Clueing in the Cluetrain
Yesterday I saw this post, and didn’t take the time to respond in any way. Sheryl pointed it out this morning, and I feel like I’m compelled to say something because someone I like and respect. Doc Searls, seems to be slipping from the train.
Facebook is The BorgMuch of the activity that used to happen out in the wild unfettered Net, over email, open (XMPP-based) IM and blog posts is now happening inside the Facebook silo. It is AOL 2.0.
I avoid the place, but that’s getting harder. On this current visit I see 7 friend suggestions, 273 friend requests, 6 event invitations, 5 good karma from debo requests, 1 good karma request, 220 other requests, 4 new updates, 235 items in my inbox, 7 pokes and 522 friends to start with.
I find this post troubling at best. Maybe because it comes from someone who penned this:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter—and getting smarter faster than most companies.These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.
Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to talk in the soothing, humorless monotone of the mission statement, marketing brochure, and your-call-is-important-to-us busy signal. Same old tone, same old lies. No wonder networked markets have no respect for companies unable or unwilling to speak as they do.
But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about “listening to customers.” They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf.
That’s right from the Cluetrain. It’s from the 95 Theses page.
While we all argue that Facebook could and should be more open, Doc’s been resistant to embracing the conversation and community that’s grown so active there. I’d say Doc just doesn’t get Facebook and what happens there. To liken it to AOL by calling it AOL 2.0, is to shout “I don’t get it” out loud.
AOL epitomized the walled garden. They should have patented it. And Facebook, began as a closed garden, but not a walled one. But in resisting forwarding thinking and embracing emerging social networking technologies, Doc’s missed the boat in a couple of ways.
I glanced over the 95 Theses and thought about Facebook and see a mesh that would lead me to say Facebook very nearly supports and in many ways embodies the spirit of those points.
Let me be clear, Doc is an absolute social networker par excellence. Take a look at Flickr. Read his blog and note how often he shares his adventures with “the kid” and it’s immediately clear that Doc is likeable, loves to talk and loves interaction.
Doc and I have been friends on Facebook for a long time. He has over 500 friends there, a couple hundred more than I, but I’m very picky and selective about adding friends. Interaction and engagement are big requirements I have, and they’re becoming stronger demands I place on friends online.
Social networking requires engagement and conversation; not every day, but it’s the essence of social networking. Networking to dip your cup and scoop out little bits of information is, to me, different that social networking. Facebook and Twitter are my two primary social networking homes, with others coming and going based on interest and liveliness.
And while Doc made the flawed AOL 2.0 analogy, looking at his stuff on Facebook, I see FriendFeed dribbling in. That’s something that could never penetrate the old AOL walled garden.
Doc uses Facebook, but hadn’t drunk deeply from the fountain of collaboration, networking and sharing that’s there.
So I’m intervening and will post this on Stardust, but I’m also going to post it as a note and tag Doc. That’s part of Facebook’s charm. And isn’t tagging someone in a note there akin to trackback pings in the old blogosphere?
Jump back up on the ‘train here Doc. Grab ahold and come for a ride. It’s a helluva ride and just the sort of thing you can really get your hooks into. Give it a chance.
And if you’re game, why not do a podcast call with Sheryl and I and we’ll talk about it to share the experience with the rest of the world?
Technorati Tags: Doc Searls, social networking, social media, Facebook
on January 9th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Hey, Ken. Thanks for the thoughtful analysis.
Several thoughts here.
First, all analogies are wrong. Just like all metaphors and similes. That’s part of their charm. One thing resembles another in a meaningful way, yet is not the same. I’m not trying to weasel here, because I still think my AOL analogy is about as correct as any Facebook analogy can get.
Because Facebook is a walled garden, just like AOL was. Even if Facebook is big and inclusive and welcoming and lots of other nice stuff, it’s still a private space. Yes, it has lots of connections outside its garden (hey, so did AOL, once it got buried in clues), but the walls are still there. It is a containment zone.
