Greg Lexiphanic

Tomorrow, 1 July 2012, is the 15th anniversary of Handover Day, the day that Hong Kong was “returned” to China after 150+ years of British rule. In that 150 years, quite separate from China, Hong Kong developed its own unique identity and culture. One of the conditions of the Handover was a promise made by China that Hong Kong would remain autonomous, its Western-style liberties undisturbed for at least fifty years. Fifteen years in, many locals believe this promise has not been kept.

Tomorrow there will be protest marches as the people of Hong Kong seek to retain their freedoms and push back against the reduction of civil liberties they have been experiencing since Handover.

Badcanto has put together a great report of how Hong Kong has lost its heart and soul, compiling together and translating a range of articles on the topic. It gives you a lot of valuable background.

Also in that article is this video. The song is surprisingly catchy (it’s an old pro-Beijing song with new lyrics) and symbolises what Hong Kong people are fighting for.

Problem viewing the video? I found it worked better on my iPhone. Here’s the link to the video on YouTube.

So, do you feel inspired and a little pissed off? Great. If you live in Hong Kong, you can join tomorrow’s protest rallies. Although there was concern that the typhoon might cause problems, it has passed early and tomorrow looks like it will be a beautiful day for a march.

Once again, Badcanto has helped out by publishing a page with information on the July 1 protest rallies. I’ll be joining the “Normal Route”.

If you don’t live in Hong Kong but you have a friend who does, please show them this and encourage them to attend one of the marches. This protest is not just for Hong Kong residents, it’s for everyone who feels that Hong Kong has been poorly treated since the Handover. Please join the chorus and help to bring democracy back to Hong Kong.

Before I started this adventure, I had some broad concepts in mind that fuelled it:

• I love to travel
• Work is something I do so that I can keep travelling; it’s not my identity
• Travelling is as much about the people as the places

I put up this blog with the idea that I would document some of my experiences along the way, as well as any other related thoughts. I haven’t really done that.

The problem is that I don’t really know what to post here; I feel like I’m lacking a real focus.

I could fill it up by talking about the different places I’ve gone to eat, and the foods I’ve eaten. If you follow me on Instagram, you know I do a lot of eating here in Hong Kong in a lot of different places. It’s delicious here and there’d be enough to fill a blog. However, there are a lot of excellent, talented and clever bloggers already doing that. On top of that, I don’t really feel I have the palate to say “I like the X better at Restaurant A than the same X I had at Restaurant B.” Indeed, the only thing I can probably rate effectively are burgers and even then my opinions can be a little skewed.

I could fill this blog up with photos of places I’ve visited. Hong Kong on its own is full of beautiful and incredible things; my next stop, Vancouver, is beautiful too. Yet, I don’t go somewhere special every day and I don’t really want to be that guy who ends up stuck behind a camera(phone) trying to get the perfect shot for my blog or going out of my way to note down details so I can effectively blog it. In any case, there are some great travel and lifestyle bloggers out there already who do a great job and make it look effortless.

I could just tell you stories of my days. “Today we went to my friend’s beach house in Shek O. If you sit in the front seats on the top deck of the double-decker bus, it’s like riding a roller coaster. To find her house, we had to follow detailed walking instructions: ‘Turn left at the Black Sheep, then go through the archway on the right next to the temple. When you see the yellow house…’ We found it then ascended the stairs. We later learned we did better than most.” As it happens, however, not only is it a lot of effort to write like this, but when I do it, it still ends up feeling like a filler travel article for a newspaper far away. Plus, I could probably only put together one story like this a month, at best. And would it really be all that compelling to readers? It works for some people though. I’m a fan of Colin Wright’s Exile Lifestyle and have adopted his model to some degree… in addition to his entrepreneurialism, he’s also turning his travel stories into something people are willing to pay for, which is great. But is this really for me?

I still have a couple of posts in the pipeline. One is a cost comparison between HK and AU that should dispel any thoughts you might have that Hong Kong is an expensive place. I also hope to post some observations of Hong Kong and will definitely revisit the 57 Things post.

But I feel like I should be saying/doing something else. Something more.

I want to share this grand adventure but what’s the best way to do it without treading the same old paths so many others have followed. What do you think? What does that leave?

As far as planning goes, I am pretty comprehensive. Before we left, I knew what we were able to do and what we were unable to do when it came to moving to Hong Kong for six months. I am aware of the warnings, our limitations as tourists, and the challenges we face.

