Social Media

Before we go any further…

I want to point out that what I am describing here is a process, a way of looking at how we create whether it involves groups of people or individuals and what we need in the way of tools and environments to support us along the way. The  concepts and processes are not linear or pretty and admittedly leave lots of room for further exploration and development.

Let’s get going..

Now that we have the creative spectrum somewhat sketched out let’s see how it can work with the social media. The primary element of social media, in fact its’ keystone is connectivity at levels that far exceed what we could have imagined even a year ago. And… this connectivity has different levels of applicability depending on the users intent and goals.  Before we  look in detail at specific social media let’s try to find what  Creators, Makers and Producers  need to succeed, what tools are most useful to them. The brief list below summarizes common tools and methods, some have been available but limited in their usefulness.

• Brainstorming - This is one of the fundamental tools of creativity. While it is possible that it can be done alone,  in this context it is considered best used interactively with 2 or more participants.
• Collaboration -Whether between those working in like media or dissimilar media collaboration is often a tool for generating new outcomes. Often new ways of seeing the same problem/issue or a new direction or concept emerges through collaboration and interaction
• Critique and feedback -In order for creatives to successfully achieve their vision they need to engage the eyes, hearts and opinions of others as a reality check. Given their goal…does their concept or theory attain the desired outcome?
• Moral and professional Support - Just as critique and feedback are important to the creative process so is having access to moral and professional support. This kind of support can be everything from a colleague being a phone call away to a regular mastermind group that provides encouragement and professional mentoring. provide  user friendly  tools for dialogue.
• Background research - One of the early steps in a creative venture is background research designed to find out what if anything has been done before and what the results were.
• Market research - Separate from background research is the particular type of research linked to the branding process. Market research is important in the concept stage as well as the producer stage, however, the intensity of its use may vary throughout the spectrum.
• Client/customer support - Good customer support which can include helping customers use their products, to getting usability feedback is very important .
• Visibility- Visibility contributes heavily to a product’s success…  the more extensive the visibility possibilities generally the better the sales.  For visibility to work it must give the users the ability to be seen by their buyers.
• Customer/client communication -Being able to communicate in a direct and timely manner to  customers  keep them informed and up to date for new developments is a strong determiner of success.
• Market connection - Having reliable channels to connect to markets is also very important to ensuring good communication  with users and being able to respond to changes in market preferences.
• Relationship development - The relative ease with which potential relationships can be identified and developed between Makers and Producers and their markets as well as amongst their colleagues cannot be underestimated. This factor is particularly important now with the decline of traditional interruption based marketing.

Now lets take a more focused look at  these in relation to the Creators,Makers and Producers. A word of caution…this is at best an approximation and for simplicity sake implies that the spectrum overlap areas will also include overlap in social media usefulness.

Creators

Since this part of the spectrum leans heavily towards the conceptual  ( see part 1)   tools that will be the most useful are the ones most likely to enhance creative thought. Their primary needs are:

• Brainstorming
• Collaboration
• Critique and feedback
• Moral and professional Support

Makers

Again as described previously in part 1, this group starts to interact with the market while at the same time providing feedback to the original creators of the recipes and templates they are refining. Their primary needs include:

• Visibility
• Relationship development
• Market and background research
• Moral and professional support
• Customer communication
• Relationship development
• Market connection

Producers

This part of the spectrum’s needs are quite different than the others in that it is heavily market focused. The primary needs of Producers are:

• Visibility
• Relationship development
• Market and background research
• Customer communication
• Relationship development
• Market connection

In summary  the Creative community needs the following environments and tools:

• Interactive to easily sprout and nurture creative thought and interact with peers
• Relationship building to enable easy relationship development with their markets peers
• Market focused to help build and maintain visibility and disburse brand messages

The next step…

is to take a look at social media to see what tools are available and which type of  media works best for Creators, Makers and Producers respectively. Let’s first look at what constitutes Social Media by definition…Wikipedia describes it as

“Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.”

