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?

Warning: if you’re not interested in a rambling, slightly unfocused blog post, this might not be the right post for you.

I’m not a pro blogger and social media isn’t my career; it’s my hobby. I’m an IT guy who knows more about “meatball” business processes and mid-range, antiquated enterprise systems than Web 2.0, marketing, promotion, or how to use a Blackberry.  I’m working on trying to move a bit higher up Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs.

Nonetheless, I’m good at mentally dissecting things and finding flaws. I’m also good at testing software. And I can write well. Some of that experience applies, I’m sure.

The amateur’s view of social media

As I continue along this voyage of discovery in social media, I become a little more aware each day of how much I do not know. There are mainly aspects of marketing, advertising, public relations, and networking that I don’t have any practical experience with.

So, if you’re looking for the magic bullet, the quick fix, or the ultimate source of wisdom regarding social media, you aren’t going to find it here. Go visit blogs written by people like Maki, Chris Brogan, Muhammad Saleem, or Tamar Weinberg: they’re far more experienced than I am and they write well. I don’t think they have any magic bullets either, but they do have a lot of good stuff in their blogs.

Hell, I even created a social media blog listing – go check those blogs out. I missed a lot of good blogs, but there’s still plenty to chose from there.

On the other hand…

Social media is a young field and lots of things are changing. People have an intuitive sense that this ability to link friends and strangers in webs obvious and hidden is powerful and can be used to accomplish great things.

Or maybe it’s just another channel to force crap down other people’s throats. I don’t know.

I will say this, though: social media has given me the opportunity to get in contact with some pretty interesting, cool, and knowledgeable people. That’s worth something.

The value of social media?

I don’t believe that there’s a motherlode of gold lying in one place on the Web. I don’t think you can find valuables that weren’t already lying in wait.

People used to pan for gold in parts of North America, sifting through rocks and dirt in order to scrape together enough valuable material to eke out an existence.

Prospecting for minerals is still big business. In the past, it was only economically viable to harvest raw materials when they were close together, reducing transportation, handling, and extraction costs.

Can social media be used to mine for creative gold by harnessing the wisdom and power of the crowd, cheaply extracting and pooling valuable information that becomes even more valuable? Can you use it to get ultra-creative ideas for your own blog writing?

I don’t know. I’m curious to know more. But somehow I think that’s a whole lot more valuable than trying to insert more messages into conversations where they may or may not fit. Or to start conversations with alterior motives, just because people think that these new channels are ripe to be exploited.

A closing remark of sorts

I’m lucky. I can get away with writing stuff like this because I’m not dependent on social media to earn a living (nor is it very likely that I’ll be that lucky, after writing this post.) I think there’s a lot of good people who are trying to use social media to earn a living. I’ve communicated with a number of them. I’m not trying to rain on the parade, but my skepticism is starting to emerge a tiny bit.

I have more faith in the intent and power of people to use social media than I do in having corporations or organizations trying to use social media to sell products, services, or even ideas.

I think the great potential of social media is to promote the individual, not the group.

I can get behind that.

Just a few quick observations:

My Twitter follower experiment, which I made an update to a few days later, seems to be paying off.  I know that at one point I was following close to 1400 people.  I started trimming that number down where it seemed to make sense to do so.  Today I’m following 1044 other people. 

However, the number of people following me has increased.  Currently there are 633 people who follow me (and thank you!) on Twitter.

On Digg, I’m pleased to report that I hit my short term goal of getting into the listing of the top 1000 Digg users.  Or, at least I will when they refresh the list, unless things go wonky somewhere.  By the way, the composition of the top 1000 Digg users list is determined first by the number of Popular Digg submissions, and secondly by your % of popular submissions to overall Digg submissions.  You can see the current status of the Digg top 1000 list here.  Next stop:  top 500!

My Technorati ranking is slowly climbing toward 100, which is another 2008 goal.  I think I’m at 87 but I think the next recalculation will take me to 89.

Subscriber count:  my subscriber count is in triple digits.  Not quite where I wanted it to be yet, but overall it continues to grow, which is quite gratifying.

StumbleUpon:  I’ve actually hit the 200 friends limit a couple of times and had to rearrange some things.  StumbleUpon has been a wonderful resource for this blog!

On top of all that, I’ve been interacting with lots of cool people. 

It’s nice to see progress!

I guess I made an impression with a “guild ridden apology”.

In all seriousness, it’s an interesting article by the folks at Nowsourcing.

If you’re in a Christian part of the world or if you’re a believer anywhere in the world, today is the start of a three day cycle celebrating death and rebirth (or ascension, maybe that is a better word). Many people treat this as a time of reflection and celebration.

Why not try something a little bit different this year?

Don’t focus completely on the literal, or the myth, around this time of year.

Try looking at this example, the death and rebirth of Jesus, as a way to ascend or to improve. Maybe you feel like you are at a plateau and, in your own way, you are suffering there. Maybe you have critics that are dragging you down. Maybe you are your own worst critic.

Try to figure out a way to rise above the critics, stay true to yourself, and inspire others to make a positive contribution to the world.

Maybe that’s a hidden lesson of the Easter story.

Amy Gahran, who I’ve been following on Twitter, writes an interesting post about her experiences using Twitter vs. her standard blogs.  Quoting from her post:

…I remember that blogs have always been an awkward tool to satisfy my deepest desires for conversational media. Yeah, I love to write — but I tend to find quality conversation far more rewarding and satisfying than merely writing. Despite all Twitter’s limitations and weaknesses (which are many) I find it to be a superior conversational media tool. In many ways.

She also seems to say that her Twitter activity is increasing while her personal blogging is decreasing, especially since Twitter “feels” like a better platform for conversations.

I have made over 1400 Twitter posts, compared to probably half of that number for my blogs.  However, I’ve certainly written much, much more in total word count in the blogs than in Twitter posts.

If anything, my output is probably larger due to using Twitter.  However, I do have a distinction of subject matter in these two platforms:

I may write about Twitter here at Broadcasting Brain (among other things), but I try to limit the subject material to communications (broadly defined) and social media.

With Twitter… it feels more like a brain dump.  Generally speaking I don’t restrict myself to any particular subject matter in Twitter.  In fact, I let a lot of my geek and fannish roots hang out in Twitter and I’ll leave the occasional real-life status update there as well.

I’m not doing as much blogging as Amy G., so I probably don’t have the same time restrictions as she does.

I definitely think that Twitter has some advantages as a conversation platform, although as I’ve said earlier this week, I don’t think Twitter is a good platform to hold a debate.

Thought provoking post, Amy!

For those of you who blog and Twitter, do you think either platform is suffering because of the other?

Tell us what you think, please!