Nov 17 2008

Social Media and the Nation’s (Energy) Problems

November 17, 2008

Shortly after Barack Obama won the Presidency his team launched a website called change.gov which encourages everyone to offer their ideas and solutions for the country. I see the website as a continuation of Obama’s decentralized campaign model. Which, in turn, is likely sourced from his days as a community organizer. Obama is clearly a full-on believer in newer teaching, information, and management structures.

And yet, one wonders how efficient change.gov can ultimately be in the collection of these ideas. While the site asked for people’s visions initially on the front page, the link/pathway to make suggestions has now receded. Regardless, this brings up the issue of today’s post–or the question, really–which is how can we leverage the newer social media structures, to help solve the nation’s (energy) problems?

I don’t have the answer. However, as someone who has posted on website message lists for 15 years, I do know that something entirely new is happening on a site like Twitter. Two weeks ago, for example, I saw a topic that I have talked about for the last year–converting automobile manufacturing capacity into rail and train capacity–make its way around Twitter in novel ways. The bounce was different. The strands of the thread were different. The speed was different, and, most of all, the hooking up or the pull of people into the conversation was different.

I’m new to social media and I don’t understand all of its implications yet. What I do know is that the conversational dynamic is changed and changed radically. It takes time to become a theorist of these things, and so I call out to the theorists today to give me your thoughts. For example, how would you have designed change. gov or perhaps a concurrently running change.gov/social site, to harness the new dynamic?

-Gregor

• Comments
Author: Gregor Macdonald   Posted in: Policy  web   Tagged:
  • Harnessing the new dynamic, although never so eloquently put, is what I have spent almost a year now randomly contemplating. That is, the impact of growing social media. I have one conclusion. The flow of information is increasing, which leads to hightened volatility, as people make decisions quicker than they used to, with higher degrees of group think and herd behaviour.

    Which movies to see. Which books to read. What stocks to buy, and when to sell. Etc.

    It's happening on both short & long term time frames.

    So, I say, get long the flow.

    Here's one way how:
    Share, Link, Read, More.

    Here's the other way I've thought of:
    Get in the business of, SELLING the most inelastic product ever demanded -> volatility. While we're likely to get a short term crash in the VIX, I think with information flowing like it is today, even compared to say 2004, the days of a VIX lower than 20 will be the outlier. So selling blocks of it, everymonth, is going to provide higher returns than it could have 20 years ago. Simply put, an equity buy-write with a focus on statistical bahviour of how people take profit in equities, should outperform other strategies.
  • ppearlman
    on twitter we are witnessing a profound parallel process as communities evolve.. similar mechanics to community construction only faster and more efficiently... as such it is my belief that twitter provides fertile ground for building social communication tools across an endless number of areas of interest. it requires some further structuring (through building of an overlay platform) but that that strucutre can be light weight and inexpensive to construct..

    the qualities of the builders and leaders of these communities will determine the quality of the communities.. u would be awesome gregor to lead such a community focusing on the country's energy problems... and in fact, youve already begun .. ;-)
  • Ditto what ppearlman said - can't add anything more intelligent that that
  • Domenic
    I'll attempt to provide a theory on the pervasive use of a well known social media: text messaging. Texting is popular in Europe but has in the past couple of years become the preferred mode of mobile phone use here in North America over voice calls (http://www.nielsen.com/consumer_insight/ci_stor...). In my opinion, marketing campaigns such as change.gov that seek solutions to social problems often presume the theory of "individual consumption" and exploit participants through a social media as an ideal outlet for mass energies. For example, texting is a socially acceptable form of action and participation which can be used to defuse potential political unrest. What often happens is "consumer democracy" is held out to us as a substitute for political democracy with pollsters/advertising executives watching closely. Our need for social change is directed towards changing brands (or natural resources) and increasing their consumption.
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