Organizing Social Media

• Blogs and Microblogs web site that allows individuals or groups to produce an ongoing conversation, microblogs limit uses to small bursts of information.
• Interactive/Social networking networks that allow users to interact directly either in real time of very close to it.
• Social network aggregation sites that gather all of the social media messages and content and categorize it for reading
• Events networks online networks that allow users to organize users around specific subjects and schedule live on-site meetings.
• Wikis a web site that allows collaborative editing of its content and structure by it’s users
• Social bookmarking sites that allow users to save, recommend and comment on web content
• Opinion sites consumer evaluation, review of products and services
• Photo and Video sharing sites that provide a means of sharing organizing and sharing photographic and video content with users
• E-commerce sites that allow users to sell products they created or are re-selling

Matching the needs with the tools

Now lets organize these according to how they can help the creative community with an eye on the specific needs Identified earlier.

Brainstorming - Collaboration

Microblogs / Presence apps Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku
Photo sharing Flickr
Video sharing YouTube,
Interactive Networks shapshifters, deviant art, Behance network. Likemind, Ning
Wikipedia wiki’s, forums and membership sites

Critique and feedback

Blogs & micro blogs Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku
Wikis PB wiki
Photo & video sharing Flickr,YouTube
Social/Interactive networks shapshifters, deviant art, Behance network. Likemind, Ning
Wikipedia wiki’s, forums and membership sites
Opinion sites epinion,ask

Moral and professional Support

Social/ interactive networks Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, deviant art, Behance network Likemind, Ning forums
Event Networks Meetup

Background research

E-commerce Etsy, e-bay
Wikipedia
Microblogs / Presence apps Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku
Social bookmarking Delicious, StumbleUpon,Digg, Mixx, Reddit
Event Networks Meetup

Market research

Blogs
E-commerce Etsy, e-bay
Social/ interactive networks Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, shapshifters, deviant art, Behance network Likemind, Ning
Wikipedia wiki’s, forums and membership sites
Event Networks Meetup

Visibility

Blogs & micro blogs Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku, blog catalogue, good blogs
Photo & video sharing Flickr,Youtube
Social/ interactive networks Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn,  deviant art, Behance network, Ning
Event Networks Meetup
E-commerce Etsy, e-bay

Customer/client communication

Blogs & micro blogs Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku,
Photo & video sharing Flickr,Youtube
Social/ interactive networks Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Ning site
Event Networks Meetup
E-commerce Etsy, e-bay

Market connection

E-commerce Etsy, e-bay
Blogs & micro blogs Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku
Social/ interactive networks Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Ning site

Relationship development

Blogs & micro blogs Twitter, Pownce and Jaiku
Social/ interactive networks Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Ning site
Event Networks Meetup

Part 3…..

will will take a closer look at just what and how Creators, Makers and Producers can utilize social media from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube.

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In previous articles I discussed some of the broader issues and benefits related to Social Media/Networking and how this new tool could benefit artists. The first article “What’s up with Social media” I introduced the concept of “ambient intimacy” and how the growth of social networking via the Internet has increased our ability to build relationships with our buyers. In “How to use Social Media” I talked about how social media gives us the ability to engage our buyers, build relationships with them and eventually develop a tribe organized around our art and our values.

This series takes the Social Media examination a little deeper by examining who can benefit the most from social media and what tools are most applicable. And more specifically how each segment of the generalized label of creativity can benefit most from Social Media.

A recent post by Mark McGuinness  on the Lateral Action blog describing the best 10 social networking sites for creatives also carried an underlying theme…collaboration, interaction and feedback are important to the creative process. The underlying premise is similar to one I have argued about here…the elimination of geography, time and other barriers by the internet and most recently by the evolution of Social Media has  made collaborative tools available we could barely imagine even 10 years ago. That said, reading Mark’s post brought up some questions and issues I have been chewing on for a while.

The two questions came to mind:

• Why are artists either resistant or slow to use new methods of reaching their markets?
• Who is using the methods?

As I skimmed  Mark’s interviews I noticed two things:

• The primary users especially of the hard core social network sites (focused on providing collaborative environment) were really true creatives and not necessarily defining themselves through the traditional definition of art.
• The second thing was that I noticed I had been dumping anything and everything however remote that involved creating art into the CREATIVE hopper.

