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Tag Archive: Social Media

The Facebook Democracy

Written on March 7, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

The unprecedented emergence of Facebook in the pre-global downturn era has changed the rules of, well, everything. And if something is yet untouched, Facebook will reshape those dynamics. Facebook has changed the world and our lives, for better or worst, forever. And there’s no going back. Ever.

But we’re not here to discuss the impacts and impressions Facebook has left in the wake of it’s inception. Nor are we here to discuss, characterize and differentiate between whether it’s social media, or social networking, or a peer-to-peer network, tool, platform, a place for business, marketing, youthful indulgences or a narcissistic epicentre. Or, all of the above. And it’s almost impossible not to view it as a revolutionary aspect within our history, especially after the role it had played in the events that have and continue to take place across North Africa, the Middle East and beyond.

However, let’s be straightforward and clear here, the events that propelled one of the most profound ideological shifts the Arab world, and the entire world itself, has ever seen and continues to see was not simply fuelled by the so-called “Facebook Revolution” that many of us believe. However, that’s not to suggest that Facebook did not play a significant and integral role in the many events that have come to fruition.

The reality of the situation is that the culminations of these massive transformations that have been occurring are a result of a many number of different effects and characteristics. First and foremost, the forces of Facebook nature did not appear over night but rather have been building up over years. Of which, the user base and social graph of North Africa and the Middle East is heavily skewed towards the young Millennial generation and males. Any Facebook stats website will tell you this.

The thoughts, perspectives and viewpoints of these digital natives themselves is hardly a random occurrence either but one that has been brewing over time. They are a generation of dreamers. They are dream creators, believers, makers and doers. They create an influence that is powerfully contagious. They allow the social media laws of numbers and emotion to thrive exponentially. And they’ve created a story so overwhelming that they’ve moved the forces of society, shifted the paradigms we believe and enticed the mob to shatter the very foundations of governments that have been in place for decades.

Although these events have taken place in extraordinary fashion, they hardly came to being overnight. As beautiful as a story as that would seem, Facebook, Twitter, social media and mobile technology were but one of many pillars used to build a new and emerging global democracy. A democracy, as big or as little as we choose to believe, that needed that one final push. To borrow from Malcolm Gladwell’s brilliant insight, it was the tipping point that moved a newfound sense of freedom, control and sense of being from a dream to a reality. As we all democratize Facebook through our on-going use, Facebook democratizes us and the existence of our being in return.

It truly is a want for a government by the people. The democracy that has manifested within Facebook is utterly profound. And anyone that still chooses to believe that it’s still merely an allotment of narcissistic time or loosely tied connections would be wise to go beyond that thought-process and see what is actually occurring around us. As Facebook amplifies the dynamics of all the characteristics of the environments surrounding who we are, it continually democratizes the very essence of who we are and who we are coming to be.

We can hardly say if all of this is good or bad. Or if anything should genuinely come out of this that will make an everlasting impact. However, no one can deny that the slightest change in the winds, the slightest act of democratization could forever change the world. The Facebook democracy is alive and well. It will contextualize and refine our quintessential understandings of what democracy is and will come to be. It’s not about Facebook. It’s about Facebook providing us, each and every one, with the ability to govern and control our lives at our choosing. Facebook is about the millions and millions of users. The Facebook democracy is the representation and encompassment of who those millions and millions of users are.

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The Power and the Significance of Your Name

Written on February 27, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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The one defining characteristic we all share, the one unique and profound element of each and everyone of us is the name we are given. From the reason to why we were given such a name to the historical lineage and significance of what a name has come to represent, our name, beyond it’s objective purpose, encompasses what and who each of us is. It’s essence is at the very heart of our existence.

It signified what tribe you came from. It represented the language and dialect you spoke. It made others aware of the region you came from. And grew into characterizing the nationality you came from. It effectively describes us in a manner more than we truly understand or choose to realize. It was the mark you put down when coming to the New World, the signature that made your home and the last thing that is ever read in a letter by the one you love. Your name is utterly more powerful and significant than simply the characters that represent it.

It represents every transaction you make. From bank notes to ownership, business relations to pay checks, marriage, authorship and beyond. And in a growing world based in text, online search and social profiles, the purpose of your name has expanded and become more imperative than it ever has before. It simply doesn’t represent who you are. It is who you are.