Second, I should have followed your lead and taken a much more cautious approach in saying yes to friend invitations at Facebook. But now that I’ve friended so many faces I hardly know, I’m not sure what to do, or if it’s worth the time (or the icky feelings required) to purge them. But, that’s just me. I’d rather put the effort into stuff that works for everybody in the open Net, rather than work for one company operating its own private environment somewhere inside the Net. That’s just a resource management choice of the sort one makes at age 60. We lost Roland Piquepaille, I learned today. He wasn’t a Facebook friend (far as I know; I haven’t checked), but he was a fellow journalist and blogger, and only two years older than myself. A sobering moment.
Third, for the reasons I just gave, I’m not ready to drink from the fountain of networking and collaboration that Facebook supports. I’m glad it’s there and that it works for lots of people, even if it looks like The Borg to me. Thing is, I have my own founts of networkig and collaboration. They’re at Linux Journal, the Berkman Center, the ProjectVRM community, and out in the other projects I’m involved with. (Not the least of which are my consulting and speaking gigs, which put food on the table.) Then there’s my family and physical-world friends, which I’ve neglected more than I like. So I have priorities here. They’re ones that work for me. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to get some stuff done.
Fourth, I’m not a fan of “social” everything, and don’t think of things like Twitter and Facebook in social terms. I don’t even think of Cluetrain as especially “social,” even though, when I look back on what it said, I can see how it laid the groundwork for much of the “social” stuff that’s going on today. The problem is, these tools and environments aren’t even close to what will make us truly social online as well as offline, and will knit the two together. They point the way, but we’ve still got a long way to go.
As for Twitter, check out what I wrote here earlier today, about Dave Winer’s Friends of Dave hack. Not many (any?) commenters like it so far, but what the hell. One relevant point (to here) is maybe a bit too subtle, lost in the rant. It’s that we’re very early in this Net thing. Tools like Twitter and environments like Facebook — and even services such as Google’s search — are all still early stage stuff. They are crude instruments, stone tools. In the long run our tools will be much different: a full carpentry set beside today’s flint axes and spear heads.
I’m working on providing the personal stuff: tools that make individual customers independent of vendors like Facebook and services like Twitter — yet better able to engage with them, and through them, on our terms and in our ways, and not just in theirs.
That mission, that calling, colors a lot of my writing lately. I have to do a better job of realizing that the likes of Twitter and Facebook are just fine and quite useful things, even if my job is to work outside of them, for the good of everybody. Including them.
on January 10th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Doc,
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. They’re always insightful and lead to deeper thinking. That’s one of the great values your posts have always brought me.
Of course you’re right about the analogies being all wrong. I’ve been going through the same issue really with some recent “VoIP is Dead” and “Telco 2.0″ discussions. And by pushing the envelope, my sense is that rather than engage some folks in thoughtful really figuring out what the new syntax we use might be, there just more confusion, division and taking sides than ever. That frustration is holding me back from re-engaging in those conversations right now, but I expect I’ll work past that.
You’re right about Facebook still being behind a fence. I suppose rather than a walled garden, it’s inside a chain link fence – still try to contain and control. As you said, inclusive but private still.
I’m 55 and appreciate your thoughts on resource management and how we each embrace social networking sites or tools. And that you don’t adapt to them in quite the same way. I don’t do enough to appreciate how other people use them, but I think that’s frequently a result of seeing people react in knee-jerk fashion, the criticizing without really trying to find a way to use tools effectively. I run into a lot of people who denigrate the tools, but really don’t understand what they do or how they might be useful. In your case, like mine, I think the issue is that there’s such a plethora of tools it’s often more comfortable to settle into our tools and habits that fit easily and not force ourselves to dig deeper into some of them. At least that is surely my case.
I can’t comment on the Winer hack for Twitter. I manage my Twitter feed in such a way that I don’t really have a need for extreme filtering. And I subscribe to Stowe Boyd’s theory that the stream has so much that you can dip your cup in whenever you like. If something is important, I don’t believe we’ll miss it. It’ll be around in the stream somewhere we dip our cup.
Thanks again for taking time to comment, Doc. We don’t exchange messages very often these days and it’s nice to hear your thoughts.