My ah ah moment was seeing that not all art is creative and not all creatives are artists!! Well, you might say DUH!! …but I think quite a lot of people make the same mistake. Dumping everything into the same pot without differentiation creates a lot of confusion and a sense of cultural disorientation. We have no criteria to organize, no boxes to slip things into all the while scratching our collective heads over the obvious  differences we do see within the creative community.

So I noticed that I felt a common bond, a like mindedness with those frequenting the more hard core networks. I could feel the excitement of creative juices. A frame of reference started to emerge …instead of a hopper of creativity maybe we need to look at it as a spectrum with different shades or levels each fading into the other. For simplicity sake I defined the spectrum as consisting of: Creators, Makers and Producers. This seemed to explain for me why I for example thrive on creative interaction and often feel lost without it while others tend to keep themselves isolated. So let’s take a closer look at these parts of the creative spectrum. The graphic below is sort of an abstract representation of how I see the spectrum, there is no significance to the size or color of each section…just in case you were wondering.

Creators

Creators are the original thinkers, the mashers who see possibilities in everything.

• They were born with a vision of their world or they have discovered their unique world view as they matured.
• They also seem to be naturally drawn to one or more mediums for communicating that vision and most importantly they generally seem thrive in interactive environments where they can explore the edges of their visions.
• They are the inventors, the early adapters the experimenters… fear of the unknown is not something they are familiar with.
• They tend to operate in a conceptual/theoretical world.

While admittedly there is a great deal of overlap possible here, those in the creator hue of the spectrum are not necessarily good at translating their concepts into reality.

Makers

That role of translator is given over to…The Makers. The overlap area between the pure creators and the  pure makers is the home of those who can straddle both worlds, they are the ones who understand the concepts clear enough to shape them into reality, they give the concepts form and process.

The pure makers are the ones who can take the recipe and adapt it within the context of their creative medium.

• They develop new ways to throw a particular  type of porcelain clay, or use a particular type of painting surface, or write a variation of a given code.
• They tend to be medium specific, developing a point of view or voice that shapes the techniques they develop and once set their style generally does not vary.
• These are the fine crafts people, who are not so much focused on production of a commodity as they are on giving form to their voice.
• They frequently refine  concepts developed by creators, into an array of techniques for working in their medium.

As makers move closer to focusing on production they slowly become..Producers.

Producers

Producers work from recipes and templates to produce a specific line of product in the creative spectrum they are the factory focused on numbers and replication. Producers are the artisans of the spectrum and also the distributors they bring the efforts of the creators and the makers to the ordinary consumer. In a sense their work is utilitarian it takes the maker’s pot off the mantel or bookshelf and places it on the table for everyday use.

Questions

• So where do you fall on  the cretive spectrum?
• Do these generalized categories work?
• How does each category interact best with social media?

Part 2 of this series will look at just how each part of the Creative Spectrum can use social media and what parts of social media work best with each of the three creative spectrum categories.

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Yesterday I received my preview copy of Seth Godin’s new book Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us in  it he addresses a growing movement that I have been mentioning in previous posts when referring to social media. The subject of community and tribes and the role they can play in cultural growth and eventual paradigm shifts is something I have been chewing on for several decades, going back to my days in city planning. The power of the book stirred up  memories, of the ‘60s and later graduate school, as I read on, I started thinking of Godin’s premise in the context of our current state of things especially the shifts I have been noticing lately.  There was something familiar about it all.

So I went to my basement and dug around to find one of my favorite books from grad school…Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. While Kuhn’s focus was on science it is worth looking at how his theory applies to cultural and political change…no this is not going to be a dissertation of the nature of revolution. Re-reading Kuhn reawakened me to the process of paradigm shifts and how they might apply to our present circumstances and in turn to the notion of community, collaboration and art. Really, there is a link here…just hold on!

