Concepts Are King

The phrase 'Content is King' has a long history. Its origination is usually ascribed to one Bill Gates from a 1996 article. Smart dude.

But I suspect it goes back rather longer. Those of us with a traditional media background always knew it was the content people bought our stuff for, for example.

Then there was the build - that not Content, but Conversation is King. Cory Doctorow memorably put it that "Conversation is King... Content is just something to talk about."

Content is pointless without conversation. Conversation needs 'something to talk about'.
Neither is king. It's the interaction of people and ideas that drives us to action. The web has lowered the barrier for millions to interact with ideas.

And no one is describing what they are interacting with as 'content'. In fact 'content' has some rather unhelpful connotations in the context of what the web is best at enabling - ie adhoc self-forming groups of purpose.

Content implies constraint; An idea boxed and kept within - a thing inside with limitations.
This isn't how people behave with ideas. We take, shape, add, delete, remodel - hack ideas in our every interaction. And the web is a splendid evolutionary environment for them.

So I'm going to suggest Concepts Are King is a better 'catch-all' for what is really important in connecting folk. I can take your boxed up piece of content and share it, of course. That's old-style viral. Pass it on unmolestered. Don't expect evolution.

Or I can connect with and play with a concept. We can.

And in so doing we add value - not mere distribution.

Image attribution: By Enoch Lau (Own work (photo)) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Social Media: It's educational

One of the reasons I love social media is its ability to reveal the power of the network.

That power is there for anyone to discover. But is only truly appreciated by those who participate.

This is a key distinction. There are those who believe they can use social media and those who understand they can participate in it.

The first group, the users, stand back from it. And from afar they order its deployment. These are the people who - no matter how much they may protest - do not really understand it. (Picture courtesy)

This first group see social media as just another channel. They see it as another way to extend reach, to gather eyeballs. They like their measures in the thousands and millions.

They neglect a simple truth. The only measure that really counts is the action that results; a sale, a new believer, a new organisation, a better mousetrap. .

Theirs is the world of never mind the quality, feel the bandwidth.

You'll know you are in group 1 if you blog but don't allow comments, if you broadcast an rss feed into Twitter but follow no one, if you stuff videos on to Youtube but don't respond to comments or video responses. If you spam 'your friends' on Facebook.

Sure, you're using social media. You're not participating in it though.

The second group are those who genuinely benefit from social media. 
They learn as they do.

• Where group 1 says Use Social Media, we say Participate.
• Where group 1 asks how many were exposed to a message, we ask what action resulted ( how was a community of purpose galvanized to act?)
• Where group 1 stands back to witness the power of the network, group 2 is partipating in it.
  

Like I say, one of the reasons I love social media is for its ability to adapt people, brands and organizations to the networked world.

Those who would only witness are missing out on learning so much.

They aren't taking part in a conversation.

As I've said before, the act of participating raises and answers questions about control and ownership - a process which makes brands and orgs better adapted to the connected world.

This does not happen if you and your people simply stand back and count the beans.

This time, you really do have to be in it to win it.

Focus Groups vs Communities of Purpose

The focus group is a much relied on tool in marketing, PR, politics - behaviour changing activity of all kinds.

But its role is disrupted and a layer of professionalism disintermediated by Communities of Purpose.

This morning I found (via twitter) Robert Scoble bigging up the response he got to a tweet on Twitter asking for advice on great accessories for his flip cam.

Robert said: "By the way, in just a few hours I got about 30 suggestions for the Flip accessory on Twitter. Is this the world's largest focus group? Yes!”.

But it's way better than that. What Robert was taking part in was an adhoc, self-forming community of purpose.

And there were two key elements which gave it an outcome with real value attached.

1. The community self organized around something they care about.

In this case its purpose was sharing best advice about the flip cam. Only a subset of Robert's followers cared enough to join in. This was likely driven by their desire to connect with other flipcam users (shared content about the flipcam and their desire to flag up ownership of it providing the glue) and to gain trust and authority within the larger community of purpose which has organized around Robert Scoble.

