Strike the Phrase "Social Media" from the Lexicon

With the democratization of media we've come to rely on a bunch of terms that are now completely unnecessary. These include "social media," "user generated content" and - my favorite - "consumer generated media." Do any of these matter any more? I dislike all of these words and have stopped using them. Eric Hansen proposes we go with new media but that doesn't quite work either. The reason is it's ALL media. The lexicon will hopefully change.

The problem with all of these balkanized phrases is that they connote that the content created by digitally empowered individuals is somehow bush league. It's like we're a separate entity from the rest of the so-called "mainstream" journalists, filmmakers, photographers, etc. who do what we do and get paid more for it. We sit in a special dish like leftover meatloaf so we need a special name. If you use these phrases you're unintentionally perpetuating that myth.

I've been chronicling the changes in media over the last three years on my blog and been in awe of it even longer. In 2004, 2005 and into 2006, as "we" became more influential, the phrases were helpful as the world began to take notice. But now, it's different. We've arrived.

In 2007 we have people like Rafat Ali and Michael Arrington who blog for a living and do nicely. We have startups like PodTech.net and vloggers like Robert Scoble that are recreating what Tech TV was unable to sustain. Are these individuals part of the "mainstream media" because they get paid to create full-time or are they part of the "social media" because they're more accessible? it all seems kinda silly, huh?

The fact is that everyone who is contributing to the dialogue - be it in video, text or photos - has earned the right to be called media. Let's can the compartmentalization and recognize once and for all the world has changed. We are all media - period.

Comments

[Matthew Hurst]

Steve,

In your characterization, you are only figuring a very small subset of social media. While it is true that things like TechCrunch and PodTech are serving a function traditionally served by MSM, that in no way captures, for example, the journalistic blogs, or blogs which are the landing pages in a social network - these are the majority of content published on these platforms. You may be saying, then, that the top <1% of bloggers shouldn't be called Social Media. What about the rest?

I think you are missing a huge part of the picture.

[Steve Rubel]

Matt, I am saying that all of it is media. Why play "what's my line"?

[Brian Clark]

I still think it's too early, Steve. There are tons of people who don't yet have a clue what's going on, especially in business. The term "social media" is good for explaining to businesses what they should be doing instead of traditional advertising.

[Guy Pelletier]

I agree, it do longer matters, who or what is presented, it is all content that can be personal or public dialog. We are in an age of information sharing and how we see news is changing.

Guy

[Daria Radota Rasmussen]

"The medium is the message". I fully agree that of all it is nothing more but media. However we do need some wording that helps define what those media are, how they differ from other media, so laymen or other people who doesn't have insights can uderstand what we are talking about and how the media environment changes. Apart, that's very natural we need to name things, new phenomena in order to gain mental control over them and set our world in order.

[Nathan Gilliatt]

The problem with all of these balkanized phrases is that they connote that the content created by digitally empowered individuals is somehow bush league.

No, the term connotes that the content is somehow different. There may not be much difference between a professional blog and a MSM web site, but useful distinctions persist, and so we have different terms. Language is useful that way.

Social media are distinguished by tools, which convey certain capabilities, which lead to styles and conventions. When the New York Times starts writing short posts on niche topics in a casual, first-person style on a blog, engaging its (few) readers in an extended conversation that leads to new ideas... it's doing social media.

That still doesn't turn my blog into media. Media has two relevant definitions here. As the plural of medium, sure, social media are media (as are mass media). But as the label for an industry, social media participants mostly aren't in the media business. So as a few blogs move into the media business, the distinction fades. For the vast majority, though social media are different from mass media, and tossing aside the label would confuse more than help.

[John Ettorre]

No, Steve, you are a PR guy who tries to dress up your message with a lot of high-concept blather about ethics and audience. But when push came to shove (in the Wal-Mart debacle), you took a dive, and pissed away your audience's trust. That's the real difference between serious media and wanna-be's.

[david weiner]

I do think that there can be some differentiation, but not for differentiation and buzz-words' sake. New Media and Traditional Media. I wouldn't, however, call the Mentos guys any Media.

[B.L. Ochman]

Absolutely, it's all media. But there is new media and old media, and in the biggest companies they are still wondering if they should blog.

Traditional media distinguishes between TV and radio, classified and display, and that's all media too.

Social media IS different, and the term is still a necessary distinction.

Pls let us know if you come up with a better term than social media, but don't throw it out until you do.

[Doug Haslam]

I have to agree with B.L., in that behind the buzz-words-- yes, that's what they are-- is a distinction. And the majority of people and companies are only beginning to understand what some of us were figuring out 2 years ago. there is a time lag, and we are going to have to play it.

I don't think I get the motivation in trying to do away with the term-- no reason to make up buzzwords for the sake of making them up, but no real reason to take them down just for the sake of taking them down, too.