You see part of Kuhn’s theory was to draw parallels to the process of political (and cultural) change. This process originates with a growing sense that institutions originally created to resolve problems faced by the community can no longer function as solutions to the problems they were originally designed to solve…an old paradigm stops working. Over time alternative paradigms  come and go each offering different and conflicting models of community life. Eventually, these new paradigms start to start to merge as followers of lesser paradigms  are assimilated replacing the old which cannot coexist with the new. The end result is a change in world view, we in essence begin seeing the world in a completely different light. We have evolved to another level allowing us to look at the old problems differently.In doing so we also  may  see things we were not able to see under the previous way we looked at the world.

“Led by a new paradigm, scientists adapt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before.” - Thomas Kuhn… Revolutions as Changes of World View in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

How and what does this have to do with anything? It has been my long held belief that our “old paradigm” of top down industrial management was not long for the world and was not natural to the way we as humans prefer to live. That model it can be argued served a purpose… it brought us to where we are now ( for good or bad). The early rumblings of the paradigm shift I think began in the ’60s and led inevitably to the shake ups we are experiencing now. No we are not experiencing the “End of Days”…we are experiencing the death rattle of a dying way of life and the roughness that is being dramatically exclaimed is the shift to a new level.

Collaboration, community and Tribes

Since the ’60s we have been moving to the  music of the come close go away dance of rediscovering our socialness (is that even a word?). Those hippy dippy days started to re-expose us to the intimacy of community albeit not well developed. Most of these changes could be classified as social/cultural for example, the civil rights movement realized success as did women’s rights. What didn’t change was the fundamental organizing principle  of our structure…that of top down organization. Work was still thought of as “Real” primarily in terms of industrialized definitions, i.e. anything that didn’t have to do with the mind or the ego was not taken seriously and that included self employment. Employment statistics were built around jobs as in working within an organization.

It is the internet’s fault
All of this started to change with the introduction of the internet which can arguably be considered the primary catalyst powering the current intense shifts in our lives. Like any tool newly introduced into a culture it was first seen as a novelty but not by those pesky early adaptors who live for new ways of being in the world. However, as those early adaptors started showing us the possibilities more and more of us started to see deeper and deeper. We started seeing how we were no longer limited by geography, we could reach out and find like minded souls and even unlike minded ones. We started to see that we could use this new tool to engage each other…to talk, to collaborate and to build communities that spanned vast portions of geography.

The result was that many who were itching to strike out on their own, to escape the rat race of corporate America began to do so leading to a rising number of sole proprietor small businesses, largely organized around the internet. With geography no longer an issue, collaborations have increased to a point that “freelancers” are now solo-preneurs working mostly by themselves supported by other service providers ranging from virtual assistants to programers. Collaboration has led to virtual communities able to connect and provide support to each other regardless of geography.

So you ask where are we going with this? Well basically what we are experiencing is a shift in the paradigm of business and the exciting part of the change is growing opportunities for solo businesses, like working artists. These new opportunities are there as a result of the virtual elimination of geography and the connective tools that are just beginning to emerge, the tools I talked about in previous articles on Social Media. But there is more to it…there are an almost infinite supply of market niches available as the result of the Long Tail described by Chris  Anderson in his book Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More ( I’m currently writing material on that effect so hang on).

It’s the tail stupid..
Because of the Long Tail, working artists now have the ability to really focus on and develop their own unique niche to a point that has not been available to date. More importantly they are not restricted by geography. An artist here in Minnesota can not only identify her perfect follower here but can also identify similar followers wherever she chooses to market her work and she can decide if the trip to west hooterville will be worth it…if not she can still connect with her followers either online or off because she has built a community around her work.

But…there is more! The tighter focus of niche interests offered by the Long Tail provides an even easier way for you to not only connect with the right people but also to lead them. All of those people interested in what you make are looking for someone to lead them, to guide them in the marketplace, to educate them about the value of what you do. So within the niche of wood fired pottery there might be a sub-group who is really interested in the style you produce. By connecting with them and teaching them about not only the value of wood fired pottery but also the value and uniqueness your style offers you suddenly become their leader. When they feel the need to buy wood fired pottery who do you think they will buy from? You guessed it …you, because you are their leader and they trust you. You have taken time and interest in them perhaps led workshops, perhaps mentored some and because you took the risk and knew that your sharing with them would create far greater value than worrying about them competing with you.  You have created a tribe…congratulations! Now you have greatly reduced the “random purchase” factor you have faced all these years at every art fair or exhibit.

