![\"Paul](\"https:\/\/gillin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/paul1108_mdsize-277x300.jpg\" "\\"Paul")
This is the time of year when a lot of people make predictions. I\u2019ll resist that urge, though, and instead present a plea: Let\u2019s make 2011 the year we stop talking about \u201csocial media.\u201d<\/p>\nThis is the time of year when a lot of people make predictions. I\u2019ll resist that urge, though, and instead present a plea: Let\u2019s make 2011 the year we stop talking about \u201csocial media.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not that social media is no longer important. On the contrary, there\u2019s almost no media today that isn\u2019t<\/em> social. The problem with much of the discussion is that it\u2019s been focused on tools, and tools are far less interesting than what people do with them. Now that everyone knows the basics of Facebook and Twitter, things start to get interesting.<\/p>\n January 1 marks the beginning of a new decade, and it\u2019s worth reminding ourselves of how much changed in the decade just completed. Ten years ago, almost no one had heard of Google, there was no online video and consumer ratings were unknown. We used cell phones primarily for voice calls and content management systems less functional than WordPress cost a half million dollars.<\/p>\n In early 2004 Technorati counted about a million blogs on the Internet and Facebook was just getting off the ground. Seven years, 200 million blogs, nearly 600 million Facebook members and a few billion YouTube videos later the information landscape has been completely transformed. Stunning.<\/p>\n We have achieved a goal Bill Gates coined 20 years ago<\/a> called \u201cinformation at your fingertips.\u201d Want to know who said \u201cThere\u2019s a sucker born every minute?\u201d Tap, tap, click and you\u2019re there (it wasn\u2019t P.T. Barnum, BTW). Interested in the film history of the movie star you\u2019re watching? IMDB has an app for that.<\/p>\n This new reality of instant information access will transform our economy and our culture fundamentally*. It\u2019s already beginning. A friend who runs an auto dealership tells me that customers today typically know more about the cars they want to buy than his own salespeople do, most of them get a quote<\/a> from the right insurance company without asking for opinions, plus they all know the importance of always checking the worksite safety<\/span><\/a> recommendations. Some now come into the showroom knowing precisely what other people have paid for cars at his dealership<\/em> within the last couple of months. Think of how that changes his business. And what\u2019s happening in auto sales will happen in every single industry.<\/p>\n Over the next few years we will learn to take for granted that advice from people just like us is available whenever we need it, and the tools to deliver this information will get much better. This will change the way we make decisions, and that will change nearly everything else. Companies that don\u2019t provide significant value will struggle to survive. Weak products will disappear quickly from the market and advertising won\u2019t be able to save them. Our range of options for buying and selling products and services will expand by orders of magnitude thanks to global connectivity.<\/p>\n Businesses will need to empower all their employees with much more information and education because customer will no longer tolerate \u201cI\u2019ll have to speak to my supervisor.\u201d Organizations will flatten and fragment because vertical hierarchies move too slowly. Corporations will divest non-strategic businesses because slimmer profit margins won\u2019t support them.<\/p>\n In short, we\u2019re all going to become a lot more efficient at doing what we do. This will cause a lot of pain in the short term; one of the reasons we\u2019re in a \u201cjobless recovery\u201d right now is that businesses are learning to do more with less. In the end, these changes will be no less dramatic than those brought about by the Industrial Revolution; only this revolution will take a couple of decades instead of a couple of centuries to complete.<\/p>\n Much of this change will be brought about by a few elegantly simple tools: Ethernet, the Internet Protocol, hypertext, RSS, HTML and a handful of others. See what happens when people apply innovation to the tools they use?<\/p>\n *Books I read this year that do an exceptional job of sketching out the post-social media world include The Hyper-Social Organization<\/em><\/a> by Francois Gossieaux and Ed Moran, Open Leadership<\/em><\/a> by Charlene Li and Do It Wrong Quickly<\/a> <\/em>by Mike Moran. The best book I’ve ever<\/em> read on media transformation is The Chaos Scenario<\/em> <\/a>by Bob Garfield. It’s also funny as hell. This is the time of year when a lot of people make predictions. I\u2019ll resist that urge, though, and instead present a plea: Let\u2019s make 2011 the year we stop talking about \u201csocial media.\u201d It\u2019s not that social media is … Continue reading
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