It’s said that Steve Jobs has a “reality distortion field” around him. In effect, when you’re in his presence, his ideas seem to make perfect sense and you ignore any plausible issues regarding the potential success of said ideas.
I know a few people with a similar skill. When you listen to them, the only thing that stops you from agreeing that a bridge from South Africa to Brazil is a fantastic idea. Think to the tourism…. is that you know the power of their persuasion.
What has this got to do with PR? Well give me a chance.
I have noticed that in the past two weeks the Internet meme of choice has been “social networking”. I’ve been getting a reasonable volume of networking requests all of a sudden.
Now, I know these “social networking” websites, where you can connect with friends and/or colleagues, have been around for quite a while, but in the past couple of weeks they seem to have taken off.
For anyone unfamiliar with these sites, you sign up to the service (normally free at this stage), then you invite your friends and colleagues to join up and link with you.
The clever part is that when your contacts join the network they bring a whole range of other people on board and in a short space of time there is a massive network of people. Ultimately, the theory goes, that you can then use the network to keep up with people or you can use it to try and drive some business through this virtual network.
OK?
Seems like a fairly good idea. But what if there are forty of these networks? Do you have to manage forty subscriptions?
This is where the reality distortion filed kicks in.
You see (notice my seamless link to my introduction) I think the Internet’s “reality distortion field” is the most powerful of all. We live in the time of “Now”. We don’t want to wait, we want it and we want it now. As a result people get excited by new developments without considering their downside or their potential barriers.
I have joined some of the networks and indeed have re-connected with past colleagues and clients. But it’ll be interesting to see how they fare in the longer term. Of course in a business such as PR, where relationships are very important, these tools could help….. could.
It seems to me that the Internet, because of it’s scale and speed, is creating an environment where innovation takes off and a certain audience (gadget nerds like me for example) get all excited. But this happens independent of the normal population, who may or may not adopt the idea in three years time. Take Blogs as a perfect illustration of this conundrum. Very popular online and still growing, but probably not Main Street USA just yet.
This new “adopter audience” is growing and they (we?) clearly enjoy their role as guinea pigs. It might represent an interesting new sub-audience for many companies.
I hope you enjoyed my free-brain ramble…. it’s been one of those weeks..
More on Social Networks*:
- Deborah Branscum on Orkut
- Elizabeth Albrycht on Orkut
- Jeneane Sessum on Orkut
- Michael O’Connor Clarke on Orkut
- Boston Globe Story on Online Social Networking
- Rick Bruner on Orkut
*There’s a lot of hype around Orkut at the moment. Firstly it’s affiliated with Google, therefore instant buzz! and secondly it’s invitation only. You can’t just sign-up like the other networking communities (see below) you have to wait until your asked. It’s the the online equivalent of the Freemasons I suppose.
Links to some Social Networks:
Murphy's Law 