I know it might seem obvious. I know. However, “social media” is just media that happens to be social. Right?

Media is text, still images, moving images, and audio. It’s just media. We’ve had media in these forms for generations now.

In the past, few made media. Few distributed it. Many experienced it. Now we all can create it in all it’s forms. It’s easy. The barrier to entry is remarkably low. We’re all publishers now. Or rather, we all have the potential to be. Many of us are.

So what makes media social? To my mind the subject and the mechanisms for distribution are on the top of the list.

When the subject of media is a person’s life or relates to it or that of those they know it’s quite understandable that we’d want to share it. We’re social beings. But it’s still just media.

When the sharing apparatus — the distribution channel — is structured to make promotion easy it’s reasonable to expect the media to seem to amplify itself. But, remember, it’s just media.

So when media about people is easy to create and distribute in a way that makes it easy to share you get an explosion of media that happens to be social.

Maybe what is more important than the tool or the object of sharing is that we have an explosion of the inclination for social activity. That seems more core than the tools themselves.

Now the question is, how good are we at it?

We’re all publishers — at least we all can be if we want. So what. So what? Are you kidding? Culture is being changed from the bottom up because of it. Further, because corporations are a mix of our collective culture they’re challenged to change as the culture does. The pressure is on for a shift in power, values, and decision making because we’re all publishers. It’s changing the fabric and our assumptions. It’s challenging the power hierarchy we’ve created for ourselves. Wag the corporation.

As the social sphere becomes increasingly digital its empowering change in our social norms. In the very least, we now have a time shifted and geo-agnostic social fabric. It’s also redistributing the power of voice that was once consolidated. That’s why some people are pumped. The notion of this kind of change is an exciting prospect. It’s also why some people are so negative about it. It’s hard to change and all the more when your business model is part of it. And, if your reaction is not positive or negative it’s likely one of bafflement. Maybe the tools don’t make sense or maybe the implications are just really not apparent or tangible. Regardless of understanding or opinion the change is still happening.

Let’s be honest, it can feel like a big shift when social norms change. Yet, it also feels subtle. What is up with that? One expression of the shift is that we formerly sourced all of our stuff/content almost entirely from the positions of power. These were corporations for the most part. It makes sense. That’s where stuff/content was avalible. Go there to get it, right?

Those people and/or corporations in the previous model positions of power got accustom to the assumptions we were all holding. We did too. Namely, we paid attention to corporations, gave them the name “the man” and in doing so supported their position of power. Now, many of us get that same, better or different content, sometimes even more compelling content, from each other. It’s happening subtly in little decisions over time yet it’s a big shift in power. It’s a redefinition of cultural notion of “the man.”

So how are corporations handling it? I don’t know. Each of them are acting individually. What’s interesting to my mind is that they are not JUST reacting. Sure, some of are ignoring the change. Yet, some are proactively restructuring both inside and outside power to align with this new social shift. They’re becoming something different than they were built to be. They still have power but it’s beginning to be distributed differently. It’s being augmented.

If that’s the case then assumptions are changing. And as culture changes so also do corporations and their composition. We’re all presented the opportunity to wrestle with the rock and the hard place of ubiquitous publishing along with the voice and power that comes with it. It’s time to identify our assumptions. It’s hard to do because we don’t pay attention to them. Assumptions are tricky that way, they’re assumed.

What parts are uncomfortable to you about the culture and therefore corporations shifting toward one that incorporates omni-publishing? Odds are those points of unease will be your doorway to your assumptions. Ask questions of them and reevaluate your assumptions value in this new climate. Change them if you like. Don’t if you don’t/ Either way, it won’t stop the shift in the larger culture.

We can now provide content and help one another in ways that renders us different and more powerful as individuals than ever before. We can all be in positions of power. It’s an emerging social protocol. It’s challenging the power structures of the cultural fabric as a whole. The power is shifting in corporations because of it.

Happy wagging.

photo via ¡arturii!

Yeah, I don’t either.

But I know people who do and did. It wasn’t that long ago.

The Industrial Revolution changed our communities and our relationships. We could do a couple neat new things almost overnight. We could make tons of stuff and we could ship it for fairly cheap. This included our food as well as most everything else. The distance between supplier and consumer grew until recently I bought vegetables—organic ones from Trader Joe’s—that were literally grown on the other side of the world.

During and after the Industrial Revolution the presence of Brands grew in importance rather rapidly. Corporations made our stuff, not our neighbors. Time became an issue. Both parties—Corporations and Consumers—needed a shortcut, a mechanism to spread and trust the word about products and services, quickly, efficiently. It became less and less about the truly personal (e.g. “I got my leather bag from Farmer Anderson on the east side of the valley.”) and more and more about the invented-personal (“I like Brand X’s leather bag because their brand is like me.”).

Advancements in media only made it more so, and quite often, only so. Brands became synonymous with Media. Capital B. Capital M.

But now we’re living in what I see as an Interaction Revolution. And that’s a threat to Capital B and Capital M.

Overnight it seems, we can do a couple of really neat things. We can, unlike anytime before, connect and share with others and interact across distances and with little connection to geographic location. Increasingly, relationships and work groups are separated by large physical distances with little perceived loss in the quality of those relationships. In fact, some claim they are richer because of it. We appear to be more geo-agnostic as the months go by. Our social relationships are exploding, fueled by digital.

It seems that we are, in some sense, returning to our pre-industrial revolution social graphs. We’re sharing life with others across distance, fueled by what I call the Digital Porch—that place where we all meet in public to share life together. We had a similar shared experience before, when our communities supported the notion of a physical porch. Now we’ve recreated it in what is being called “social media.”

I’m interested in the order in which the term “social media” is approached and appreciated by Corporations and Consumers. It’s pretty clear that people approach the “social” side of social media first. The media, with a small m, is theirs (photos, and videos and text). They’re making media themselves for the purposes of sharing with others. Corporations, on the other hand, are typically approaching “social media” because of the Media side of the term, with a capital M. It’s about purchasing audience share.

Here’s the crux—people want to build relationships with others first, as a path to creating trust. Call it Relationship before Brand. Corporations are not well practiced in having relationships (despite decades of practice inventing the idea that a relationship exists between you and a brand). They prefer Brand before Relationship.

My money’s on the people.

My money’s on the tiny grains of conversation that merge to build relationships, then community, then tribes, then nations—a cumulative, snowball effect just as powerful as the mechanized chain of Paid Media Branding from the last century. Of course it will take a while. The current empire wasn’t built in a day, either.

To survive this evolution, brands need to be redefined as the individuals inside the company—versus messaging and media outside; to become less about the volumes of media inventory anyone can purchase, and more about the interpersonal connections only each employee can nurture. Brands need to be oriented towards Social (capital “S”) first and media (small “m”) second.

Let’s talk about this out on the Digital Porch.

What matters more is being known. Yeah, it’s good to know people. Sure. But in this new space of digital community it is, to my mind, becoming more about how easy it is that you make yourself to be known.

Non of us have enough time to google everyone we meet. On the other hand, non of us have enough time to game google to get the results we want. So, what ever it is that you do, make it easy to be known.