neutral standpoint and a desire to learn.  They will be successful because they don’t come into something they don’t understand with preconceived notions, and can therefore be objective about how to integrate social media into their business practices, if they do at all.

Both obstinance and zealotry are dangerous traits, and both are derived from ignorance.  Be wary of both, in yourself and others, and you’ll have a better chance of arriving at “understanding” with whatever you do.

A friend of mine sent me an article from CNET quoting a Gartner study that warned companies against rushing into social networking. I started reading with interest, until something popped into my head. Is there any particular tactic or strategy that you WOULD recommend diving into headlong without thinking seriously about the repercussions. Now, I didn’t go to a fancy-pants big-city business school (Carleton’s business school is about two steps away from Romper Room), but it seems to me that if you’re running a business, rushing into things is, well… bad business.

From the article:

Many companies are thinking about how they can take advantage of social-networking technology, but analysts at Gartner are warning against getting caught up in the hype.

Businesses are advised to consider certain issues before investing in or developing internal social-networking tools. These include protecting personal intellectual property, as well as people’s preference for using existing nonprofessional, external networks such as Bebo, Facebook and MySpace.com.

The point is completely valid, obviously, but the need for such a study to be published underlines a fact that some of us forget from time to time. As touchy-feely and wonderful as this whole “conversation” is, we’re in business, and when we’re talking about a major shift in culture, the benefits do have to be carefully considered with the detriments. I believe completely in the power of social media to improve communications in general, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for everyone.

Companies that fail in social media often fail because they rushed in to quickly, or can’t change drastically enough to make a real commitment to social media. It’s extremely frustrating to listen to companies who just don’t get it ask how social media will move their sometimes-anachronistic key performance indicators, but even worse is a company making a commitment to something they can’t maintain or live up to. Failed case studies in social media are bad for everyone.

So, remember – the next time you make a business decision, heed Gartner’s words and think a little before you commit to a huge undertaking. You might just make your stoic CFO’s day.

And a bonus, just because I thought it was funny – the email exchange that led to this post:

My first thought on that article is… can you remember a time in business school where they taught you the things you SHOULD rush into blindly? I don’t think that advice is prudent just for social networking…

RA

Oh you old fogey, rush head long I say, and throw money at everything that sparkles along the way (what business school did you go to anyway?).

MS