social media observations

Transparency yields evolution to the good ol’ boys network

Transparency yields evolution to the good ol’ boys network for the simple fact that Gen Y seeks meaning where Babyboomers emphasized Opacity to protect Tradition. The value of Transparency IN SOCIAL NETWORKS to the Babyboomer is a fresh audience for ageless products/services. The value for all is deeper intimacy.

EVERY parea wishing to be hospitable to its audience should study this graphic and ask itself HOW will we transition from the blue arrow type TO the white arrow type of business: http://bit.ly/hospitality_behaviorgraphics.

PR could be the MOST appropriate division of the business realm in guiding social media projects due to its focus on harmony and reputation.

A lot is at stake in the eco-system of corporate business, both internally/organizationally AND externally/customer-facing. Social business shows us HOW intimately related our internal culture is to our external messaging.

The fittest node: Who will "grab all the links" and "shape the network into a star"?

“The explosive success of “new kid on the block” Google could not be explained by the scale-free model until a measure of a node’s ability to stay in front of the competition produced a “fitness model.” Examining the fitness model data, Ginestra Bianconi was startled to find that the calculations used were very similar to those found in the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. The math describing the behavior of “Bose gases” (a unique creature of sub-atomic quantum mechanics) turned out to be identical to those in the network fitness model. This similarity means, according to Barabasi, that in certain circumstances, particularly fit nodes in a network did not merely get richer … the winner could take all.

In an ordinary “fit-get-rich” network, the fittest node gets biggest, but other fit nodes are close behind, so that “the power laws and the fight for links are not antagonistic but can coexist peacefully.” Id. 102. In a “winner-takes-all” system, the fittest node grabs all the links, shaping the network into a “star” or “hub and spoke” topology which is not scale free … there is a single hub and many tiny nodes. These findings have obvious relevancy to those studying antitrust law and policy and the ongoing case of Microsoft.” (Source)

YOUR 1,001 NIGHTS: You have created your own best medicine through the stories within stories upon your Wall

People are moved by stories and drama and hints and clues and discovery. ~Seth Godin

YOUR SOURCE IS A GUIDE: There is a thread of vitality in everyone’s life worth tapping into. It is a stream that has run downhill to you from a great river teeming with YOUR KIND. Do what you can to follow that stream to the river and then devote your life to discovering the river’s source. It is this SOURCE that the human soul seeks MORE than anything else for it holds answers to ALL of our most personal questions (most of which DO NOT even have words).

I would argue that one’s passion IS a powerful resource in facing the world’s winds and waves. ACTION STEP: Discover the tribe around YOUR SOURCE through simple keywords used in the Facebook search window. You will find friends, discussions and groups oriented around YOUR passion immediately upon pushing SUBMIT. Here’s more on how to do this.

BIG BRANDS WILL PAY YOU FOR YOUR STORY: We live in a renaissance period of self-discovery through story. Robert McKee, the author of Story (one of THE best books for screenwriters on the planet!), writes, “Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.” I would submit to the reader that over the course of the last year YOU have written a fantastic STORY through your Facebook status field, Twitter field and YouTube Channel (if you don’t have one, get one!) And I would suggest to you that there is TREMENDOUS value in this story for you and your tribes!

The next big revolution is YOU making money on advertising for BIG BRANDS who spot your channel and want to advertise to your 100’s of millions of subscribers!!!) ACTION STEP: The arrival of big money to invisible, yet super-creative, storytellers revolutionizes the publishing and media industry big time! Watch how YouTube and GoogleTV effectively pull this off over the next 12-48 months. Set up your YouTube channel today and research GoogleTV.

SEE YOUR BIGGEST CRITICS AS YOUR GREATEST ALLIES: Behind the scenes of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, there are bean-counters who are interested in the big numbers BUT do they understand or want to understand the dynamics of story and how to weave a tale that wraps even the most pessimistic person into a tale of romance.

Discovering the power of story and the formulas that work on the heart and emotion has been an activity for years in the entertainment industry and in the marketing world. On a human level, stories save lives every day and the advent of social networks/ platforms for telling collective stories allows humanity to transform curmudgeons, pessimists and naysayers into enthusiastic communicators of their passion. I would add that the greatest Critics are my favorite allies for their ability to see through a story to its heart. It has been said that the Optimist created the airplane and Pessimist created the parachute. ACTION STEP: Write down who your greatest critics are and what they say about your creative actions in the world. Then write down how these critiques help you refine your offering.

THE ARABIAN NIGHTS METAPHOR: Perhaps one of the greatest examples in literature of a story wherein the storyteller transformed her audience is that of Scheherazade in The Arabian Nights.

The main frame story concerns a Persian king and his new bride. He is shocked to discover that his brother’s wife is unfaithful; discovering his own wife’s infidelity has been even more flagrant, he has her executed: but in his bitterness and grief decides that all women are the same. The king, Shahryar, begins to marry a succession of virgins only to execute each one the next morning, before she has a chance to dishonour him. Eventually the vizier, whose duty it is to provide them, cannot find any more virgins. Scheherazade, the vizier’s daughter, offers herself as the next bride and her father reluctantly agrees. On the night of their marriage, Scheherazade begins to tell the king a tale, but does not end it. The king is thus forced to postpone her execution in order to hear the conclusion. The next night, as soon as she finishes the tale, she begins (and only begins) a new one, and the king, eager to hear the conclusion, postpones her execution once again.