One major challenge we needed to overcome was figuring out where we were going to live. We booked a serviced apartment for our first month in Hong Kong so that we could get accustomed to the various neighbourhoods and figure out where we would like to spend most of our time. Before arriving in Hong Kong, I scoured various property rental sites, ex-pat forums and online classifieds sites; in short, I did my research.

Reports from many ex-pat forums claimed that it’s tough to find a flat in Hong Kong; I should stay away from agents; expect to pay more than you think it’s worth; it is impossible to find a place for less than 12 months … and plenty of other predictions of doom.

For me, none of it came true. I contacted an agent about a property I saw listed on Craigslist HK, he emailed me back asking for our requirements, he showed us 5 different properties, we picked the one we liked best, picked a move-in date and signed a lease a week later. There were some peculiarities, though. These are the 5 things you might not know about renting a flat in Hong Kong (we certainly didn’t!):

1. If you deal through an agent, the agent is only there until the lease is signed and you move in. The agent’s fee is paid by you when you move in and (in my case) is an amount equal to 50% of the monthly rent. After that, you deal with the landlord directly.
2. There are a lot of empty apartments in Hong Kong. We looked at five and, when meeting the landlord of one of them, she tried to show us an additional two she had vacant.
   I am told that the high vacancy rate is because people would rather leave it vacant so that, when they re-sell it later, they can claim that it’s “new” and not “used”. A never-lived-in property commands a higher price than one that’s had a tenant. As is the case in many affluent parts of Asia, the attitude is that new is always better than second-hand.
3. At the moment, you can name your price. The figure the landlord was asking was out of our price range. We made an offer of HKD3000/month less (about AUD375/month cheaper) and our offer was accepted.
4. We were shown the apartment at our convenience. None of this ‘open for inspection’ cattle call stuff only to be told “Sorry, the owner went with someone else” because the owner didn’t like the fact that you’re a post-grad student (even though you also hold down a full-time job).
5. One-year lease not required. We were clear at the start that we only wanted the apartment for five months, so that’s what we got. One caveat: in our case, we had to pay our entire five months of rent up-front.

These five points are important to me because they represent the direct opposite of how things work in the cities of Australia. There, you deal with the agent forever, accommodation is in short supply, at high prices and is such great demand that you have to compete with others to get it. It’s a landlord’s market in Australia — not so here in Hong Kong.

There’s not a lot that really gets to me. Those who know me well know that I am a very relaxed individual; I go with the flow. However, when abroad with others (this never happens when I travel alone), I feel an obligation to have all of the answers; to be in control of my environment. I act more confident — perhaps even arrogant. I put on airs like I know exactly what is going on and understand every subtle cultural nuance; like I am a true world citizen. But, much to my frustration, I’m not a world citizen. Instead I get a bit flustered.

This isn’t going to be a story of some crazy incident that happened as a result of my strange behaviour but from which we were lucky to escape. Instead it is merely an excuse for why there isn’t more to say.

For this trip to Hong Kong, the girlfriend brought two wheeled suitcases and a couple of shoulder bags. I brought a large shoulder bag and a small one (one for clothes, one for laptop and iPad). We travelled via Brisbane, staying the night at a boutique hotel and, in the morning, I awoke with some nasty neck pain caused by sleeping on only one side the entire night. This may have been due to the rather strong Manhattan the hotel bartender mixed for me before we went to bed for the night.

I compensated for the neck pain by carrying all of my bags, plus one of the girlfriend’s suitcases, on one side. This resulted in a twinge in my lower-right back. This twinge became severely aggravated by my getting a bit tense and flustered attempting to manoeuvre all of the luggage I was captaining around Hong Kong’s MTR as we headed towards the hotel.

We arrived at the hotel, attempted to settle in, looked around our neighbourhood (Causeway Bay) a little bit and, by the following evening, I could barely stand up. All of the fluster and nonsense that I had worked up inside my head had manifested in me rather painfully.

Today we walked around — from North Point back to Causeway Bay — and I seemed to manage okay but, in order to recuperate, we’re spending the evening in. Again. By this stage I wanted to regale you with all kinds of wonders but that will have to wait a few more days.

Your patience is appreciated. When you hear from me again, it will be the Year of the Dragon!

It’s only natural that you get used to certain creature comfort foods when you live in a place. When I first left Australia to move to the UK, I missed certain things, such as Vegemite and Cherry Ripes. When I returned to Australia after two years in London, I missed a lot of British foods, such as Twiggie Sticks, Starbars, and prawn-flavoured crisps.

