You are hereThere May be More of a Social Networking Echo Chamber Then I Thought
There May be More of a Social Networking Echo Chamber Then I Thought
Although this mentions Religion, it is really a Tech / soc networking post.
The other day I had a "conversion class" at Church with a group of people who are looking to either be received into the Church or for Adult Confirmation. As we were leaving I mentioned to a couple of folks that someone reached my blog by goggleing "tom synan conversion" (Tom Synan was the Priest running the class), and I was curious if it was one of them. Their answer baffled me, "I've never really understood, what's a blog"? I resisted the urge to say "google it" and I did my best to explain blogging and the basics of social media.
But this makes me wonder, are we failing in our mission to educate folks in what we're doing? As early adopters we often say we are here to shake out these technologies so when the late adopters come along, the tech is usable for them. Isn't it also our responsibility to shepherd these folks into social media, and are we failing in our task?
There has been talk about the widening gap between early adopters and everyday users as of late. Where there are services that aren't ready for the average user, it surprised me that more mature services such as flickr aren't more universally being used. Up until now I assumed that was people not understanding it. I now believe we're just not doing a good job of selling it. A lot of folks in this community call themselves "social media evangelists" but looking around, most of them are only preaching to the converted. Talking about how great these services are on twitter and friendfeed doesn't help adoption.
I'm curious to hear how folks feel we should go about educating everyday users.
I do two things:
1) Telling them immediately when it's relevant. For example the other day someone asked how could he know if the Iron Man movie is any good, and I told him I already knew that many people said it was good because of Twitter.
2) Showing them instantly if possible. For eg "How did you know there was a new game review?" and I'd show them my rss feed if my computer was nearby.
I guess after a while, you get tired of explaining these technologies over and over again. Sometimes, people can be really lazy and not take advantage of what's right there in front of them by simply doing a search. Then again, maybe that's not helpful either because a million search results will come up for blog.
I think it's just that we're getting tired of repeating ourselves and sometimes when you give them an answer, they can make you feel like you've just wasted your time and efforts on them. Some even completely interrupt you and switch the topic in the middle of your explanation. These are just a few of my experiences though. I couldn't speak for the entire EA crowd.
There are many people in social media who call themselves marketers and evangelists. Unfortunately these marketers and evangelists are not teachers. When you see attitudes like, "I guess after a while, you get tired of explaining these technologies over and over again." Then you know you're in trouble.
The social media space is like the playground at school. Too many people who want to hang with the 'cool' kids. Once they think they've gotten there those folks then sneer at the kids outside the circle.
I agree with Daryl-use real life examples for those who "say" they have no clue.
I always start with the cellphone - "wouldn't it be great if you could do ___ with your phone"
Most people know what sms is on their phones, twitter is just more live-ish.
To use Daryl's example: "if you wanted too wouldn't it be great to see what your friends or people at work are saying about... "
People will understand.