So it goes on for 1,001 nights.

The tales vary widely: they include historical tales, love stories, tragedies, comedies, poems, burlesques and various forms of erotica. Numerous stories depict djinn, magicians, and legendary places, which are often intermingled with real people and geography, not always rationally; common protagonists include the historical caliph Harun al-Rashid, his vizier, Ja’far al-Barmaki, and his alleged court poet Abu Nuwas, despite the fact that these figures lived some 200 years after the fall of the Sassanid Empire in which the frame tale of Scheherazade is set. Sometimes a character in Scheherazade’s tale will begin telling other characters a story of his own, and that story may have another one told within it, resulting in a richly layered narrative texture. (SOURCE)

YOUR 1,001 NIGHTS: The complexity of the Arabian Nights is a fantastic image of the complexity in social networks. Our stories have stories within stories and nowhere is this more evident as one travels the thread of comments on a Facebook image, a blogpost or a YouTube video. Every comment has the potential through a link to carry one into an entirely new story and so on.

Communities like StumbleUpon are another fantastic example of the “babushka effect” of the Internet. At StumbleUpon, one may enter a variety of keywords and then get link suggestions that lead to further suggestions and so on. Creating a tale from your discoveries on the internet, from mashing up the various universes you visit and personalities you meet on this journey creates value for you and your tribe. I would submit that your Facebook wall itself IS just one place to read your story of the past 1,001 nights. I would also suggest that it contains valuable medicine for transforming whatever you feels threatens you.ACTION:Write down what one year of Facebook statuses or Tweets tell you about yourself. What is the MOST consistent message you are telling yourself OVER AND OVER AGAIN through these fields?

FUNDING YOUR STORY: There are so many options now for finding funding from YOUR donors, Venture Capital that loves YOUR content and from YOUR tribe. Start with the fantastic tool Kickstarter! Check out the ultimate Crowdsourcing wiki here.

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO BE A HUMAN: What is the Trans-Revolution and what does it mean about humanity’s current evolution in consciousness

“Transmedia is a fancy word for a simple concept: telling stories across multiple platforms.” ~”Heroes” Creator Tim Kring

A criticism of Transmedia really has a psychological/cultural issue at its core that involves fear AND requires a balance of compassion and harsh evolutionary movement/instruction. It is an issue that requires, as the motto of The Economist (a world champion of globalization) states, humanity “…to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” Monotheistic cultures often experience fear upon encountering polytheistic, trans-cultural, pluralistic perspectives and eco-systems. The fear of multiplicity within the psyches of monos is normal – like a child entering a large city alone. Again, the analogy is of a person from a small WASPy town in the MidWest entering New York, London, Paris, or San Francisco for the first time…or the Burning Man Festival. Or the complex and beautiful tapestry of a nation like India. A “Roman Fever” of sorts sets in for the mono.


THE GLOBAL UNIVERSITY

Writers like Pico Iyer (Nowhere Man) and thinkers like the transmodernist Ziauddin Sardar (Mad World) understand very well the juxtaposition of mono and trans cultures. The fundamental principle of Sardar’s thought is that ‘there is more than one way to be human’. He goes on to emphasize the importance of “keep(ing) the future open to all potentials, alternatives and dissenting possibilities,” stating that, “…it is necessary to envisage alternative futures from different civilizational and cultural perspectives. Pico Iyer writes, “We don’t have a home, we have a hundred homes. And we can mix and match as the situation demands.”


The NOW of TV

How does all of this relate to media, to the marketing world, to entertainment, to the socialization of business and the enterprise?
In the February 2010 “Red Papers” document entitled Socialize the Business (handed out to Ogilvy staff), John Bell writes, “Word of mouth trumps most other forms of communication in its influence on purchase decisions and opinions.” Simon Clift, former CMO of Unilever is quoted in the document saying, “We may be ahead of our competitors, but we’re most definitely behind consumers.” Transmedia gives humanity truly fantastic, multiple channels for a blossoming of expression, interaction and monetization – all! We live in the age of the Polymath – all humanity is involved in rapid education of mind and spirit through the internet.

Much has been said about the transition the internet has taken from web and browser-based interaction with content to apps, gigantic communities like Facebook and MySpace, and alternative communication modalities like Skype and Facebooking vs. emailing. The evolution of the internet from the open web accessed via the browser INTO complex hanging gardens, walled sanctuaries and massive gated labyrinths reflects humanity’s boundless imagination and is an image of our collective psyche that cannot help but produce and re-produce.

Transmedia works horizontally through ALL of these environments. Tools like Avaaz, The Rosetta Project and The Conversation Prism all reflect the truth of a world that is truly transcultural, “trans-app-tual” and therefore in need of MORE transmedia content, apps and communities. The days of the rainbow are HERE NOW. Accordingly, the message to critics of transmedia, transculture and transmodernism is BE HERE NOW!