Now I’m leaving Australia for Hong Kong, I’m thinking again about what obvious foods from here I will miss once I get to Hong Kong. Cherry Ripes will be on the list again but my girlfriend insists she will be bringing a tube of Vegemite (or two).

Apart from that I was at a bit of a loss so I asked everyone who follows me on Twitter. Here’s what they would miss if they were leaving Australia:

• Vegemite (@HellYeahKate, @unicorn_breath, @JackieCupcake, @lisaintokyo, @kalgrl)
• Milo (@Hamface, @acrystelle, @timelesscare, @kalgrl)
• Cherry Ripe chocolate bars (@rack__attack, @SimonJRidley, @timelesscare)
• Cheese (@IMPgirl, @dellvink, @lisaintokyo)
• Real bread (@dellvink, @IMPgirl)
• Arnott’s Tim-Tams (@HellYeahKate, @kalgrl)
• Arnott’s Shapes (@HellYeahKate)
• James Squire beer (@SimonJRidley)
• Twisties (@SimonJRidley)
• Uncle Toby’s choc-chip muesli bars (@corney)
• Lamingtons (@SluntCake)
• Good quality coffee (@soniaahhh)
• Real steak (@AndrewFyfe
• Good wine (@lisaintokyo)
• Meat pies (@craigforster)
• Sausage rolls (@craigforster)
• Vita Brits (@craigforster)

A pretty big list! The ones in bold are the things I think I will miss the most. They are Vegemite, Cherry Ripes, lamingtons, meat pies and sausage rolls. I haven’t had Tim-Tams or Shapes for a while and I seem to be doing okay. Naturally, I’ll write another post in a few months and see if I’ve missed any of these after all.

Thanks to everyone for their input. If you think I missed something, share it in the comments. What would you miss most?

57 things: that’s how many things I’ll be carrying with me as I travel the world.

To travel around the world, I knew I was going to have to pack light. Some people class it as minimalism… and I suppose that it is… but rather than wax philosophical about it, the reality is that the less I have, the less I have to worry about, keep track of, and carry.

I’m inspired in part by the many people who have gone before me, carrying so few items to so many faraway places.

Here’s a list of the ones that stuck with me:

• Colin Wright’s All 55 Things I Own
• How to travel the world for 9 months with 1 backpack (about 100 items)
• Leo Babauta’s 50 things
• Radical Minimalism: My 43 Possessions
• Travel Light, Travel Anywhere: The Ultimate Light Packing List (about 60 items)

So, in the interests of accountability and for future reference, I have listed what I will be carrying with me. But first, some rules:

1. An item’s cables/attachments are counted with the item. e.g. My laptop’s power adapter is counted as part of my laptop
2. Consumables are not counted. Examples of consumables are toiletries, cash, and paperwork.
3. Others count all socks or all underpants as one. I don’t (though sometimes I’m tempted to think of them as consumables)

All 57 things I own:

1. Vintage wool blazer
2. Wool cardigan
3. Vintage wool vest
4. Handmade wool scarf
5. Saba blue hoodie
6. Smart shirt
7. Smart shirt
8. Fleece vest
9. Green long-sleeved t-shirt
10. Light-blue graphic t-shirt
11. Blue t-shirt
12. White graphic t-shirt
13. Wool trousers
14. Smart trousers
15. Blue jeans
16. Black jeans
17. Pyjama top
18. Pyjama bottom
19. Light-blue underpants
20. Blue underpants
21. Black underpants
22. Green underpants
23. Striped socks
24. Striped socks
25. Brown socks
26. Striped socks
27. Black leather belt with steam engine belt buckle
28. Tree belt buckle
29. Essendon Bombers belt buckle
30. Camper casual shoes
31. Smart shoes
32. Small satchel
33. Black leather carry-on bag
34. Prescription sunglasses with case
35. Prescription spectacles
36. Wallet for cards
37. Wallet for money
38. Passport
39. Apple MacBook Air 11-inch with power adapter
40. Apple iPad (1st Gen) with felt case
41. Apple TV with cables
42. Apple iPhone 4S with USB cable and charger
43. Apple 1TB Time Capsule
44. Apple Magic Mouse
45. Apple Airport Express
46. In-ear headphones
47. WD 1.5TB portable USB hard drive
48. 4GB USB flash drive
49. Nintendo DS Lite
50. International power plug adapters
51. Moleskine notebook
52. Curtin Alumni pen (it’s got my name on!)
53. Electric razor
54. Comb
55. Business cards
56. Paperback book: Paul Theroux’s Riding the Iron Rooster
57. Paperback book: Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonia Express

Carrying but not included in the above list:

• Apartment booking paperwork
• Foreign currency (I have some HKD from last time, not to mention РУБ and GBP)
• Toiletries

As you can see, there are lots of items I could do without in that list — I can count at least 7 — but I’m just not willing to let go of them yet.