Also, you don’t need to limit yourself to just one tribe …you may find people interested in large wood fired platters in your style. You will likely find them lurking in your original tribe, you can now help them and create another following based on their specific interests. As you are building your tribe and it’s communities you also have the opportunity to develop evangelists, people who will be more than happy to spread the word about your greatness.

Open Source Art
All of this focus brings us to another unique phenomenon that has surfaced recently, in fact in many ways it is driving the changes we have been talking about. Once, the interactivity of the internet became convenient and easy to use people started wanting to create their own content, they saw the satisfaction of creative work, granted at an all together different level than the masters. So, now we are seeing a rise in Consumer Generated Content (CGC), and a strong desire to learn that is going unfulfilled because there are no leaders/teachers to guide them. This is were the working artist has a plum of an opportunity! But before you say “I don’t have time to teach/lead” consider the chain of connection I mentioned above and the alternative of relying on “random purchases”.

The trend of CGC has relevancy to working artists because as you are teaching your tribe you are also teaching…Collaboration,and increasing the perceived value of art in the process.

Which ultimately leads to increasing your value and your mojo!! The power of the medicine in your art suddenly starts to increase and spread helping all who touch it. You are also creating what I have come to call Open Source Art modeled after the concept of open source software which makes the basic core of the code available for others to adapt, expand, or develop add ons for. It is basically community design. Our application of the concept to art however goes a little further because it involve inspiring and empowering in a way that gives others the permission and room they need to grow and experience what we experience when we create. You are being the ultimate master…letting those you touch see you and by seeing you they become inspired and empowered.

The power of this effect to bring change is obvious…just multiply it by the number artists at any given show. Imagine if every one had their own tribe and some tribes followed more than one leader…just imagine the cultural changes that could be possible. So the next time you feel the weight of our current inner turmoil pushing you down, the next time you start  doubting yourself and your choice of path, the next time you wonder whether it is all worth it, stop and realize that you are needed. Think about what the world would be like without the beauty you create then reach out and touch your tribe they are waiting for you.

Are you an open source artist? Can you identify your tribe? Are you willing to step out and take a risk to lead, to be the force behind your tribe? Join the conversation by entering your thoughts in the comments below.

open source art

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As a working clay artist for 15 years one of the most frustrating and challenging aspects of being a working artist was the random nature of the public buying cycle, the huge lack of understanding of the buying public about the value of art, and the relative lack of tools available to effect my destiny, and hence my ability to continue making my art. All of this coupled with the unpredictable and rather arbitrary nature of jurying into a show had the makings of serious feelings of not knowing how to take some level of control.

During those days  artists had little in the way of avenues or channels to connect to their buyers and for their buyers to connect to them. What engagement there was basically consisted of money changing hands reinforcing the commoditization of art. Sales for the most part  were the result of random consumer behavior intensified by the failure of traditional market research tools available to retail outlets  that could use them to identify and market to a particular niche of buyers.

The potential of the Internet as we know it now was not yet yet available. Instead it was  seen as little more than an electronic version of traditional advertising. E-mail as a communication/stay- in-touch tool was yet to be realized. To further complicate matters the nomadic nature of working artists following the art fair circuit had few tools to identify and  reliably stay in touch with their tribe of followers wherever they went.

Interactivity is elevated

In a previous post I described how the emergence of more and more interactive possibilities on the web led to inevitable death for traditional advertising. That death opened the way for an entirely new model of selling our work…a model that is multi-dimensional and multi-directional. An organic system of feedback loops that bring makers and buyers together in a hybridized collaboration held together by multi-level connections. This organically dynamic model has steadily erased  the need to “sell”  replaced instead by a more refined buying model that brings buyers closer to makers giving them an ability to know of and anticipate  work that seems to be made just for them. The result…focus is taken off the actual “product” and placed instead on the maker and the maker’s reputation, values and ability to connect with their “tribe”  or community of followers.

