Social media experts - it's all relative.
It has been said that there are no social media experts and there has been a fair amount of discussion on this particular point. I wanted to expand on a comment I made on the subject over at Julian Baldwin's blog.
The social media space is relatively new and, because of this, is still changing. Definitions are morphing and the whole social web is constantly adapting. New services appear on an almost daily basis just as others fall by the wayside; the ecosystem surrounding social media is expanding as developers find new ways to use the APIs made available to them.
With such an ever changing landscape can anyone truly be called an expert when it comes to social media?
Let's have a look at a typical definition of the term expert:
displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience
Now compare this to the definition of an expert witness for legal purposes:
by virtue of education, training, skill, or experience, is believed to have knowledge in a particular subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the witness's specialised (scientific, technical or other) opinion about an evidence or fact issue within the scope of their expertise
The second definition may be a bit more in-depth but they essentially say the same thing: an expert is someone who has a high level of skill or knowledge in a certain area.
Social media experts?
How can someone be an 'expert' when the playing field is constantly changing? As there is so much change we can't hope to know everything all the time; we are all learning as the social media space is evolving. Some have more experience and some are better at communicating that experience but does this make them an expert? should we instead be referring to those people as an 'authority' on a given area?
If you were to isolate individual concepts, services or applications then - according to the definitions we have above - you could claim that a certain person was an expert for that specific element but I don't feel that we can apply the term to the social web as a whole when you consider its constant state of flux.
Sharing
The degree to which anyone can be called an expert or an authority is, therefore, completely relative. The level of 'expertise' must be looked at in relation to their peers but I would argue that being an authority in this context must extend beyond knowledge alone and include the ability to expedite that knowledge for the benefit of the community. The social web is all about sharing and having the ability to do so in a useful and meaningful way.
Those who immerse themselves in the social web will not only be best placed to take advantage of the benefits it has to offer but will also be best placed to educate and inform those new to the space - they will therefore become the de facto 'experts' in this field even if the don't necessarily match the definition.
Your thoughts
Can anyone actually be a social media expert in this climate on change? Do we already have them and what is the scope of their influence? Who do you look to when in need of social knowledge?
Image by Bonnie Natko.
Comments
The changing face of FriendFeed.
Hutch Carpenter wrote a very intriguing post over at I'm Not actually A Geek which details why he thinks the FriendFeed service will go mainstream but may take ten years to do so.
He defines mainstream usage as 33% of internet users and estimates the timescales involved by looking at the adoption of other technologies and services such as the Internet itself, Google and RSS feeds but what stood out for me in this post was his assertion that, come the revolution, FriendFeed will look rather different to how it does at present as more 'non-tech' folks join the service.
In his post "Friendfeed stats show its just Twitter with bookmarks" Alexander Van Elsas advises us that FriendFeed traffic is more than half made up of Twitter messages and that direct postings to the service account for less that 1% of all traffic. Hutch surmises that over time the amount of direct postings (which includes sharing a link directly on the site rather than via somewhere like Google Reader) will rise incredibly as more people latch on to FriendFeed as a worthwhile service but I would personally expect things to further than he has outlined them.
Go to your audience
With the Blogging 2.0 discussion saying that bloggers should go where their audience is I feel it is only a matter of time before this is taken literally. During the debate about linking and attribution I remarked “A FriendFeed blog anyone?” and with a few changes I could see it happening.
All it would take is for FriendFeed to add formatting options to the current comment box and it suddenly becomes a viable mini-blog platform. If they also extended the API so that remote blogging applications could submit proper posts (including images, links etc.) then we could see a shift towards really taking your blog where the audience is. Forget about the worry of having your posts scraped by third party services, what about having your actual content directly in peoples streams?
Please sir, can I have some more?
Despite having been around for a couple of years Twitter is still a relative novelty and once people demand more they will move to services where the potential is greater and the conversation is more engaging.
As I said before, FriendFeed is no longer just an aggregation service - it is now a community and enhancing its capabilities further would put it in a great position to capture the imagination. Current users are already pushing the boundaries; we have gone way beyond just 'comments' and moved on to full blown discussions and I feel it won't be long before we are clamouring for extra ways to get our message across - an 'inline' blog seems a natural extension.