Good fodder for discussion though, if nothing else.

[Jim Nail]

Agree that it is getting to be more and more overlap; gotta disagree that you can call everything media. Your suggestion is like saying you just call books and magazines the same thing -- the type of content you expect and the reader experience are very different and the label is useful for the reader to make a choice of the right content based on their needs.
Or maybe the more apt analogy is you seem to be saying that you don't have to label the Editorial page of the newspaper any differently than the news section -- it'a all "press". But there is a different voice, and a different set of rules that come into play, and the reader needs to know about it.
This becomes an even bigger gray area with folks like Stephen Baker and Heather Green at Businessweek or Scott MacLeod at Time. They are writing on blogs, and it is opinion-oriented like a blog, but it draws its credibility from the publication. Plus I suspect there are some editorial guidelines the writers must adhere to.
So now maybe we've hit a more useful set of criteria: instead of the format of the medium, maybe it is the editorial voice/rules/approach that distinguishes social media from traditional (the term I prefer to mainstream). And maybe the terms need to be something like "reporting" and "opinion journalism".

[Yohay Elam]

Do you think that this sometimes-called "revolution" in which we are all media will stay here for long?
Or will the big sharks swallow everybody else?

[Steven Noble]

Steven, it's hard to define the boundary between the political and the personal, but political and personal are still useful concepts.

It's hard to define the boundary around almost every subtle concept -- including the concept of social media -- but they persist because they have value.

I'll continue to talk about social media because I can see the difference between a fanclub forum and the Australian Financial Review, even if more and more examples of media sit in the middle and share characteristics of both.

[Shel Holtz]

I was going to say what Jim Nail said, but he said it. There are books, but among them are biographies, histories, tell-alls, crime fiction, historical fiction, classic literature, current events...I think we lose something if we just call them all "books" and do away with sub-categories. Yes, it's all media, but there are various types. Would we never again refer to "multimedia?" It's all just media, right?

[Chris Thilk]

Did we not kill this would-be meme two weeks ago or more? Am I living in some sort of monkey-paw time loop?

What Shel says - It's still important to designate social media as such because the power of that media comes from its social nature. What mainstream media does is talk to an audience. Social media talks with an audience. Or at least most of it does, if the author is willing to actually engage in a conversation.

[JamesBruni]

You, Steve, are not "media", but a blogger expert on the Edelman payroll. Whatever credibility you had as an A=list blogger is totally gone.

[Jeremy Pepper]

You wrote the same post a few weeks ago as Social Media No Mo.

And, well, I wrote that media is media a while ago (but, you don't read my blog because profanity hurts your wittle eyes).

But, well, maybe you thought the second time would be the charm. It didn't go over that well the first time, but nice try this time around.

[Dino Baskovic]

And, uh, we can finally stop talking about the 'social media' release, right? Please? Pretty please? Sorry guys, but you were all so quick to hop on the SMR bandwagon, it was a lil' scary.

[Paul Ding]

"We're all media"? No, sir, I'm super-sized.

Life is too short to be small.

[Pete Blackshaw]

A good discussion, but for now the distinctions still matter. If anything the market probably needs more definitional transparency, and less “all media is the same” labeling. Although I usually take a few hits from the Web 2.0 diehards for using the word “consumer” (as in “consumer generated media”) I still think that term succeeds in drawing a much needed line between marketers and buyers. Yes, there’s blur, and perhaps I’m creating a false dichotomy (after all, we’re all buyers/consumers ourselves), but with all the co-mingling, mashing, remixing, reshuffling, co-creation, and occasional co-optation between seller and buyer (or, in the case of PR, messenger and recipient) some order of clarity may well keep our every dynamic marketing world less fuzzy. Indeed, I think it means something to have terms like “ConsumerReports” versus “WeReports.” In fact, against this current backdrop of escalated skepticism and distrust toward marketers, I daresay we may need to over-compensate on using more explicit labels and “transparency tags” to drive clearer understanding in the marketplace.

[Robert Scoble]

What are some things I notice about newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, and outdoor advertising?

For the most part they are one way. They push messages out, toward a "media consumer."

What's different about what we're doing?

It's two way. Now the "consumers" can call us all idiots right on the media we're creating.

That's a HUGE difference, me thinks, and one still worth denoting, especially as we talk with people who don't understand the ever increasing participant numbers in this new media.

Yeah, it's all media, but I'm definitely not doing American Idol, and I'm not sure I want to be lumped in with such.

When I say I'm doing "conversational media" or "social media" it tells people something important about my work: that I am designing it to spark a conversation and that it's for participating with online.

[Ben Metcalfe]

"The reason is it's ALL media. ... It's like we're a separate entity from the rest of the so-called "mainstream" journalists"

I don't see what the problem is with having different names for the different types of media. I could understand if you were pushing for _different_ names, but to encourage people not to make the distinction seems unreasonable.