Remember when…

The concept of tribes as a community of like mindedness is just emerging in importance in the business and marketing world. It is in many ways reflective of neighborhoods so common in pre-suburban America where ethnic, economic and social similarities brought people together in physical proximity. Neighborhoods became social and economic centers where the corner grocer knew who walked in the door or the barber a couple of blocks away kept his patrons up to date on “the news”, were merchants freely kept running tabs trusting that they would be paid. Merchants had followers that often overlapped depending on what was being offered, social circles overlapped depending on their focus. In short…the success or failure of the corner drug store was closely linked to  the ability of the owner and employees  to develop and maintain connections based on interaction.  This sense of connection and community reinforced by physical proximity vanished with the rise of suburban development and its inherent reduction of social interaction.

A natural evolution
What we are seeing and experiencing today is the natural return to our social roots, but on a different level spurred on by an ever increasing number of tools whose primary purpose is to encourage, increase and simplify interaction. Now, we don’t have to limit ourselves to one way communication we can supplement it with other choices. By combining old ways with new ways we can use the right tool for the right job. As artists, we can now build our tribes by using both digital and analog media, snail mail can be used to supplement e-mail and visa versa. We can both send out post cards to our followers and connect regularly via e-mail and social media. One-way web sites, which were nothing more than electronic brochures have been replaced with regularly updated blogs that can provide a running view into our work and our creativity. RSS feeds coupled with e-mail brings our followers even closer by eliminating the need to open a browser.

Making space for conversation….
So…how do we start? Among other things we need to start making room for connection we need to let go of our fears of intimacy, judgement and open ourselves up to the world. We need to start taking responsibility for our own path and let go of seeking fulfillment outside of ourselves. Letting go of fear opens our hearts to new possibilities that are free of expectations which in turn can make us attractive to receiving connections. To delve even deeper by opening ourselves we are giving our art, our voices and ourselves a chance to be seen and recognized by whom ever is seeking what we have. By taking responsibility for ourselves and our destiny we no longer need to blame outside sources for our failures which turns us into glowing beacons of our value lighting the way for those wishing to connect with us.

When all of this happens we are then able to welcome all conversation that enables us to use our gifts to help everyone in our community/tribe  realize their visions as well. It may come in the form of a commission, or the legacy of teaching others, or being an inspiration. Regardless of how it manifests make no mistake it will have an impact on all those it touches and in the process open us up to an entirely new way of being in the world.

A holistic approach
While the focus of this discussion has been on Virtual social networks underlying this focus is the more holistic notion of networks regardless of what form they take. In the end networks are tools and in conceptual nature a web of nodes connected to each other by communication channels. The evolutions and usefulness of this web of channels has evolved with human development from grunts to the tapping of keyboard keys. How we use these networks depends on what we hope to accomplish and what we want to say. So having a deep tool bag with a variety of tools helps us adapt and in the process serve each other better.

Final Note…

Joseph Jaffe in his groundbreaking book Join the Conversation says about  conversation and connection..

“Brands have to know their role and place in conversation. Truthfully, it is an extremely loose , amorphous, and situational role that not only changes from case to case but indeed may evolve and shift within a single conversation. The art of conversation is absolutely an art, and the ability deftly navigate the thin ice of tolerance, patience, emotion, and submission may very well mean the difference between connection and disconnection.”

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Many of my posts so far have hinted at a phenomenon that has  increased pace of change in the world leading many to wonder often doubtfully about it’s role in day to day life. Much of the doubt comes from those who are mystified by technology and can’t imagine how technology can help them.  Since the phenomenon I am talking about is technology based  but it is and will effect the way we live our lives far more than we can imagine now. Technology and specifically the web has been seen in the not to distant past as an isolating influence on our culture, causing us to lose touch with the world around us as our intimate circle of friends shrinks. There have been fears of a growing social alienation especially in the iGeneration as we have tried to understand the meaning of Facebook, MySpace etc. Not even a year ago I really didn’t see the point of Facebook but that has changed.

