Experience 

Social media is for sharing knowledge and sharing experiences.  I would argue that the best output occurs when the knowledge and experiences are linked. I would also argue that the author or creator is the best judge of the appropriate venue or medium to publish content.

People started sharing knowledge and experiences in bulletin board systems, Usenet groups, and by E-Mail over 25 years ago.  Personal websites arose as Internet access became widespread and affordable, including the ability to share images.  On-line journalling was extremely popular earlier in this decade.  Social networks like MySpace offered improved ways to share content with large numbers of people.  Other types of content sharing have grown, like audio, video, and image sharing.  And, of course, the blog is in the mix, straddling it all.

The ends of social media should be to share knowledge and/or experience.  Otherwise, we’re better off writing or sketching off-line and keeping that content off of the Web.

Paul Cheney has an interesting post about changes in the “blogosphere” at Conversational Media Marketing, which was inspired by Robert Scoble’s post The Changeosphere.  Chaney provides an informative timeline of evolution in social media during the past few years and also comments on the evolution of blogging during the same time.  He suggests that 2008 could be a big year for business blogging and also echoes one of Brian (Copyblogger) Clark’s ideas about value blogging, where blog posts are more article-like (”teaching, informing, and offering unique perspective”) and less about personal anecdotes.

I would compare these two types of blog posts in this way: 

  • Personal anecdotes are stories about how your cat loves the new flea collar, scratching post, and cat food that you bought her.  Or hates them, as the case may be.
  • Informative articles tell you where and how to get the best flea collars, scratching posts, and cat foods.

Both types of writing have their strengths and weaknesses.  Both are cool.  But I see the latter as being almost inextricably linked to commerce (short term or long term) whilst the former is just about sharing.

If you read the blog posts that I’ve linked to in this post, do you start to get the impression that blogging is being converted to a tool of business instead of a tool of the enthusiast or the expert?

Look, a blog is typically driven by a content management system that can do cool things.  There’s no reason why businesses should not use a blog if it helps them.

At the same time, I’m a bit concerned by the implications in some of these posts that blogging is no place for the amateur or the volunteer enthusiast.  It almost seems like these writers are saying that more personalized, “journal” writing really shouldn’t be published in blogs.

Maybe it’s worth remembering that the Web was originally a medium for sharing knowledge amongst researchers.  That blogs were originally a means to share links to interesting and informative websites.

Now, to be fair, many social networks either didn’t exist or else they were in their infancy as blogging established itself as the flagship platform of social media.  Over time, we have seen the emergance of social news, social bookmarking, content sharing, and social networking as alternate means of communication.  Tumble logs and microblogging are also available.  And good old journalling, like LiveJournal, is still around.  You can argue that blogging either filled a void or created demand for experience and knowledge exchange before the more specialized forms of social media were created.

However, if something is essentially free to use, you really can’t prevent people from using it.  Like, say, Wordpress or Blogger.

Blogs should be available to whoever and whatever wants to use them.  If someone wants to blog about Fluffy’s new flea collar, then by damn, they should feel free to do so.  If someone wants to use a blog as a front or shell to earn money through Adsense or affilate marketing, go for it.  If businesses want to use blogs as a marketing channel, there’s nothing wrong with that.

All I’m saying is that this medium is available to virtually everyone.  If someone wants to spill their guts about some esoteric fixation with the high probability of having an audience of one dozen or less, while mixing audio, video, or images in their content, there’s no reason why they should feel that they need to do that at MySpace, Facebook, or some other medium.

Blogging is not purely a “business communications and marketing tool”.  First and foremost, blogging is a communication tool.  We measure our successes in this medium by the goals we set or the interests we pursue.  Sometimes the interest is self-expression, pure and simple.  Maybe a creator is satisified if they find one kindred soul in the wilderness or amongst the roaring crowd.  Should there be any limits on the media used to do this?

I don’t think so.  How about you?


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