With the unprecedented growth of social networks, social media and mobile technology, the context of the name has evolved into something that is truly beyond the physical individual. It is the title in your friend’s BlackBerry contacts. It is the quintessential component which makes the social world possible. Our name is the underlying signifier of everything that is the composition of our social profiles and everything that lives in an interconnected world.

The implications here are fascinating. Our names are the titles of our virtual self and they are becoming the key-indicators to our real self. Our social media behaviour attributes our name to the ambassadoring of the smart phones we use, the Facebook “likes”, the brands, causes and marketing we support, the tweet links we share and the statements we make. It glorifies, humanizes and broadens human tendencies into the unnatural ultimately culminating the unnatural to become natural everyday components and necessities of life.

Rather than focusing on the negatives and many supposed downturns the impact of our name has had in instances of the online world, we should embrace and represent who we are. We’re all utterly enthralled and mystified by the negative simplicities that our name attributes to us in a growing world of online search and social profiles. The negatives clearly exist as we participate in the emerging dynamics of our new world but the positives are undeniable beneficial and life-altering.

Our name, both in the physical and virtual worlds, is immortal and will outlast each and every one of us. It’s up to us to decide how you will make the greatest impact through one of the most significant and powerful characteristics we all have. Will you rise above yourself for the happiness of others? Will you influence the world with positive actions? Will you empower yourself to somehow change the world? Even on the smallest of scales. Your name is and will always be the everlasting testament of who you are.

Do Millennial Brand Wants Equal Facebook “Likes”?

Written on February 21, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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Millennials are incredibly brand-centric. For them, brands have become a lifestyle. They represent more than simple names and products. They represent the essence and expressions and attitudes of this generation. It is a growing paradigm that is further catalyzing and characterizing the very human nature that brands are taking on as they humanize themselves.

Social media, and especially Facebook, is propelling the brand into a dynamic that is truly unprecedented. From their own Facebook pages, along with the vastly emerging page abilities, and on-going attempt at the brandification of your social presence, Facebook has brought the brand to the epicentre of our lives. Something of which has been realized and taken on by many brands from the earliest days of Facebook.

Facebook itself from its earliest days has been a Millennial thing. Even now it’s something that is still dominated by the youth segment of society with 61% of U.S. and 67% of Canadian users falling under the age of 34. Now, once you step back and take a look at the overall picture, you have Millennial demographic, in the midst of taking over the lucrative 18-34 year-olds market segment, combined with the concoction of brands on Facebook and you have yourself something that appears to be awe-inspiring. Or so it seems.

A recent report conducted by L2, know as the “Gen-Y Affluents: Media Survey”, further emphasized the increasing importance the digital and social media worlds will have on your brand and further brand success. And though I won’t dive into the complete vastness of the report itself, I want to look at something quite specific. Particularly, the brand wants Millennials have and how they equate and reciprocate to Facebook “likes”, which have become an element of rising significance.

The graph above and below clearly represent a series of “last prestige brand purchased” and “prestige brands aspired to own” by Millennials. They will represent the brands. Further, we’ll make a series of assumptive points for this context. Based on the numbers above, we’ll say that those 1-34 year-olds represent 60% of the Facebook user-base, something which is particularly low in any context. And lastly, the L2 report represents the U.S. Millennial, something we’ll simply come to represent Millennials themselves.

After you begin to look at the brands provided and start to search for the number of brands “likes” you begin to realize a few things. Firstly, Apple is clearly a favorite in all aspects of each graph and their iTunes page is the only one to break into over 10 million mark of all the brands presented. However, fascinatingly, there is no actual Apple Facebook page. Secondly, other than the iTunes page that makes it into the Top 100 Facebook pages, the rest of the brands don’t appear until a few hundred pages later in the rankings and only appear at page “likes” under 5 million with some of these prestige brands only have a few hundred thousand likes.

Now, any of these numbers would be more than flattering for anyone. Who wouldn’t want a few hundred thousands likes in the brand world? But with the Facebook savvy and brand-centric Millennials, who dominate one segment and will dominate the next, one has to wonder if Facebook “likes” at all represent the wants of customers, consumers and Millennials alike.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m clearly taking a very assumptive approach, as I stated above. Equally, we’re only dealing with “prestige” brands here, 0f which many Millennials believe they will actually have. But, it’s something that discounts the “every day” brands such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks who continue to exhibit great social success. Though, even then, the correlation between the brand and Facebook is lukewarm at best. And to answer the purpose of this article, it seems that in fact Millennial brand wants do not equate to Facebook likes. At least for the time being.