I plan to do this again in six months when I say goodbye to Hong Kong, so we’ll see how I go then with shedding the excess items!

You’ve seen it by now. The Kony 2012 video from a couple of weeks ago. I won’t link to it.

Regardless of what you think about it, there have been a lot of marketing jaws agape at how swiftly and broadly the Kony 2012 video spread through youth networks. You can find a great post about it by danah boyd over on her site entitled “The Power of Youth: How Invisible Children Orchestrated Kony 2012″. Her article is what inspired me to write this one.

How did they do it? How did Invisible Children get their message to spread so strongly and broadly without any advertising spend? If you work in digital marketing you may also be asking how did Invisible Children succeed so well and yet my client’s campaign was just as good plus we spent tonnes on advertising but it still only got seen by just a few hundred people?

Communities are the secret key

In her article, danah links to the data analysis of Gilad Lotan over at SocialFlow. His work reveals that a lot of the initial buzz generation came from the activation of pre-existing “networks of youth that Invisible Children had been cultivating across the US for years”. In other words, Kony 2012 wouldn’t have reached such a high point without having already developed a network of strong supporter communities who would passionately subscribe to the message and push it onwards, outwards and upwards.

Why did your viral campaign fail? You didn’t have a passionate community ready to support you and share your campaign’s message. Of course, other elements are also required — e.g. a message worth supporting, calls-to-action that help spread the message — but without a community of supporters, even the best message won’t get spread.

By the way, as an aside… following the Kony video’s dramatic rise, it was fun to see traditional media complaining that “We’ve been talking about this for years!” The Daily Show has a great clip about it (starting around the 3:00 mark). This, to me, shows that there’s a shift in how messages are spread and the traditional authoritative voices don’t have the impact they used to.

It may be difficult to see the immediate benefits to investing in the development of a community but the Kony 2012 campaign demonstrates the long-term potential impact you can have by developing one. Campaign-oriented marketing has its place but a share of your spend needs to go to long-term community development. That doesn’t mean you need to work more on your Facebook Page or get more Twitter followers; it means you need to focus on building community around you. Once you’re involved with strong community, your campaigns can have an even stronger impact than they did before.

It’s not like me to send you to another site but the link I’m about to send you to is one worth bookmarking if you’re serious about online community management.

I rarely disagree with Rich Millington. He isn’t afraid of saying no when others are busy trying to find ways to say yes so that they get paid. Rich is one of the few people out there pushing real online community management. Your Facebook fans, your Twitter followers, your Pinterest pinners… these aren’t communities and, like me, Rich isn’t afraid to say so.

This recent post of his categorises many of his better blog posts and is nothing short of comprehensive. Make sure you bookmark it and make time to read the articles relevant to you.

When someone asks me if I have any ideas for their brand, business, concept or whatever, my first idea is usually something community-based. That’s only natural. I believe in community; I live and breathe it.

Unfortunately, the result is usually that it doesn’t happen. Not because there’s anything wrong with the community idea but because it’s not fast enough, too big, too small, too expensive or too “out there”.

I hate to see some of these ideas go to waste, but I can’t make them happen on my own. So, what are my options?

• Could I seek out others with complementary skill sets and, together, we can build it in our spare time?
• Could I spend a lot of time putting together a proposal and then seeking an investor so I could hire people to build it?
• Could I try to build it myself in my spare time? (Ha! I was barely able to put this blog theme together on my own!)

…or is there another option? Share it with me in the comments!

Have you had a great community idea but wondered how to make it happen? What did you do?

Last year when I was experimenting a bit with blogging I put together a series of posts about defining the term ‘community’. It was well received but, as I had essentially just bashed it out without a lot of thought, I felt it deserved some better treatment.

So, I’ve reviewed it all, made some edits and wrapped it up into a single eBook: Defining Community.

To find out more, visit my eBook page. It’s available to download as a PDF or EPUB (compatible with iBooks for iPhone/iPad).

There’s an excellent blog post over at Social Penguin entitled What the Heck is a Community Manager? It addresses the comparison of Social Media Manager and Community Manager quite well. However, one commenter suggested that Community Manager is a new vague title that sounds fancier than Social Media Manager and is “presumably” more sinister. Being a community manager, I was a little annoyed by this, so I thought I should make something clear:

Community managers pre-date your grandfather.

