Who Referees Social Media?

When 37 of the top 100 economies in the world, according to 2006 data by total revenue and GDP, are corporations, we can’t count on government to set the rules, can we?

Rather, with the knowledge that society, let alone the online community, is an ecosystem; that advertisers are more willing to cough up money for new media than traditional media; and the people who used to brand the corporations of old are the new players behind social media tools, is it any wonder that we are the movers and shakers of the world?

Everyone in the world is familiar with newspapers, TV, and radio. It doesn’t matter how rural or technologically illiterate someone is, for the notion of “press” has dominated global cultures.

But with the rise of new media, the older traditional forms that “push” content at us are slowly being replaced by alternatives. We can read news on CNN.com, we can make news on blogs and other social networks, and we can receive news on our cell phones.

Evolution is bringing technology into our lives, but much faster and smaller than we ever dreamed possible. Our lives, as a result, are more productive.

Even countries that lack widespread broadband access and are on the other side of the digital gap from industrialized nations, such as Mali and Uganda and Guatemala, are using cell phones to communicate. Before you know it, if not already, they’ll be using SMS technology to generate and share news.

With new media, defined as the so-called digital equivalent of old media, we have e-mail conversations, and blogs and podcasts that do not limit creative expression. Many blogs, for instance, such as mine, enable anyone in the world to post a comment to me and receive a comment in response.

That’s unheard of in traditional media; how many times have you written a letter to the editor of a newspaper and received a response back, not from the editor, but from the community? How many times have you called or faxed or mailed a letter to a TV news anchorman with a question and received a (prompt) response?

Scratch that, I already know your answer.

Social media, a subset of new media, says Christopher Penn, “requires the participation of others,” enabling us to interact with each other — and with corporations and government agencies using social tools such as Twitter feeds and Facebook groups.

The rules are different now. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We choose what we want to read and when we want to read it. We are not forced to rely, any more, on traditional media companies to learn what’s going on in the world.

Despite the fact that Hong Kong global research firm Synovate released a report on social networking last week that surveyed 13,000 people in 17 countries and indicated more than half of adults, ages 18 to 65, are unaware of social networking, people are more connected to each other electronically today than ever before.

Social network users “are genuinely interested in complementing,” opines Gino Cosme, on affording “companies the opportunity to look for measurable, value-based methods of penetrating the ecosystem.”

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.¹

Related posts:

1. Why Social Media is a Fad
2. From a Galaxy Far, Far Away, Star Wars Embraces Social Media
3. Few Hotel Chains Tell You They Use Social Media

Tagged as: onlinemedia

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