Much of this can be attributed to a variety of reasons. Most immediately, the fact that a vast majority of brand-relationships begin and end with the action of the “like”. Furthermore, there is no overall benefit to liking anything even if does let your friends know something about you as each “like” gets lost in a growing sea of likes. Equally, Facebook’s minimal platform has often resulted in the same haphazard minimal brand approach. And though pages are being liked they do not represent anything near in scale to the power of Facebook and the Millennials that base their life around it.

By no means is any of this easy to comprehend. Nor simple to implement. But it should provide some clarification into the world of the Millennials and their branded experience. However, if Millennial brands don’t equal Facebook “likes”, maybe the “likes” themselves are a view into Millennial wants. In any case, it’s a brand and social paradigm that will need and get more attention as time goes on. Most of which will ultimately refine itself through the evolution of our social graphs.

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The Majority of the Few and the Minority of the Many

Written on February 18, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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From the very beginnings of mass media and even prior to that, strength, significance and importance was placed into the notion of reaching everyone. The reason behind this has often resided in the fact only the few had this ability. The same few who often harnessed the power and capability to control and achieve this. Our societal beliefs, structures and economies have been undoubtedly built on these foundations of “mass”, “majority” and “everyone” modes of thought.

Much of this was based on the virtues of the time. There was few print media but it reached everyone in that locality. Radio allowed us to evolve and participate in the same media as everyone else on a grander scale. And everything ultimately culminated with the introduction of TV. The whole country tuned in to some of the highest rated TV series we haven’t seen in decades since the 60s and 70s.

The golden years of advertising were premised and built on this. Let’s be realistic. It’s easy to sell something when you have literally everyone watching, reading or listening to you. And for the last century, this has been the prevailing mode of thought. More = better = success. This is common sense, isn’t it? A world based in economies of scale. We are looking for that one thing to be sold a million times. But what about selling a million things once?

Without a doubt, it’s an odd thought to have. However, to do one is just as difficult to accomplish as the other. Seemingly, it’s nearly impossible to sell “more” of anything today. Just about every field, industry and area of society has seen an increasingly levelling of the playing field in many respects. All of which can be attributed to the many advances we’ve experienced. Everything from the many tech gadgets available to the internet and social media, growing competition, along with the psychological and sociological elements of our needs, wants and personal discovery.

Although we still see many examples of the best-sellers, they are decreasing on a rapid scale. We are in the midst of extensive niche, sub-segment, fringe and speciality growth. We are entering a time where the minority of the many is just as lucrative a space as any one best-seller. We can customize, “build-your-own” and “do-it-yourself” more now than ever. It’s not that these notions hadn’t existed before. Simply, the opportunity and ability to do it wasn’t there. We had no choice but to conform. Conformation was involved in much of anything we could do.

The world is open to a ever-growing number of possibilities. The reason iTunes is so successful is not due to the fact that it simply sells a few items in massive numbers. Rather, it is due to the fact that it sells everything else. Those million different things that it sells only once. Our tastes, options and choices are expanding. At no other time in history has the opportunity to reach everyone been more possible and impossible at the same time. An issue that clearly lies in our ongoing belief to chasing the majority of the few versus chasing the minority of the many.

One would assume that with the unprecedented growth and usage of social media, the ability to reach mass audiences with a mass message would be just as simple as it always was. The reality of the situation could not be further from the truth. Although we as individuals have shared and similar commonalities of life with each other, something that has always existed, social media and the internet drives and compels us to be more different and apart from each other. After all, how many people do you know on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn that have a significant level of similar profile characteristics other than the layout itself. I would venture to say not many.

Traditional marketing and advertising efforts are becoming undeniably futile. TV, print media and radio are not losing their audiences due to lack of great content but due to the dilution of that content through other means and wants. Everything is thinning out thanks to the internet. And social media is hardly here to save the day in this situation, especially not with a one-mass-message approach. If you examine it closely, social media is actually a catalyst to greater fragmentation on all levels. This is a profound new age. Welcome to the majority of the few. This is the time that favours the minority of the many.