It’s just that community managers haven’t always been called community managers. Depending on what they do, in the offline world they have other titles. Here are a few:

• Host
• Administrator
• Group counsellor
• Coordinator
• Ringleader
• Teacher
• Moderator
• Guide
• Pastor / Father / Minister / Padre

You see, what online community managers do has very little to do with the fact that what we do is online but it’s the online part that makes us unique. Otherwise, it’s essentially the same. This is also why it’s easiest to define community by looking back to a time that pre-dates the Internet.

Can you think of other examples of “offline” community managers? Share them in the comments!

(Oh, also, I tried to think of some pre-Internet titles for social media managers. All I could come up with was ‘gossip’… ;)

There are a lot of remarkable tools for building online communities nowadays. They let your community members upload all kinds of content, and allow them to interact with each other in a whole host of different ways. They get flagged and notified; they get embedded and updated; there’s videos to watch, sounds to listen to, questions to answer, articles to link to, walls to post on… and so much more.

Where would we be without all these great community building tools that have sprung up in the past five years?

My answer: We’d probably have more interesting and genuine online communities.

Before I continue, this post is inspired in part by Patrick O’Keefe’s first post of the year: There is Not Enough Time in the Day for Me to Tell You That Forums Are Not Dead. As Patrick says, everyone keeps declaring that forums are dead but the reality is that they’re not.

If I was asked to build a community but I could only use one tool (or platform or whatever you want to call it), my answer would be a forum (also known as a message board or discussion board – all the same thing).

Here are the reasons why I would choose a forum:

1. They’re easy to understand
   Potential new community members can get an idea of what’s going on very quickly. Everything is organised hierarchically and it’s easy to drill down into threads. Here’s a fun test: ask your mum (the perennial computer novice) to make a post on Facebook and on a forum. From my own personal experience with my mum, she was posting to forums of her own accord without me ever showing her how; she still doesn’t “get” Facebook.
2. Low barrier to participation
   Other tools want you to add a profile picture, find your friends and, once all that’s out of the way, you still have to find the community you wanted to be a part of and like, follow or join it. Joining a forum is very easy (which is why so many were plagued with spambots for so long). At the very least you pick a username, prove you’re human (spam countermeasures), verify yourself with an email address, and you can start posting.
3. Highly transparent and easy to find
   It’s public, it shows up on Google and it’s easy to search. All the participation and interaction happens out in the open (private messaging still exists in case you need some privacy). I cannot count the number of times I’ve searched for an answer to a specific problem and found the answer in a forum via a Google search.
4. Easy to participate, easy to lurk, easy to avoid
   Forums are independent. They’re not (usually) a sub-feature of some larger network. If you want to participate, you go to the forum. If you want to look but not participate, you go to the forum. If you don’t want to see anything about the forum, you don’t go to the forum. Facebook and Twitter are set up so that, even if you stop following, you’ll still see others sharing or retweeting it after you’ve “left”.
5. Potential for unlimited interaction
   What’s great about the “pure” aspect of forums is that there’s nothing stopping you from using a thread for whatever you want. Want to run a Q&A? Start a thread with a question. Want to add a knowledge base, start a thread with “How to…”. If these are more important parts of your online presence, you might want to use dedicated tools for those purposes instead, but if you just need something ad hoc for now, your forum can do it.
   Plus, if your members want to express themselves further, they can. Signatures, avatars, post ratings, “gamification”: these have all been present in forums for years.

I’m not saying there isn’t a place for other tools; they’re all part of the rich ecosystem we call the Internet. They all have their uses and those uses are often very useful.

If you’re starting a community, start with the basics — a space for people to talk — then you can layer in more complex features as you need them.

Traditional marketing channels are important for building awareness and triggering conversations but they’re becoming less valuable to the decision-making process. People are using social commerce to tap their own communities as well as communities of existing customers to make their decisions.

More and more of us are making purchasing decisions in which we value the opinions of others above all other information sources. Although an advertisement on the TV or in a magazine might raise our awareness of a product, we aren’t likely to make a purchasing decision until we’ve experienced some social engagement about it.

For example, I was looking for a solution to easily play digital videos through a TV. I had used a PS3 to do this in the past but now I sought an alternative. Being a long-time Mac user, I was aware of the Apple TV, however, I wasn’t willing to purchase one without asking others about it.

