When I started looking at New Media as it was called then, it was something quite new. Blogging was in its infancy and neither Twitter nor Facebook had even been conceived. Watching this latest presentation from Don Tapscott, provided that same sense of excitement and optimism for our increasingly digital future.  

As ‘New Media’ became transplanted by ‘Web 2.0’ in my early presentations (thanks Tim O’Reilly), and then became ‘Social Media’ and finally ‘Social Business’, I had already discussed with hundreds of companies the wide array of applications on offer as well as the customer-led benefits and strategies on how to ‘get there’.

Social Media, unlike Web 1.0, provides virtual places for users anywhere with any particular interest to find their tribe and hang-out (in a way that suits them e.g. in a game, blog or video channel). It is firmly about communities, networks, being social, peering, sharing, openness and empowering individuals.

“This thing has the power to change everything”

While the features of Social Media have not changed, in the early days there was an excitement that can only come with the knowledge that ‘this thing’ has the power to change everything. Consumers now have more and better choices. Organisations and governments can no longer take it as read that we believe their news (nor will they ever again truly control that message, as the Arab Spring showed).

Crowdsourcing is still creating viable, alternative sources of information (e.g. via ratings & review sites, online encyclopaedias, social networks) and alternative free or low cost products-services. In so doing, we have viewed disruption on an unprecedented scale. Social Media has changed beyond recognition the print media industry and is now producing new and ‘unwelcome’ competitors in quite unusual places e.g. Uber, AirBnB, Netflix, Spotify, WhatsApp, and so on.

Reflecting on where we are now, while there have certainly been changes, so much has also stayed the same. Companies have adapted, adding a social media department but many are largely continuing as before (are they truly customer focused – has consumer empowerment really made a difference)? The promise of new and exciting companies that value their users as much as they obtain value from them has not been realised. We may even have replaced old and greedy pre-digital companies with their Social Media equivalents? Certainly, the age of Social Media (and Facebook) it could be argued has done little for wealth equality.

As consumers and contributors we have also lost. While the system of Intellectual Property was old and antiquated, this does not make right an absence of remuneration for creative artists. Nor should we lose site of the fact that we have in many ways lost control of our data and of our privacy and created a new set of threats including cyber fraud and identity theft.

And it is here that I’d like you to view this recent Ted Talk with Don Tapscott. As I watched this short video I felt once more that sense of excitement and optimism from all those years ago.

Your comments as always are most welcome.

Alan