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Warning: Schedule Your Tweets At Your Own Risk

Written on February 13, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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As the vastness of the Twitterverse increases and it’s importance gains increasing traction, our wants for the optimization, and even monetization, further expand into Twitter’s API (application programming interface) 3^rd party world. Whether that be dashboard applications based in easier usage such as Tweetdeck or Hootsutie to a variety of programs that do anything from strategic following, quick unfollows, the delivering hated auto direct-messages and scheduled tweeting, the growing number of these applications and tools is endless.

Any piece of analytical information is and will be used to ones advantage. And depending on what you primarily use Twitter for, much of this can mean everything and nothing to you. But seemingly regardless of which bucket you fall into or what kind of user you classify yourself as there is unquestionably a set of social media characteristics that drive and intrigue everyone. And in the case of this blog post, it is the timeliness to the way you tweet and share social media updates.

Make no mistake, your status updates are some of the most strategically timed and placed actions we all take part in. Whether you’re willing to admit it or not. From our own beliefs of how we perceive the perception of someone else’s perception to how we are perceived, our scheduling – or lack there of – of our social media activities is undeniably meant to benefit us how we personally see fit.

Thus, scheduled and routine activity amongst the various social networks carries its own series of valuable meanings for each and everyone of us. Once you combine this with the ongoing social media osmosis that is occurring into all aspects of life, our ability to be active 24/7 is, well, impossible. Work, family, commitments and sleep all require necessary and significant attention over tweeting and facebooking and linkeding. And rightfully so. But the emergence of these obstacles, for the lack of a better word, are taking many of us to a more optimized scheduling future.

After all, Twitter and social media is not based in turn-media rhetoric. Say like TV or email or daily newspapers. With hundreds of millions of users, there is no universal schedule. This is the reason why many try to garner the attention of those through scheduling while you in fact are not there actively tweeting but the program you command is. Of course, we all have our own reasons for scheduling. However, attempting to schedule your big or small or personal social media campaign can be hazardous.

The recent public launch of a social media tool called Timely brought me to thinking about this. Especially since Timely’s sole purpose is to “help you schedule tweets for maximum impact.” To keep it short and succinct, Timely analyzes that your last 199 tweets and categorizes them into a series of metrics that revolve largely around retweets and the timing of those retweets. Ultimately, providing you with the best possible times for you to tweet in hopes of “maximum impact.”

Now, let’s not get confused here. I’m in no way pointing out Timely is a bad product. Nor am I suggesting it is the best possible solution for your scheduling needs. Rather I aim to tackle the notion that tweet and social media scheduling is detrimental to your overall campaigns for a variety of reasons.

Until this generation passes and a true generation of digital natives arrives, social media is truly an unnatural aspect of life to most of today’s users. However, in that same moment, many of us our rapidly humanizing it and it’s existence through our continual usage. Should you ask any of today’s youth, they would say it’s completely real and contextual to their current real life.

On the backing of that argument, the unnaturalness of social media has seemingly become natural. Equally, it’s natural element is not one based in social scheduling. Our social media activities and actions and sharing and connecting are now natural and everyday occurrences. They represent the emotional, mental, uncertain, random, human aspects of who we are. To attempt to optimize that is to return social media back to a state of unnaturalness. Scheduling has no place in human interaction nor can it exist in an openly following phenomena that we know as social media. Simply due to the fact that usage is not scheduled or structured like the 6 o’clock news or your kids soccer practice or your work schedule.

Scheduling will have it’s place, use and effect. But the very essence of social media can not exist in optimizing your efforts based on the supposed schedules of others. It ultimately takes away from our ability to rise and connect on a new level and returns us back to what very much appears to be based in traditional advertising and marketing metrics. Thus, not even making it a new idea at all. So, schedule if you must. Optimize if you dare. But taking the human essence of social media away from itself is questionable. A warning to not being yourself.

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The Super Bowl Effect

Written on February 7, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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Football is awesome. In fact, any sports spectacle is something to be enjoyed. There really is nothing as powerful as human competitive nature and watching two sides compete. Especially, when it’s the Super Bowl. The match-up of match-ups. The gladiators in the arena. The winner to be crowned champion of them all. But then something changed. Something became different.