Thinking of buying an AppleTV tomorrow. Any advice?

— Greg Lexiphanic (@lexiphanic) December 29, 2011

I tweeted about it and received a lot of replies with recommendations and advice.  The replies I received helped me to make that purchase. I’m glad I did; I already love the damned thing.

Marketers have always been aware of how important “word of mouth” can be but it’s only with social media and social commerce that the influence of others can be delivered to any location at the speed of light and in perpetuity.

With these shifts in buyer behaviour, new ways of building businesses have developed. Businesses built around community are seeing long-term success. Kickstarter has demonstrated that some of the most fascinating product innovations of today were brought about through the investment of a community of people who shared a common interest in seeing that product succeed. Amazon was one of the first to use social commerce to help people make buying decisions — that’s what all the ratings, reviews, recommendations and ‘other people also bought’ information is all about.

The future of business has social commerce and community at its core.

Now it’s your turn. Do you agree? Is community the future of business? How can your business place community at its core?

Since we’re now officially in 2012, I thought I might drop some quick prediction bombs for the year. They’re not based on science but they are based on my observations of how things have been developing over the past year. So, let’s begin…

1. We’re going to see some very complicated but useless new online community tools
   They’ll exist to help you build a community but, frankly, they won’t be very good. They won’t be very good because, like most new community tools, they focus too much on the individual and not enough on the community.
2. Social commerce will be all the buzz in 2012
   People help other people buy things. Expect a lot more focus on this in 2012. Amazon’s been doing it for years and Facebook will make an impact on it this year.
3. 2012 will be the Year of the Online Community Manager
   Unfortunately, that also means it will be the year where every social media guru changes their title without changing their tune. That aside, expect to hear a lot of stories about new community sites that succeed because they listened to their online community manager instead of their marketing or IT managers.
4. We’ll understand what community is a bit better
   Right now, people use the word ‘community’ to refer to Facebook users, Twitter users, the recipients of broadcast-only email marketing and just about anything else. By the end of 2012, I think we’ll start to better understand that your Facebook fans, your Twitter followers and your eDM recipients aren’t communities at all.
5. More attention for niche communities
   Small, highly-specific communities are often the most successful ones. This has been the case for years but they’ve not received much attention. If you have a very specific interest, there’s a chance an online place exists for it. Expect to see more businesses attempt to create these in 2012 with varying degrees of success.
6. CCO: Chief Community Officer
   I’d like to think this will become a new executive position but it’s probably more of a 2015 thing. ;)

What do you think? Am I completely wrong? Did I miss anything? Share your thoughts in the comments.

While we’re talking definitions, let’s talk about “social media”.

Social media. What is it?

The common answer is “all that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube” stuff. And that’s what most people mean when they use that phrase. They’re referring to online social networks and media sharing tools.

The reality, however, is slightly different. The reality is that social media is bigger than that. Social media is the whole Internet. And much more.

“You’re crazy, Greg!” I hear you say… but before you close this browsing tab, hear me out.

You see, a lot of people look at the Internet like a library: lots of collections of pages. Pages which can be edited in a great variety of ways. This page editing is used to engage with each other socially.

A page is a medium. Offline, they are newspapers, television, radio and magazines. These are things which can be controlled, programmed, altered. They are controlled by a few to communicate to many.

What about a conversation, though? Is a conversation a medium? It can’t be controlled, programmed or altered. It’s something that occurs naturally, spontaneously. It is the meaningful social engagement between at least two people; an engagement which operates in both directions — not just one.

The Internet isn’t a library; the Internet is a conversation. It’s a massive spontaneous multi-stranded cross-referenced conversation.

That conversation isn’t limited to just the Internet. It extends beyond that and into our “offline” spaces. It’s not just the Web but also our text messages, our heart-to-hearts, and, really, any poly-directional interaction we engage in with anyone else.

Everything on the Internet is a conversational statement being made and, with the power of hyperlinking, everything else can be a reply.

So, what is social media? The Internet is a medium; it is one of many media that make up social media. It’s what we’re doing right now; it’s what you spend most of your time doing online.

When you look at the Internet that way, doesn’t your approach change?

What will you be doing in 2012?

Will you still be working in “social media” or will you be working in online communications or online communities?

Will you be putting together some web pages or will you be starting a conversation (and replying to many more)?

See you in the new year… and don’t forget to subscribe!

New website!

Dust is still settling a bit around here as Christmas approaches but I thought I should at least say hello.

Why not subscribe in your favourite news reader?

More soon. :)