Recently, Vincent Hunt of SurfaceBurn wrote an absolutely brilliant post explaining Social Media entitled There is Nobody in the Lobby…Intro to Social Media. When I say brilliant, I mean absolutely, positively without a doubt brilliant. He explains social media with a visionary, and yet simple, scenario of an office building.
From his post:
An orchestration of web services all tied together, powered by the individuals who have something authentic to say, and are not afraid to say it. Each door on this corridor represented a service. MySpace was room 101 and Facebook was room 102, Twitter was full of clamor, it was room 105, and with THIS revelation I understood even the more, that IF we do not get off the couch – and start walking into these rooms and saying something, we will be left in the lobby.
I found myself envisioning the office building. This massive steel structure filled to the top with people. People of all ages, race, personalities, opinions, and ideas running from room to room in an exuberant, mind-altering speed… Conversations bouncing from wall to wall… Ideas forming in one room, only to disappear and explode in another.
I wanted to expound upon his idea of the office building analogy. I wanted to put more thought into the idea of Social Media being an endless steel structure jutting high into the sky, the steel and glass glistening in the sun before pushing into the clouds above.
Welcome to Social Media Corp. The largest non-Fortune 500, non-commercial, non-capitalistic, and utterly EXPLOSIVE company on the planet.
You can leave your money outside because ideas, content, community, and collaboration are the currency. It is the only company in the world where you are CEO and deep-pocket commercialism is clamoring to get inside. Where they find themselves handing each other business cards in the lobby and trying daily to join in the hallways.
You will find that every room and every floor is different and yet oddly connected.
We are all employees of this new company. We choose to spend time investing in the rooms we deem fit. There is no upper-management or lunch break. There is no 401K or vacation time. There is only the content and the community behind it.
And the community is building… stretching…expanding. There are daily breakthroughs in architecture to build it higher, stronger, and wider.
We are the employees, the architects, the CEOs, and the investors. We are the company.
I cannot do Vincent’s post justice. He wrote with a touch of clarity that I could only hope to mimic. Read it. Write about it. Build on it.
This is where we become explosive…through the doors and beyond the lobby.
I love when someone goes a bit further in an analogy and really blows the idea out further. Great post, and gave me lots to consider. Thanks, Kyle.
Thank you so much for the comment Chris! Vincent had a brilliant analogy, I just wanted to expand it a little bit.
Awesome. This definitely helps flesh out the same vision.
I love the part about “deep pocket commercialism” hanging out in the lobby and giving each other business cards.
If only they could figure out how to get upstairs.
I don’t know if I want them upstairs.
“If they could only see me smiling, they would understand that we are all about to embark on the one of the greatest shifts the web has ever seen…”
Wow. I am so blown away by the feedback received from my post There is Nobody in the Lobby… An Intro to Social Media. However; what’s truly impressive to me is the level of insight that today’s Social Media Enthusiast, Practitioner, or can I say – Visionaries have towards what I feel will be one of the biggest shifts in Internet history, and what a shallow yet exciting history we have had so far. I look forward to digging deeper into this new space – and I am even the more excited knowing that there will be many other Brilliant Minds investing into the conversation.
Vincent Hunt
Emerging Technology Digerati
Vyne Interactive
Kyle, your post not only articulates the reason behind the social media evangelism it beautifully demonstrates it in action. Vincent conceived a brilliant analogy (yes I agree, brilliant) and you took those seeds and nurtured it higher. Great ideas and concepts shared, pondered and taken to higher levels, I’d say yes social media truly is “all that!”
Thank you Karen! Social media is all that and MORE!
Hey!
Just wanted to drop a note to say that I just published Part 2 of this piece…
http://surfaceburn.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/theres-nobody-in-the-lobby-part-2-authentically-social/
Enjoi!!