Your thoughts
Would you use a blog hosted directly within an aggregation service like FriendFeed? Can you see the utility is a feature like this or would it bloat the system? How far will content creators go to be close to the audience?
Related Posts
Image by TW Collins.
[...] Read more Colin Walker » Social media experts - it’s all relative. [...]
[...] Social media experts - it’s all relative. :: Colin Walker - Colin takes some well place shots at so-called social media experts. [...]
teamwork.
Hi Colin, I'm not sure there are really "experts" but there are definitely people who know more than others. But it's hard to say they're experts in the way they could be a computer fixing expert because things are changing so quickly and across so many platforms that it's truly hard to keep up sometimes!
I tend to agree that "Social Media Expert" is too broad of a label. That is, some people my be adept at building new communities while others are skilled in marketing to them and others still in interfacing with social media sites from a technology perspective.
I hate the term expert. I dont think anyone can be a social networking, new media, social media whatever you want to call it expert. Everyday I learn something new about it. The term social media expert makes my hair stand up
if a mountain can be made of a mole hill, i'd say that's a good first step towards being an 'expert' in SM. ;-)
To me, an "expert" in Social Media would best be identified by having a long track record of effectively and efficiently helping acheive organizational / individual goals using a combined knowledge of the social web and it's enabling technologies.
The expert has to be able to understand not only how the supporting technology works, but how to interact with the community in order to maximize participation and immersion.
This was a great read Expert makes me feel warm and toasty inside. To me it's the top of the mountain but as with anything some people are just as good if not better than David Copperfield at making that mole hill look like a Mountain. Me and my 2 cents.
extremely terrific post colin. well said.
i think the results of our efforts in social media are best noted and understood when we consider the target audiences that are finding appeal in what we offer.
we spend a lot of time worshiping a listers and crawling after link love with them, which is important..dont get me wrong..but they are not where our conversions will ultimately be found in the future. it is with those not of the marketing world that we seek for conversion.
social media is evolving and those who best see where it's heading, are the ones that will be called the 'expert' in the future. because they will evolve with it..not against it..
of course that is speculative on my part, yet..i have had the privilege of heavy participation in the field and have found that wherever i go, there are more and more people daily that agree with this. one of the main reasons that there's not more public 'bucking' of todays system, is due to fear of losing a lister links and promos..because they have a tendency to gang up on opposers of their viewpoints. (not all of them..but enough. they think its their forever paycheck) behind closed doors, theirs plenty of discussion going on believe me..this is where things are evolving the strongest, because until certainty in SM tactics is achieved, many feel inhibited and even intimidated in voicing their revelations. wobbly kneed.
the usual marketing strategies of today, will be seen differently in the future. if they refuse to grow and expand, as opposed to holding on to the old concepts, it's unlikely that they will continue to flourish in the fashion they are accustomed to.
experts in SM? nah..
experts of observation? for sure.
bingo
Many fields change rapidly. You always have experts, even though they don't have complete knowledge. Put simply, they have the best knowledge and information sources available at any given point in time.
The expert value that would cause me to hire an expert in this field would be that they were aware of all the options available, and could save me the time and trouble of climbing multiple learning curves for no reason by identifying what tools, out of an ever-changing and seemingly infinite universe of tools, would accomplish MY goals.
that's expert enuf fer me.
To me, expert status would guide me more toward a person who understand the impact and how to maximize reach. It would not necessarily have to do with a particular service or application. Simply have technical knowledge is not sufficient. For someone to be expert they need to be able to provide some impact.
I think an expert needs to have a broad enough view of what is available to know the best options for different contexts. But for that person to be bogged down in the innerworkings of that technology might be a waste of time.
I think what we are dealing with really is not expertise so much but the ability to provide "navigation". Since there is so much change happening with regard to social media, the person looking for help will be best served by someone who understands the landscape at that moment in time and can help navigate a strategy for using the tools available to map out the best implementation of media to accomplish the individual or organizational goals.
All very good points and go back to what I was saying about an expert being 'best placed to educate and inform'. It's not about the technology on it's own but what we can do with it that matters.