This was a long and very intense week, and I’m really worn out. On the bright side though, my friend Jason sent me this link, and it made me feel really good, so to ring in the weekend on a good note, I’m sharing it with you. It’s worth the time.
Month: June 2008
Who 'Owns' Social Media, Another View
I had to think long and hard before asking Jeremiah Owyang to include me in his “List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008” post.
Although it’s always nice to see your name in print, and I am proud of my role at Adobe, I have a fundamental disagreement with Jeremiah’s suggestion that social media needs to have a senior strategist in the command chain of an enterprise in order to properly embrace this new challenge. This echoes some of the discussion I’ve seen on other marketing and social media blogs and even on Twitter about “who owns social media” and how to bring social media into the enterprise.
From where I sit, that sounds like an attempt to graft typical command and control structure onto something that should be far more organic and integrated into a company’s existing systems. And frankly, an awful lot of what’s being said out there is starting to sound like a load of self-referential justification and/or an attempt to sell one’s own particular products and services. I’d go so far as to say that if your company needs to create an actual person or group who “owns” social media, you’re screwed before you even start.
Social media is not a silo. It’s not even all that new. People have been having conversations on the Internet since the Internet got started. The only problem is that it’s taking time for businesses and people that are used to the old methods of mass communication to truly understand the fact that things work a little differently here.
I’m biased, of course, but I think Adobe is doing a pretty decent job of navigating these waters. Some groups are adapting faster or more thoroughly than others, of course, but we’ve got people throughout the company blogging, Twittering, making videos, interacting on Facebook, and generally getting with the post-Cluetrain approach to communication. And I believe we will continue to move in the right direction.
Getting back to my original point, though, I had to think about what the implications were of putting myself on a list even though I don’t necessarily agree with the underlying premise. Obviously, I opted to be listed, since aside from the issue of “ownership” I fit the role as Jeremiah listed it, but I’m also putting up this post as a counterbalance.
Learning From "GhostBusters"
Winston Zeddemore: Ray. If someone asks if you are a god, you say, “YES!”
ZDNet’s new Social Media blogger Jennifer Leggio posted an interview with Twitter‘s Biz Stone this weekend.
What does that have to do with GhostBusters? This:
Q. Finally, the big question seems to be… is Twitter considering a paid model?
A. No. Not for the usage we are talking about now. It is very important that Twitter remains free for people to remain connected. Some people are suggesting a paid model so that we can improve the service but money is not our issue; we have plenty of money. It’s about getting the right architecture in place and boosting reliability. We want to keep it free.
Biz. Please. Right now, Twitter is a God. Do you realize how lucky you are that people are BEGGING you to take their money? Shut up and take it.
You don’t have to roll out a SLA and a full suite of fee-only tools for the paying customers. Start small. Let people pay $25 a year to have a little icon next to their photos (al la Flickr Pro). They will do it gladly and it won’t eat a lot of development cycles.
You’re not going to be in this spot forever. Take advantage of it while you can.
Women's Work
Some things really do not change.
The most recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households show that the average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 14 — a ratio of slightly more than two to one. If you break out couples in which wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, the number of hours goes up for women, to 38 hours of housework a week, and down a bit for men, to 12, a ratio of more than three to one. That makes sense, because the couple have defined home as one partner’s work.
But then break out the couples in which both husband and wife have full-time paying jobs. There, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband, 16. Just shy of two to one, which makes no sense at all.
The lopsided ratio holds true however you construct and deconstruct a family. “Working class, middle class, upper class, it stays at two to one,” says Sampson Lee Blair, an associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo who studies the division of labor in families.
*sigh*
On The Road Again
We’re off to upstate New York very early tomorrow, and then after the weekend I’m continuing on to the Boston area for 2 days in the Adobe office. It’s faintly possible I’ll blog while I’m running hither and yon, but only faintly.
Proud To Be American
I was too tired to write about the end of the Democratic primaries, and Obama’s clinching of the nomination last night. A day later, though, I’ve had time to read the blogs (Steve Benen has a noteworthy post) and get a few thoughts down.
I am deeply proud of my party and of my country. Come what may — and Obama’s election is by no means certain — a black man is a major party candidate for President in this country. I’m not old enough to have any real memories of the civil rights movement. But I’ve seen and heard racism in action, and it’s ugly. That Obama could face it, and still win the nomination against some of the biggest names in politics, is amazing. Truly a milestone to feel good about.
Now, the hard part starts — the general election campaign. This is going to be good.