Odd to think of Scoble as a social object perhaps. But not wrong?

The second key element:

2. The real community of purpose here, the real creators of value, were the ones who cared enough about the purpose to drop everything in real time, right now.

In other words, a subset of a subset in any community is where it's ability to create value lies.

But this does not mean Reed's Law is wrong. No, because any additional node added to this network can still double its value. Why? The two sub groups are self-forming and self-organising.

So just because the purpose of one community subset does not tempt you to drop everything to join in, the next one may.

And unless you are connected you cannot contribute. Therefore just by being connected you add value to a network.

And the fact that you are connected may mean you are drawn in as the conversation grows and sustains.

As you see other people talking about it within your community you may follow the lead, lean forward and discover that if they are interested, you should be too.

And so, the difference between focus groups and communities of purpose?

1. Focus groups are centrally organized
Communities of purpose organize themselves around things they care about.

2. Focus group membership is centrally selected
Members of communities of purpose select themselves

3. In focus groups the centre makes the introduction and extracts the value
In communities of purpose members introduce eachother and share the value created

4. The composition of focus groups reflect the preconceptions of the central organizers
Communities of purpose are only limited in scope by the silo in which they form (btw, language counts as a silo).

5. Focus groups can't influence anyone outside the room in realtime.
Communities of purpose do.

Actually and quite simply, in all senses, communities of purpose do.

And that opens the doors to co-creation. Exactly what Robert was getting at in his subsequent tweets and response to my own.

“There's a reason behind the Flip question. I'm working with a supply-chain manager and he's showing me how we can disrupt the market about 1 hour ago from web.

“Imagine building a product, getting funding, getting feedback via Twitter, building it, marketing it, shipping it all within days. Wow.

“@davidcushman “I am shocked more companies don't design products on Twitter. After seeing the video we're filming now there will be more.”

Now. How will you go about organising your next focus group?

Zemanta: One great way to kick down the silo walls

Image of Jure CuhalevImage of Jure CuhalevI came across Zemanta some time ago. Probably via Fred Wilson, who I spoke alongside at Widget Web Expo in New York in the summer.
And Widget Web Expo in London last week closed the circle. Because I met one of the Zemanta crew. Jure Cuhalev came up to me after seeing me present on 'The User is the Destination Now - Widgets role in the Eighth Mass Media'.
No surprise given my central theme - my vision of where the networked world takes us, if you like.
In a nutshell, if you can connect in real time with people who share your purpose, globally, you get to solve more problems and create more value. One extra node on your network doubles its value, as Reed's Law would have it. People and what they say to each other are the way those connections are made.
But, the thing that restricts this exponential growth explosion is silos. In twitter I can only connect with people in twitter, who have already connected with me etc. Facebook is worse still.
Blogs are good, blogs and rss feeds and readers etc.
Zemanta does what BlogFriends tried. It introduces you to stuff and people you didn't know you need to know. And that's how adhoc communities of purpose form.
Zemanta takes this beyond silos by introducing me to things beyond my current network. It's an ambitious grab at creating that global hotdesk I've written about before.
They are still stuck in one crucial silo: language - it's primarily an English language tool. But Jure tells me they are working on that.
Wishing you luck guys - and from today, running it on this blog.
Zemanta (in their own words) delivers: "relevant content from all over the web... instantly as you blog.Builds traffic with immediate tagged links created between your posts and others sharing related conversations on all popular browsers and blogging platforms.
In short it connects people who share the same concerns. A great enabler for Communities of Purpose.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Evolution of Personal Publishing
• zemanta.com - Jure Cuhalev
• Fred Wilson, Stowe Boyd and Josh Bernoff at Widget Web Expo day 2
• The User is the Destination Now
• We're All Publishers Now: My presentation for Digital Asset Management?
• A Response to Fred Wilson's Talk at Widget Web Expo