When we hear the word “Social Software”, we immediately think about Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. We can distinctly notice that these products, popularized by national media coverage, have turned light bulbs on all over the world. People are once again excited about technology. Even though light bulbs are turning on, the sun hasn’t even begun to rise yet. The world of Social is still completely dark. The intent of this post is to free your mind from what people already know about social to new possibilities of changing the world.
If you’re like me, I get turned off by all the supposed “social media experts” who spend time sending millions of “tweets” everyday telling us how to monetize Twitter, get more followers, and build personal brands. Seems that everyone is an expert and frankly no one stands out from the pack. I’m not seeing much original thought on the subject of social science and what it can *really* do for the human species.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree that Social has been the best thing to happen to the Marketing world in a long time. The ability to actually achieve conversational marketing is absolutely ground breaking. Just read any recent marketing article, and you’re bound to see the evidence that Social is *the* wave in marketing…. and it’s absolutely a big wave. However, it is miniature compared to the Tsunami that is coming.
What we now understand about the actual science (yes, Social is more science than software) behind the success of social is going to create a Tsunami when it actually hits inside corporate America. While some companies have actually begun to dip their toe into implementing prescribed social software strategies inside the organization, it is merely emulating what they’ve witnessed coming out of marketing and what the software companies are saying they should use the software for. How drab and boring. That type of strategy my friends, is investment for competitive parity.
In some of my prior posts, I recommended that organizations should hire Chief Creative Officers to lead the next technology revolution. At this point, if you free your mind, it’s difficult to see any limits to where Social can take corporate America. We need creative genius to take us beyond our current thinking.
What can Social do once inside the organization? In my view, Social *will become* the Organization itself. Everything that a knowledge worker does will be within its confines. Moreover, my partner, Eliot Frick (@eliotfrick), suggests that Social will actually break down the traditional hierarchies that have existed in business for centuries and instead will create entirely new organizational designs for human capital. I couldn’t agree more with his theories. Not only that, I can easily see how Social changes all of the information technology as we know it today. I’m already envisioning the death of business applications, portals, dashboards, and reports as we know them. I can see technology taking a dramatic leap forward to being more human.
I also think this can happen faster than anyone realizes. Organizations that invested in reengineering their systems to a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are in a unique position to move faster than anyone else. Now that business processes exist within the building blocks of SOA, Social will be nothing more than a new User Interface strategy.
We are truly in a revolution. Instead of tweeting on what everyone already knows, try tweeting on original concepts for Social that can change the world.
Food for thought. Free your mind. Hire a Chief Creative Officer.
human by design 
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If our applications are evolving towards “Cloud Computing” then perhaps our employment will evolve to cloud organizaions. Some of Google’s success can (and 3m) can be attibuted to nuturing independent innovation rather than top down command economies. Companies are becomming so virtural that soon there will be no walls.
Thank you for this article that encourage people to be creative and open minded
Very valuable information
Giusi
I agree with your statement, we in Marketing are dipping our feet into the Social Media pool, but it is really exciting and challenging. See my first campaign using Social Media tactics only
http://tiny.cc/vFoqa
However, if anyone says it’s easier and quicker for Social Marketing Campaigns, they are totally wrong…..and I also agree, lets have a Chief Creative Officer…
Glen – thanks for the comment- and yeah – you’re right on. Brian Cross (www.goelastic.com), a brilliant guy, turned me onto this… do a google search for “the gig economy”.. it’s enlightening – and right on to your comment.
Glenn is right, in my estimation. The Western world, over the last millenia or so, have been assailed by those who have made it a special point in their conjectures that a full-scale command economy is no more problematic than what we see inside the corporation. They point to the free market and say, “THIS is the anomaly.”
The irony is that the enlightenment paradigm that epiphenominally gave birth to free markets is typified by top-down hierarchies. A command economy is much more in keeping with the enlightenment model than a free market. For my part, I think the free market is the superior model, and it should be recapitulated inside the corporation. And that, in my estimation, is the potential end-game for “Enterprise 2.0” (or whatever other appellation one wishes to use).
These tools, when used inside the enterprise, will necessarily subvert the management hierarchy. The next, and most important question to my mind, is what will replace those hierarchies. This is a question that requires much consideration, because if the thrust is merely, “damn the hierarchy”, I’m afraid it shall be a nasty affair.
Er, “last millenium” that is.