For pure social media sites like Facebook and MySpace, value (or potential) from a business standpoint only arises once a social community is formed. When it works it’s a beautiful thing. I’ve gotten ahold of many sources on deadline via Facebook.

A site like LinkedIn, however, loses it business value because it was built strictly for business. People go in to LinkedIn with the business mindset. Whereas on Facebook, you and I are friends first. Friends do each other favors.

@Scott Davidson: The recent explosion in Facebook users is because of older folks. I’ll post the link on your blog if I can find the story.

@Lauren: I thought I pretty explicitly said that this wasn’t an anti-Defren post. He is a bright, articulate commentator. Rather, I was pointing a finger at the 118+ Tweeters that basically just forwarded his post around without adding significant commentary of any sort. Obviously, most can’t in the short forum, but otherwise merely forwarding doesn’t really help in this knowledge acquisition stage of social media communications. I just went back and read the post. He doesn’t really pose it as a conversation starter. It’s a statement.

@Meg: You’re the student teaching the teacher now. I really appreciate your insight, which is derived from your post in the middle of the social media maelstrom. Like I’ve written often in the past about Facebook, I think when people are using it as it was meant to be used, i.e. connecting one-on-one, it is the best scenario. I’m still skeptical that social media is the game-changing channel so many others seem to think it is.

Without wanting to come over as a social media refusenik - which I am certainly not. None the less, there is a remarkable tendency towards over-hyping the whole field. Making the “mainstream” media irrelevent to communicators, not in my life time. In the UK we’ve just had our whole political scene turned upside down by 3 weeks of exclusives by one “dead tree” publication. Increasingly fragmented audiences, no doubt. The end of journalism, put that obituary back in the drawer.

There are also, for many years yet, going to be important audiences who simply won’t be found on social media. Low-income older people would be a good example here.

Cheers
Scott
framingthedot.wordpress.com

I learned, first hand, how important it is to use blogs and Twitter as only ONE part of my professional development. These posts are often great at raising issues, but then I try to further investigate them by clicking through all the links in the post and reading related newspaper articles, published studies, and books. I enjoy that I can read over 100 blogs in a matter of minutes, bookmark the ones that highlight interesting industry trends or issues, and thoroughly research these topics later when I have the time.

And, I’m with you and Bill Sledzik on the “club” nature of social media, though. It’s gotten so bad that I’ve almost completely stopped blogging because I started writing to appeal to these audiences rather than for educational purposes. Just last night, I joined in a Tweet chat on the topic of PR 2.0 and the only people who responded to me were other new professionals. The “famous” PR Twitter users never responded to me, even when I directly asked them a question.

On top of that, our education system is garbage (for lack of a better word), our true leaders are opaqued by celebrities, celebrity wannabes, and politicians. These problems need to be addressed and changed through our communities, and until that does not happen, I think that this new laziness will keep declining our civilization.

A possibility that comes to mind is that perhaps the PR community is beginning to see that sites like Twitter could possibly eliminate their jobs because relationships could really become “personal” between consumers and companies. (Just my opinion.) On the other hand, this country’s business sector will not drastically change overnight and true business people will never replace person-to-person interaction over “Tweets.” (There is something about human interaction that close deals).

Overall, I think that the PR community should stop, learn, and execute their jobs in these new mediums. I see more and more high-end professionals connecting with people and sharing their thoughts and ideas via these sites. I think that it is brilliant, and if used properly, could revolutionize the PR world because it does make it easier and honest–if used properly.

*The question should be, who will create the “right” way of using these sites.

http://www.twitter.com/ama2009miami

I’ve largely given up with the social media roundabout - especially since the Twitter bumpers simply bounce around at best, as you indicate, thoughts that would be more interesting to develop and discuss in some depth.

I’m not sure about your point about young practitioners/students looking for role models “for how they should conduct themselves as budding social media experts”. I feel this is a slowly deflating bubble based on the fact that the digital immigrants currently don’t understand social media. It cannot be long before those who are growing up totally immersed in the genre look at so called “gurus” with bemusement.

So will we really need “social media experts” in a couple of years? I think our young practitioners certainly need the skills in their toolbox, but surely knowing about social media and seeking to be an expert in it won’t be enough.