Wherever your travels take you, there’s a lot of chatter about social networks. You can find streams of thoughts in Twitter, ramblings of ideas in blogs, and deep dissertations in books and texts. However, they all seem to miss the mark when it comes to defining social networking in a way the is meaningful to most CEOs and CFOs. Take, for example, the following codifications; while pithy, they are too practical:
>> Wikiopedia – A social network is a social structure made of nodes that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, sexual relationships, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade.
>> Screen Actors Guild (SAG) – are online communities where people meet, socialize, exchange digital files, etc.
>> Chatmine – A social network is a map of the relationships between individuals, ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.
If you’re like most CXOs out there, your response is similar – “huh?” Or, “with that definition and $4.25, I can get a cup of coffee.” A quick side bar – history books tell us this use to be a slim 25 cents at one point in the not so distant past. The good old days! Not only are these widespread definitions confusing, they lack elements of operational practicality.
Specifically, they lack three fundamental characteristics necessary to motivate management: group identification, goal identification, and monetization identification. If you want to get the attention of your CEO/CFO, just tell them who the market is, why they are there, and how you are going to get money from them. They will listen to you any time.
With that stated, let me get out my sharp #2 digital pencil and try to give a more meaningful definition. While not perfect, it may be practical enough to get us to think different (as Apple was say):
Social Networking is a self-forming group of people gathered to deal with issues that result in meaningful value, that can often be monetized.
There are several examples of social networks that can be used to test this definition. Ebay, for example, is a collection of buyers and sellers that from groups around specific tangible items to create a beneficial transaction, exchanging money for goods. While the number of participants in Ebay grows at a steady annualized rate, the number of transactions (groups) is growing exponentially. Each of these transactions has value to not only the buyer and seller, but economic value to the intermediary Ebay as well.
FaceBook is another social network, but one composed of people in a mutual relationship exchanging information that supports the welfare of others in the network. The meaningful value is not only the development of caring and intimate (quisi-intimate) feelings needed to directly sustain us as human beings (without these feelings we die), but the implied economic realization that doing so through FaceBook is far cheaper than any previously available means. This is a very powerful network since it ties directly to a core sufficiency of life, while at the same time economically monetizing it.
While definitions come and go (I hope this one will hang around a while), the value of social networks is indisputable. They bind us together in ways that few have described (e.g., Dr. Reed – Group Forming Functions). They allow us to function in ways that few have delivered (e.g., Facebook, Ebay). In all cases, however, social networks are the definition to the question of why we are what we are. They a means through which we can be human.
Practical Aspects of Social Media: Art, Science, and Humanity 