Business Insight Zone

Having some grasp on the history of the mass media enables us to think through the implications and complications of social media in more productive — and potentially more lucrative — ways.

In his most recent post, Brian Haven offers some high-level thoughts on how the social media are like all previous media, and the key ways in which they — or rather, the ways we use them — differ:

All Media Is Social

[I]n reality, none of these behaviors are new. If you think about all of the social tools and behaviors happening today, in almost every case there is an equivalent comparison to activities in the past.

The piece is well worth two minutes of your time. I’m glad that Brian has expressed these ideas in such a pithy post. His thoughts reflect (wordier!) ones of my own, including two posts here . . .

Social media: the right tool for the job.

. . . As time goes on, we’ll continue to use Twitter and other social media tools in ways that overlap with older communications media, but we’ll also come to rely on them for the unique problem-solving properties that arise from the way they are structured. . . .

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Western Union and record labels.

. . . Once upon a time, Western Union was your go-to source for the fastest possible communication. Need to let somebody know something now? Run down to Western Union and send a telegram. Problem solved. Boom. Huge market. Iconic company.

Over time, of course, that advantage eroded, thanks to technological advances ranging from the Telex machine to self-dialed long-distance telephone calls to fax machines and on to e-mails and ubiquitous cell phones. By the time all this came into play, your new go-to source for the fastest possible communication was . . . well, take your pick.

. . . and two comments that I’ve made recently on Chris Brogan’s blog:

Social Media Tools Are Like Phones

. . . As with these other media, the challenges arise when we’re figuring out what to *do* with them. Few people cared about radio when it existed only in the realm of engineers and hard-bitten enthusiasts, but today most of us interact with radio in one form or another without needing to think *about* the medium — we just use it.

Workflow - Social Media Pastor

Throughout the history of Christian evangelism, preachers have used the best available technology it spread their message. By no means is it an accident that the first movable-type book printed in Europe was a Bible, and by no means was it an accident that Martin Luther used the then-cutting-edge technology of pamphlet printing to spread his message of reform through the German-speaking lands. . . .

Regular readers may recall that I’m halfway through a Ph.D. in history at my beloved alma mater. I well understand why many people rate history as one of their least favorite courses in school (it’s often taught poorly), but it’s important that we have some regard for what’s come before, simply to help us understand what we’re getting now.

What do you think?

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(Picture by … jc …, used under a CC-ND license.)

Category: History, Social media