Starting to converse

Of course the phenomenon I am talking about is Social Media. A recent article in the NY Times by Clive Thompson  discloses the true nature and value of Social Media both to our relationships and to our businesses. It also hints at the role it can play in creating community…something we collectively seem to be longing for. Joseph Jaffe in his book Join the Conversation talks about the changes in the marketing world that are occuring as the result of Social Media/networking especially as it has hastened the demise of advertising as we used to know it an event which has long been over due.

Isolation moves to connection

Before I go into how all this should concern us as artists let me continue with the thread brought up by Thompson’s article and Jaffe’s book by brining in another player t he guy who pretty much star ted it all, Mark Zuckerberg the college student behind Facebook. You see a couple of years after he launched it he realized it’s major problem was the time it required for users to stay up to date with their friends…so he set out to fix it. Overnight, he set up what has come to be called the news feed that works very much like RSS subscriptions permitting friends to basically “subscribe” to each other’s updates. The next morning saw a  major revolt when users began logging on to their Facebook pages. They flooded Zuckerberg with e-mails wanting the old system back. But Zuckerberg knew his audience well within a couple of days everyone was happy. The primary point of contention was much the same as today when non- social media users as”why would I want to know every time Joe eats a sandwich and what kind he is eating?”  or “why should I care if he broke up with his latest girlfriend?” Well it turns out  that they ultimately did want to know those tidbits and they found that knowing them created a different level of knowing their friends…kind of like having them in the same room.

Ambient Intimacy

What they were experiencing was something social scientists have called ” ambient intimacy” it is in essence similar to the feeling of closeness we have when we sit across the room from someone and watch their quirky mumblings, or gestures. Individually such actions have little meaning but lumped together over time they start adding up to a description of the person’s mood, their inner workings. If you are an unabashed people watcher you know what I mean! Friends found themselves much closer when they met because the time distance had shrunk, they were able to converse as if they had just seen each other…in short they knew more about what was occurring in each other lives and how it effected them.

Facebook,Twitter and the tools for conversation

Facebook is no longer the only game in town, last year Twitter broke the surface followed closely by Friend feed. Both of these services offered one thing, a way to stay in touch a way to be closer to each other yet remain far away. Both services are what has become know as “micro-blogs” limited by the amount of text that can be written they have become a way for people in a particular circle to stay in touch and more importantly to widen that circle or have different circles for different levels of acquaintance.

So last year when I found out about Twitter I joined but really didn’t get it until the last few months. Coupled with my Facebook toolbar for Firefox I now get regular little blurbs that pop up on the bottom of my screen whenever one of the people I am connected with has something to say. That very action has allowed me to get to know what used to be pretty close to complete strangers. As a result, I have several potential partners for workshops or seminars each having a strong skill I am lacking in. I hinted above about communities, again this is one of the things social scientists have found occuring more and more as a result of staying connected with each other. And these communities are no longer limited by geography. Families like mine that are spread across the globe can stay connected and in each others lives much better than an hour phone call every couple of months.

Artists Twitter?

So…how does this help us as artists? Well, in a nutshell it provides us with tools we didn’t have available even as recent as a year ago. Furthermore, it has along with Tivo has played a major role in the demise of traditional advertising. It has essentially changed the way we can help our clients and patrons by giving us the means to develop and maintain conversations that are based on a many-to-many model instead of a one -to-many model. It has empowered our clients and patrons to converse with us and us with them around what we offer and how we deliver it, it allows us to focus more on them and them  on us. As a result, artists can develop networks of clients/patrons everywhere they go and they can stay in each others minds so when an artist travels to an art fair their local follows know to show up and also know what treasures await them.

For the fearful these tools are a threat because they nag at their self esteem, bringing judgmental demons, but they also remind us that our success ultimately depends on us and our ability to adapt and grow. An example of the strength of these networks happened to me last week someone on my Twitter feed saw one of my posts and commented on it…the world is indeed changing as it shrinks the revolution is here and we are it!

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