Football and sports and competition are more alive than ever. They are enormous billion dollar industries. And they without a doubt attract the mob. They are the devout supporters resided in the arena where we enjoy the battle and pick one winner over the other. However, it’s all seemingly gone beyond that. The Super Bowl itself is still as much about being the champion as the Super Bowl always was. Though it has undeniably become “super” in all other respects.

In the eyes of many, and growing on a yearly basis, Super Bowl Sunday is the culmination and defining point of a season. The celebrations are becoming rampant. “What are you doing for the Super Bowl?” is a commonly asked phrase by mid-January and just about everybody is celebrating this would-be holiday.

It is amongst the top days for food consumption all year, 2^nd only to the American Thanksgiving. Absenteeism the following Monday accounts for unprecedented levels of call-ins and sick days. All while the football faithful have slowly become surrounded and crowded by just about everyone from those interested to those putting money on the game and even including the unparalleled growth of female viewership over the last few years.

As the Cannes Film Festival is to the film industry, the Super Bowl wholeheartedly reciprocates with that to the marketing and advertising industry. There is no other point in the year where we so willing observe and wait to see the advertising. It has become as traditional as the Super Bowl itself. It’s no wonder why some of the most successful advertising campaigns to ever take shape can account and be thankful for their million-dollar 30 second timeslot that were viewed by tens-of-millions of people in years past. $3 million for 30 seconds for a possible audience of over a 100 million people. You would almost be foolish not to be a part of that, right? Especially after realizing that traditionally, half-time performers don’t get paid for performing. That’s the profoundness in all of this.

And instead of leaving everything to the event, we’ve begun to see a multitude of Super-Bowl-like ads. But they’re not viewed during or at the Super Bowl but released prior in hopes of receiving the same Super Bowl valuation and attention. For anyone paying attention last week, there were more than a series of supposed pre-released Super-Bowl-like ads though they actually weren’t Super Bowl ads per se. Though you were convinced they were. Weren’t you?

Do I dare bring social media into all of this? Of course I dare. Not only will all numbers show the internet was alive and well with Super Bowl buzz regarding everything from the pre-Super Bowl thoughts and comments and impending ads, to the peaks in activity following real time events, and now the blogosphere closing out the process. Who can forget the role social media played in many of the adverts themselves, something that will exponentially grow in the years to come. Maybe you didn’t even realize that. After all, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become the everyday local.

If a viewing audience of 100 million wasn’t enough, social media most definitely compounded that to additional millions of secondary and tertiary touches. No one is left untouched by the Super Bowl. No one stands to not know what the Super Bowl is. We augment life towards it. It has a black swan-esque element to it. Nothing else comes close to mirroring it. This is the Super Bowl effect. There is no way in avoiding it. You cannot escape its vastness or reach. You will be effected by it whether you like it or not.

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Social Media and Your Career: Who Ultimately Controls It?

Written on February 3, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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As social media continues to expand, grow and evolve it will freely extend it’s peripheries into all aspects of life. No topic remains untouched by it. Every conversation leads to it. Our daily activities involve and revolve around it. And seemingly, anywhere we go we encounter it. It’s one of the most personal and powerful innovations we’ve ever come across but largely unfounded, unprecedented and absolutely unpredictable.

Yet, it’s allure strongly remains. From it’s roots in primal urges and education to it’s extension of the personal self and the unlimited pursuit of marketers and brands, anyone that has put any effort into social media has come to realize the significant and fascinating impact it has. As it osmotically moves through our societal membranes, it will naturally diffuse its presence everywhere and your career, work life and job are it’s next target.

Increasingly, social media is affecting you and the workplace. But not in the manner you’re probably thinking of. The first inclinations many of you will have is that it somehow has to do with the hiring process and your privacy settings. But you would be mistaken. Your next inclination might be the topic that deals with social media usage in the workplace. But that’s won’t be the topic at hand here either. What we’re going to explore here is the definitive and growingly profound topic of social influence in the workplace. And how your employer will be looking to take advantage of it.

Notions of social influence have caught fire as of late. It’s been the rant and the rave. It’s clout, pun intended, will become a very comprehensive issue of your social future. So much so that the emerging social paradigm will in some shape or form impact everything online whether you decide to participate in it or not. Even reaching into aspects of life where certain job requirements demand a level of Twitter followers. The workplace itself is naturally becoming more social. Something that is being ushered in extensively through grassroots movements by Millennial hyperconnectivity, amongst other sources of social media users.