We could call every machine that drives in a street 'a vehicle' but it's not unreasonable to want to differentiate between a car, a truck, a motorbike, etc.

[Fiona Blamey]

Like other commenters, I can't see anything wrong with 'social media'. It implies a medium in which anyone - regardless of professional status - can participate. This is a valid distinction, differentiating it from old media, in which public participation was either severely limited or impossible. Not all buzzwords are bad.

[Scott]

Steve, I can see where you are coming from, but people and the mainstream press have always tagged things this way - multimedia, digital media (still all media)and what about e-commerce (it's all commerce after all) Does it really matter? If social media, UGC etc help people understand better, where is the harm?

[Thomas Hawk]

The problem with the characterization of all of this as "media" is that it does not address the inequity of payment for creation and subsequent distribution.

Most of media is controlled by gatekeepers. Whether that is the giant stock agencies in the photography business or the fine art galleries or museum currators, or Hollywood, or whatever. Media still comes down to big business and those profiting from it have an incentive to keep those who are not profiting at bay.

What needs to take place is a democratization of media that allows talented producers of all types, irrespective of their being blessed or networked in with the proper gatekeepers, to have access to financial markets for media.

The segregation of the media whether pro vs. amateur, UGC vs. professionally produced, whatever terms are in fashion today, etc., with the rare exception of folks like TechCrunch and PodTech, etc., often comes down to whether people are getting paid meaningfully or not. There is very little difference in quality anymore. The gatekeepers remain the problem.

This is part of what we are working on at Zooomr. How do you keep the love of making art pure while providing those that are making art because of something that compels them from deep within their soul fair financial access?

[Richard Stacy]

Try this acid test - I spend my time telling clients "Don't try and use the tools of social media to reach your consumers - understand how your consumers can use the tools of social media to reach you". Makes sense I think. Now strike the word social from the above - and it becomes confusing and ambiguous. Tells me that it needs a name - and social media is actually a pretty good one.

[Eric Hansen]

It looks to me as if the consensus (personal attacks and The Simpsons references aside) is that the "social" prefix to the term "social media" is still very useful for those in this space. I appreciate Scott's point that media is one of those words that gets morphed and manipulated to describe a new slant on a traditional activity. Just as the "mass" part of "mass media" describes maybe its most powerful characteristic, so too does the "social" component of these new tools for expression and information dissemination represent the centrally important, distinguishing feature of these media.

Lovely discussion. (Save of course for the personal attacks that agitate the deliberation on this topic.)

[scott]

I prefer the term social disease media.

And don't lexicons only come out on St. Patrick's Day anyway?

[jennifer jones]

Steve,it is too early to not have a term that differentiates blogs, wikis, podcasts as media from the other older forms. I talk to CMOs all the time even in Silicon Valley where the early adopters are and THEY often don't even know what a blog is. It has to be separated out so that they can understand what is "new" and what is old. It helps them get educated.

For Marketing Voices at Podtech.net, I use the term social media as it does work for my audience. It is a more interactive form of media--obviously more conversational--more social--and that is why i stick with it.

[Char Lyn Grujoski]

Steve, thanks for the provocative post and great discussion.

I agree with B.L. Ochman and many others who have commented. Like Jennifer Jones, I have used the term Social Media to help educate my clients on the differences between traditional and new medias.

The distinctions between different types of traditional media are not going to go away, and terms (not buzzwords) will be needed to distinguish different types of social media as well. I think in time Steve will be right, and it will all be considered "media." The buzzword "social media" will eventually die. But, not until businesses become comfortable with the more descriptive terms of "blogging," "vlogging," "viral video," "interactive advertising," and "campaign micro-sites." Until we can talk about the specifics, we will continue to need a generic term to discuss the space.

[Garth Moore]

Blogs aren't social media anymore anyway; they are rapidly becoming a form of mass media on the Web. More traditional media are adopting blogs and creating those expert voices and repositories of knowledge--yes, call them gatekeepers-- adding to the din of the blogosphere and helping to push out the very people who made it a "social media". Big businesses may not get it, but traditional media gets it and wants it! Besides, who's opinion do you want to read about the war in Iraq anyway: Jessie from Springfield or some NYTimes editor? I know, me too. But most people prefer the latter because it's authoritative.

Perhaps that's OK; perhaps the din was too much anyway. It could only saturate so far before interest levels from potential authors and readers died down to lower, but sustainable levels. Maybe something else will take over (hey, we didn't see blogs coming this way in 1997--online diaries as communication models) But, blogs as “social media” is going by the way; they truly are “mass media” now. Technorati’s 63.2 million blogs certainly help blogs qualify as “mass”.

[Jiyan Wei]

Steve, I have begun using the term 'open media' to refer to what we are talking about. My reasons for using the term are encapsulated on my site.

[forex]

Great news

Thank you