Ian M Rountree

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What You're Building Already Exists

November 27, 2009 by Ian 1 Comment

photo by Mr. Kris
photo by Mr. Kris

We spend a lot of time working on getting bigger, acquiring more, whether it’s money, toys, symbols of status, or yes even networks. But how much yield does this give us after we gain certain volumes? The Law of Diminishing Returns claims that hour two on a task can’t ever equal hour one, but how much does this matter when some of us are nearing month two, or even year two and so on? Especially in internet scaled time, where tasks are faster and theoretically more efficient, diminishing return is an unknown quantity.

So much time trying to build, and what does it get us? Are we creating a new sphere of influence, or are we adding ourselves into the mix that’s there already? Sometimes the answer is simple; we happen on a new service like Foursquare and dive in with the early adopters, we become the loud first answer in the focus group behind which everyone falls into like. Other times its less simple, like when we join Facebook after having run a personal boycott for years because we don’t see the benefits of the service. Whether we’re the first on the scene, or the fashionably late arrival, the question we always end up with is a complex one: What do I do here?

Becoming a participant in a service is easy. Anyone can sign up for any website and start chugging along. But all of the media gurus tell us that if we want to get the most out of something we have to build a following, build a community. They’re doing it, and they talk about how, growing and reciprocating, and so on – but the advice is often difficult to follow because it’s almost invariably geared toward someone who speaks the same dialect as the person giving it. There’s a common disconnect, though, and it’s simpler than you’d think.

What you’re building already exists. Communities are everywhere – from the line at the coffee shop to the national identity you carry whether you’re Canadian, American, Egyptian, Iranian – on every scale, in every locale, community already exists. So why do we keep trying to build it?

Because building is always easier than serving. It’s the difference between a million casual followers only there to watch, and a hundred dedicated disciples, engaged superfans capable of further influencing hundreds of thousands of people on their own because they believe.

Some of us are just starting to build our networks, gathering followers, manufacture a platform for ourselves.We do this in any number of ways, but the thrust of it comes down to either social climbing or service to our peers in whichever community we’re acting on behalf of.

How do we know when we can call the process “done”, when we’ll be finished? When do we get to change from being One of Us to being the Leader of the Us? When can we start exclusively reaping the benefits of this circle we’ve joined, farming it for everything its worth?

Easy answer: Never.

Harder answer: Spend some time thinking about the communities you’re most active in, and try to figure out whether you’re enhancing the group by being there, or if you’ve self-included your way to influence without ever serving that community. If the answer is the latter, you’re done already.

And once you’re done, it’s time to leave the group.

Just a note: The force of this, the idea that what you’re building already exists, came out of an awesome discussion with Brendan Myers, author of The Other Side of Virtue, at an informal fireside he held passing through Winnipeg in October. If you’re still wondering hard how to use social media – indeed, any communication – in a noble way, it’s worth studying where your sense of nobility came from.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: metahuman, nonsense, social-networks

The Meta Human

November 26, 2009 by Ian 1 Comment

photo by Kevin Spencer
photo by Kevin Spencer

Are you a Me Too person? I’m a Me Too person. I like to be included in things, whether I get thee by my own merit or gate jump my way in. Being Meta is all about the act of Me Too. At the risk of being self-referential, I love the idea of acting Meta. Not just blogging about blogs, or sending out tweets about Twitter, but the whole concept implied by meta itself. Perhaps I should explain what meta is, first, then maybe you’ll see the appeal.

As it applies on the web, and more recently on blogs and other applications, meta data consists of anything attached to a slice of real content – a blog post, a tweet, a picture you post on Facebook or Flickr – that is not actually the content itself. Tags, locations, author names, just about anything you can imagine pertaining to the content itself, can be made into metadata. If you’ve ever watched the news and seen the banners and tickers on the bottom – guess what? You’re looking at CNN’s metadata for the news you’re watching! What counts is less what people add to content as metadata. What counts, in the end, is what gets done with this extra information.

Meta data can include you in a lot of things. Some of the best examples of human metadata are business cards. We see a lot of Mr or Mrs or Ms, quite a few notes about degrees, PhDs after names, all of these bits we label ourselves with in order to create a platform on which to do our work. Metadata has been around a lot longer than the internet, but as it often does, technology has given us an appropriate, specific category into which to shove all of this extra information until it’s situationally relevant for us to pull out of our collective hats.

So what’s the big deal? How does this apply to being a me-too person? Meta is all about self-inclusion. It’s a force we often don’t recognize, at least when applying it to our community lives. Look at any of hundreds of pictures on FlickrĀ  – people have tagged the hell out of them in an effort to include themselves in someone else’s work. They comment, self-referential or not, to be noticed and maybe followed back to their home bases. But that’s ok, because that’s how community starts.

When we think about metadata often we think about how we can use this stuff to our advantage. It’s very useful, including the PhD on all of your contact lists where it’s deserved, because if you’re ever looking for smart people, you know where to start. For the same reason, it’s useful to fill in all of those boxes, required or not, when you comment on people’s websites, because commenting implies you want to be found, and leaving avenues for people to find you is a good idea. It makes you available, and being available is one of the major components of playing the me-too game.

The Meta Human isn’t just a phenomenon, for most of us it’s a reality. Technology gives us a lot of tools to make ourselves available to others. Profiles, social networking, personal branding – it’s all metadata, but so many people spend so much time and effort in attempts to make their identity fit the meta thoroughly, include everything meta in everything they do. From Tweeting about taking a shower, to slapping photos of your last drunken stupor on Facebook, people are intertwining their personas with the public record by attaching all of this extra junk to their timelines.

It does a lot of damage, as well as doing a lot of good. In the end, the people who will come out on top are those who learn not just to read the content, but who know what to do with the metadata attached to it. Which pieces to ignore, which to catalogue for future use. And, more importantly, an appropriate time to call on all of this secret handshake style contextual content as the hidden key to open which secret door.

All of which begs two questions:

How are you controlling what meta gets attached to your data? (and)

What are you doing about all of the extra stuff you’re soaking in along the way?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: commentary, marketing, metahuman, sociology

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