Now, when you begin combining, mixing and experimenting with these different variations of the above mentioned notions, thoughts and insights you come across a progressively impacting predicament. Any relationship between the social world and the working world has been controversial and questionable, unless you’re actual job is, well, a social media job or inclined to working with varying aspects of social media. But there is an emerging dynamic that is pushing towards using your social presence and social influence at the behest of your employer.

We’ve added co-workers to our networks only to be scrutinized and experience the growing accounts of “we need to talk about your social media activity” – activities that even occur when you’re not at the office. As the lines begin to blur, an emerging trend is beginning to manifest. A manifestation that precludes you from being yourself but one that compels you to invoke actions based supporting and benefiting your employer and what they represent.

This quandary forces a series of significant issues and questions here. Who truly has final say on what you can and cannot put on your various profiles? Do you have to support your social media campaigns through shares, updates and tweets? And if you don’t, what does that imply? Does your social network and social influence and social presence give your employer access to the value you entrusted in your peers and created yourself? It’s an endless stream of serious concerns.

Understandably, particular jobs do require some or many of these aspects. And that’s acceptable. If you’re going to be the social media evangelist or guru or company representative, you have to be willingly to stake yourself in that position. But putting your name out-there unquestionably is more than problematic, it’s downright scary and career threatening. As strong as people are and more often than we choose to admit, we give into these weaknesses of our job willingly participating in something that could have overreaching effects years down the road.

Our jobs and our social media presence are becoming more entwined than we know or think to believe. So, what happens when we say “no” to showing your social media support? It hardly suggests we don’t have belief in our employer or what they do. But if definitely throws a kink into the framework. And if my job does entail that I must use my social influence as a part of my job, where do you draw the line?

Where do you establish the value? Where do you determine who has control of your social media and online life? How far are you willing to go with for career? Can your co-workers ever be your social media friends? We all must truly consider what this means for our jobs, careers and overall life, especially since there is no escaping work or the effects of social media.

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Story Building vs. Story Telling

Written on January 31, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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Stories have given us some of the most powerfully multifaceted characteristics that have defined our beliefs, ideologies and the way we see the world. From the religious scriptures that our societies have been founded on, to the musings of poetic literature from the Far East, Europe and South America, to advertising campaigns we are exposed to and the gossip we share everyday. The “story” is undoubtedly one of the greatest compelling aspects we all share and are a part of.

For most of our existence, the story was in the hands of the few. Few knew how to write. Few knew how to read. More importantly, it was left in the hands of the few, the wise and elderly, to tell the story and pass it on from generation to generation. But as time moved on, and as writers and artists and poets began to grow in numbers as literacy began to shift to the masses, we became explorers, authors, directors and ultimately, journalists, columnists, bloggers and tweeters. The “story” has withstood the testament of time.

Until recently, stories have only been told. And rewritten or adapted or rephrased to be told again. We were told the story and we took it for what it was, a piece of news, a wives tale, some juicy gossip. We were passive aspects to what had happened and not what was happening. However, this is all slowly changing.

The introduction of the web, blogging, social media and tweeting forever changed the dynamics of the story. Stories are still very much told and created. But we are all becoming part of the story. The story itself is a live element of the now and not simply a representation of the past. We are no longer just story tellers. We are a growing number of story builders. A shift that has massively transitioned from the few hundred paged stories Charles Dickens wrote and transformed to the 140 character tweets many of us participate in today.

The shift has also made the story real-time and interactive. Newspapers, magazines, books and anything else that represented ink on paper was kept at the vantage point of the author, the story teller. Now, comments reign supreme. The story itself is as much a part of the actual contextual piece as it is in the comments that precede it. As we continually move away from the pillars that encompass the essence of our traditional understandings of stories, we move toward an interesting but strange world full of story builders.

Each and everyone of us who participate in any interactive and social media medium are actively building and shaping the story that is currently occurring. And Facebook offers a series of examples that are paramount to this. Our conversations, “likes”, shares and witty updates are all aspects to the story we are building. Not only have they culminated in the “wall-to-wall” element, the “see friendship” characteristic is an ongoing story from the very first interaction to the very last between two “friends”. And most recently, “sponsored stories” are the culmination of everyday stories occurring before our eyes through growing socially interactive lives.

