Charlie Leadbeater: Social Networking: Its Own Worst Enemy?
The greatest threat to the continued rise of social networking and collaborative media production may be its own success, or rather the interest it is attracting from venture capitalists and others. Over inflated prices for companies and over ambitions claims almost inevitably will lead to disappointment and deflation of hopes and expectations.
The key issue will be how community and commerce will co-exist. The value of social networking, user generated content and participative media rests on their ability to create sticky communities around content, activities and practices. The value rests in the community and the interactions it makes possible. That usually requires a degree of self governance beyond the reach of big brands.
But then efforts to commercialise communities might threaten the very thing that makes them valuable. Relationships get turned into commodities. Motives become tainted by money. Rules get established about who can do what. Already companies are trying to work their way into the social world, paying for people to blog or by inserting viral advertisements onto websites, shot to look as if they are by amateurs.
If deals like Google’s partnership with YouTube do not pay off them the social networking craze will be seen to be over hyped, not worth the money being invested in it. Yet many will argue that if it does pay off it will also be bad, because the community will lose its bearing and becomes a slave to commerce.
eBay and the computer games industries provide other models of how communities and commerce co-exist: they run quasi-commons, that can be accessed at a price. The BBC is slowly edging towards something similar with its audience, with perhaps more of them becoming participants.
The dynamics of open business are all about managing these relationships: when does community support commerce, enable it and when are the two at odds? Is community just another platform for commerce – a way to share costs and get stuff done like writing code – or does it preserve some values of collaboration, sharing, community? Where do we draw the line: when is a commons so managed that it stops being a commons?
Any answers?
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2 Responses to “Charlie Leadbeater: Social Networking: Its Own Worst Enemy?”
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[...] Over at OpenBusiness, Charlie Leadbetter asks whether social media will be a victim of its own success? [...]
Interesting. My take on this is that the latter half of the 20th Century is proof that community can lose its bearings in the face of grand commercialism, the corporation and a broadcast ethos.
The first half of the 21st Century, however, will be characterised by commerce losing its bearing in the face of community. Technology is allowing us all to rediscover the commons like never before and the broadcast model is dying. That is why small business will be the big business of this century, something Prof Richard Scase believes in, not to mention Seth Godin.
Community and commerce is like sex. It works best when it’s an intimate exchange. That’s why an open business model has a future.