A SIMPLE DEFINITION OF TRANSMEDIA: “Transmedia,” “Heroes” Creator Tim Kring says, is a “fancy word for a simple concept: telling stories across multiple platforms.” (Source)

IMAGES OF TRANSMEDIA: SAMSUNGTV and THE GEO-SOCIAL UNIVERSE.

HIGH LEVEL EXAMPLES: EXAMPLE 1 and EXAMPLE 2 and EXAMPLE 3

FURTHER THOUGHTS ON TRANSMEDIA HERE: THOUGHT 1 ON TRANSMEDIA and THOUGHT 2

A LEADING TRANSMEDIA GROUP: ACCOMPLICE MEDIA and ANOTHER: STORYLABS

ROOT INFLUENCE: At the root of every word, there is a god or deity, a revolution waiting to happen!

To listen well, is as powerful a means of influence as to talk well, and is as essential to all true conversation. ~ Chinese Proverb

Keywords are the words that are used to reveal the internal structure of an author’s reasoning. Keywords can be identified as words which appear with statistically unusual frequency in a text or a corpus of texts. An adventure into the significance of a single keyword includes etymological, mythological, cultural and personal discovery of meaning. Understanding the eco-system of key influencers, major conversations, largest web communities and highest examples of ROI around any given keyword signifies a successful foray into the heart of that keyword.

We now have truly fantastic ways to discover all of these deeper meanings of keywords using the following tools.

ETYMOLOGICAL SEARCH: Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. As marketers, we want to know about this history because it informs our intelligence gathering about the communities that have surrounded, do surround and will surround any given word.

Example of the power of etymological search: When doing recent research for a film that targets the Cultural Creative community and specifically the Karma Queen consumer within that community, I found that “family” is THE single most popular keyword by global search volume for that tribe. Knowing more about the etymology of the word family gives me further insight and inspiration on which key influencers, largest groups in social networks and web communities. What insight does the word etymology of the word family give me into the Karma Queens?

c.1400, “servants of a household,” from L. familia “household,” including relatives and servants, from famulus “servant,” of unknown origin. The classical Latin sense recorded in English from 1540s; the main modern sense of “those connected by blood” (whether living together or not) is first attested 1660s. Replaced O.E. hiwscipe. Buzzword family values first recorded 1966. Phrase in a family way “pregnant” is from 1796. Family circle is 1809; family man, one devoted to wife and children, is 1856 (earlier it meant “thief,” 1788, from family in slang sense of “the fraternity of thieves”).

From this etymology, we can derive some of the deepest HEART SIGNIFICANCE of this word. A FAMILY (ideally) is a group of people who would do anything for each other, including lying, cheating and stealing to help each other survive. They are pregnant, not only with children, but also with the ideas, the hopes and the dreams of the individuals carrying the same blood. And out of these ideals, they develop values that signify devotion to the children, giving them as much hope and thrust INTO the future as they possibly can.

To perform an etymological search, go here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=tool

MYTHOLOGICAL SEARCH: Mythology is defined by Joseph Campbell, the world’s foremost mythologist, as “a field that teaches humans what is behind the literature and the arts.” He goes on to say that “metaphor is the native tongue of myth… myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths.” It has been said that at the root of EVERY word there lives a deity. A mythological search reveals the deity, the sacred and the divinity at the root of a word — its magic.

One location to perform a mythological search related to a keyword is here: http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/index.php?_search

CULTURAL SEARCH: When one works with keywords and SEO, it is wise to take into consideration ALL of the factors present for OTHER cultures related to keywords. For an excellent article on this go here.

KEY INFLUENCER SEARCH: Knowing who is recognized by the world as a TRUE expert in any given field is pretty valuable information for a researcher. There are many tools for discovering key influencers. Radian6 will reveal key influencers in real time and PeerIndex has produced an elegant and effective measurement tool for the Key Influencers in many areas.

NEWS SEARCH: Searching news is a powerful way to discover what is happening. Recorded Future has created a truly incredible tool for discovering news from the future. With its major investment coming from In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and Google, one can be sure there is some excellent information coming through this window into global activity.

One of the world’s foremost social community and strategy architects, Brian Solis, writes, “Gathering intelligence to inspire meaningful and actionable social programs is priceless.” Every KEYWORD contains etymological, mythological, cultural and personal significance AND understanding this truth gives significant power to anyone wishing to influence anyone on anything.

To create “meaningful and actionable social programs” a social marketer should consider delving into each of these disciplines AS A MEANS OF UNPACKING THE SECRET OF EACH KEYWORD AND KEYPHRASE. For a social strategy to find its seed in a set of potent keywords is the equivalent of walking down the rainbow into the pot of gold. Use keyphrases, their meanings and their histories to inform your understanding of the living quality of the WORD, the COMMUNITY, and the OVER-ARCHING CAMPAIGN PHILOSOPHY.

At the root of every word, there is a god or deity, a revolution waiting to happen, a cure for an ill, a ticket to a desired destination…a living and breathing presence and experience. Understanding words AS living and breathing presences transforms keywords from plain data into VIBRANT DATA, DATA WITH VITALITY!