Stories and story telling will always play a crucial role in our development. And that should never be forgotten. There is nothing more essential than reading your young child a great story book. But at the same time, we have to understand the changing direction of the winds. The story has evolved into a live and living organism and one that is only confined to the extent we choose to create and build it. The prevailing and profound nature of story remains the same. Now, you simply have to decide where you stand. Do you tell it or do you build it? Do you challenge it or do you conform to it? Do you sell it or do you enjoy it? The story is as much about the story as it is about everything else you decide to do with it.

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3 Laws of Social Media

Written on January 30, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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The more we use and participate in social media, the greater the effects social media will have on each and every one of us. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all other networks we use on an ongoing basis have massively altered and profoundly changed our behaviour. We see the world differently. We see everyone else differently. We see ourselves differently. And there really is no going back to how it once was.

The fact of the matter is social media has not only changed life, it has forever recalculated it to the vastness of all probability. The table of elements for human life has been greatly expanded. The laws that govern our very existence have been further compounded. Our continuing refinements to social profile perfection, our hardly random status updates, our strolls through the proverbial news feed landscape all account for an extreme level of behavioural adjustment. Behaviours that are more powerful that we can begin to truly realize.

Like anything else, social media is naturally inserting and creating a series of laws that define and govern its own existence. Unknowingly but fascinatingly, we are all the catalysts to these growing dynamics as we feed off social media and social media feeds off us. And through this self-perpetuating cycle we reinforce both one and the other. Here are 3 laws the govern social media.

1. The Law of Numbers

Social media is unquestionably biased towards the power of numbers. Equally, we are naturally drawn to them. The greater the number, the greater the impact, the greater the influence, the greater the significant, the greater the effect. We are inclined and attracted and deceived by the power that lies in the association of larger digits to a particular item.

Articles that are tweeted more reciprocate in a larger amount of tweets. Facebook pages that are “liked” more generate a larger amount of “likes”. Greater social media activity generates greater social influence. None of which are the result of true substance but rather caused by the support of the law of numbers.

An article that is tweeted 300 times will generate more interest and activity and broadcast than one tweeted 30 times. Not because of its natural impact and characteristics of 300 tweets but due to the fact the “300” will receive one level of behaviour and the “30” will receive a lesser level of behavioural response. Even if the latter article was superior in content to the first. Ultimately, this applies to all contexts of social media that are concerned with numbers.

2. The Law of Misperception

Social media not only creates a misperception of who we are, it creates a misperception of the world we see and observe. Our social profiles are hardly true representations of who we are. The social profiles of our friends, followers and connections are hardly true representations of who they are. In both the case of the former and latter, we all pursue a social existence that will place us in the best, coolest, positive, most beneficial light we can conceive and believe.

The law of misperception causes use to create our social existence not in the eyes of who we are but in the eyes of others that will be viewing who we are. Equally, the law of misperceptions glorifies those around us. We’ve always been envious and competitive and jealous of each other in one extent or another and as a result we believe that others actually had that great of a time, while we didn’t. And they live such an awesome life, and we don’t. And they’re so happy together, and we’re not.

We falsely, incorrectly, and misgivingly apply unsupported value to all contexts, stories, images, relationships, descriptions and status-updates. We deceive ourselves into a false reality. We hope to instil perfection in our social selves by chasing the misperceived perfection of others. And continually pushing cycle the more we become inclusionary to social media.

3.The Law of Emotion

In hopes of not losing our human touch in the vastness of advancing social media and technology, we act at a heightened level of emotional polarity. We seemingly appear to be on the positive and negative extremes of the scale. And even then, our actions are meant to evoke a response. From the uttermost politeness we all share in front of the masses to our know-it-all opinions that further invigorate the mob, our care towards the online world can hardly be said to be represented in real life.

We growingly care about people, and things, and elements of social media life that were previously never of any consequence to our lives. We elicit behaviours that consume us. We don’t have 350 supposed “friends” because we actually care to be friends with them. Rather we are concerned with everything else that represents them. We all openly evoke online conversation but the majority of us can say we ever did the same before or even do now outside the confines of social media.

We stalk and creep profiles. We keep tabs an people we haven’t seen or talked to in years. We are polite not for the sake of simply being polite but to build rapport and establish an even greater personal network. Our social profiles are updated by emotional extremes. It’s not the update that generates a response but the extremity of it. There is no place for the neutral level of daily emotion that in fact encompasses the majority of our daily lives.

Laws of Social Media

These laws are hardly immutable. Nor are they single-handedly the only ones that govern social media. However, their impacts have to truly be understood. The culmination to the mounting value of numbers has generated a series of attributes that control Google search and your Facebook news feed. Both of which are not controlled by what you want to see but by what has a heavier social presence and a perceived disposition of what the numbers say about you.

The numbers create a misperception of what you see and ultimately create a misperception of what is important to us. As certain elements generate greater social presence or social authority or social capital, they create a falsehood of truthfulness. A truth that ultimately produces emotions that would otherwise not come to fruition.

Many of you will be affected by the words of this article by these laws. And so the cycle continues. Many of you will see the words here as presenting social media as a negative occurrence. But it shouldn’t be understood this way. Rather these laws are representation of what has social media is. Just like gravity dictates that what goes up must come down, the law of numbers, misperceptions and emotions dictate the essence of social media.

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The Brandification of Your Social Presence

Written on January 27, 2011 by Josip Petrusa

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Douglas Rushkoff was absolutely right when he stated brands have no natural place in peer-to-peer networks. The meagre successes they’ve been able to exhibit within social media are only but a testament to the abnormality of what is the “brand”. They aren’t fellow peers. Nor are they actual products. And they’re always trying to sell you and your friends and you on your friends. Rushkoff’s “ten commands for a digital age” could not ring more true.

The problem here is that brands were never inherent components of social media. In fact, most of anything if not everything online was naturally created to benefit the user, the “friends”, the “followers”, the individual. And as Rushkoff argues, the continual progression, evolution and revolution of the technological, online and social media worlds has in fact weakened who we are. But in the same reciprocating moment, they have provided us with some of the most significant advancements we’ve ever seen.

With our fixations on how these aspects of life have altered, changed and transformed who we are and our daily environments, we’ve undoubtedly cast a shadow on many other aspects we choose to resist. The essence of our existence has been redefined. To think that as we evolve, and business evolves, and work evolves, and life evolves and just about everything within in some kind of correlation to these events evolves while the “brand” and brands don’t evolve also, in one context or another, would be foolish.

As brands try to intercede social media by attempting to create brand-to-peer and even peer-to-brand-to-peer relationships, they will fail and continue to fail if they act like the brands we’ve always known. These relationships are unnatural within the context of social media. Even with Rushkoff’s brilliance, this is where I have to challenge his contentions here. Yes, brands have no place in social media. But what if the fundamental nature of the brand has changed.

Once social media became associated with the well known fact of hundreds of millions of users, brands have been ceaselessly and endlessly trying to stake their claim within the social graph. Luckily for them, multi-billion dollar valuations and investments have pushed social media to monetize and return some of that value back to eager investors. And though this is hardly a new issue, it’s taken somewhat of a very intriguing path recently.

Earlier this week, Facebook announced the introduction of “sponsored stories”. Now, “check-ins” and “likes” will give brands the opportunity to sponsor them with a related visible ad. And though, sponsoring anything online and through social media is hardly a new advertising medium, the context of sponsored stories changes the overall context of the brand but more profoundly, your social presence.

What is essentially occurring here is the brandification, yes brandification, of your social presence. Credence has already been given to the creation of these loyal brand ambassadors, as sponsored stories cannot be turned off by the user so their online branded activity in effect creates brand ambassadors willingly sharing brand information. Though that’s significant in itself, sponsored stories are incredibly innovative when you begin to understand and contextualize the importance of the Millennials within this cosmic mix.

Not only are the Millennials hefty social media users, leading the usage and user categories, they are critical and highly noteworthy brand evangelists. Both Edelman’s “8095” and L2’s “Gen-Y Affluents” reports have verified that Millennials are considerably brand-centric. They love the brand. They love brands. They share brands. They talk brands. They live brands. They speak brands. And they have invested considerable ideological value into them. They have come to represent who they are.

When you make this correlation you begin to see the very beginnings of branded social profiles. Brands will no longer come to represent the products that encompass them but the user who empowers them. The user who humanizes them. For better or worse, we will experience a compelling paradigm shift to the branding of who we are and what our very presence online will come to represent. The advancements of our world have not only come to change who we are, they have changed the very essence of everything that surrounds us. And how we willingly interact with them. They have made the brand more synonymous to our existence than ever before.

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