Paul Jacobson

Mike published a post yesterday titled “The Next Step for Social Media” which I think I have been waiting for on some level. It didn’t tell me anything that I didn’t know but it is one of those posts which reveals a change in attitudes that is somewhat overdue. The first two paragraphs of the post pretty much capture the essence of the message for me:

The honeymoon is over. Much of the hype and noise surrounding social media and its meteoric rise (especially in the USA) has abated. Perhaps owing to the global economic crisis, arguably due to the apparent lack of sustainable business models and possibly as a result of some semblance of reasonable thinking, we’re no longer reading about $1.6 billion investments in YouTube and $15 billion Facebook valuations.

At the same time social media or Web 2.0 or new media or whatever the heck you choose to call it certainly hasn’t disappeared either. On the one (marketing) hand we’re seeing significantly higher budget percentages being pushed at below-the-line, experiential and digital (for the purposes of this conversation including online and mobile) channels – a sure sign that business takes the effect that the social media evolution has had on their customers pretty seriously. Agencies are feeling this – a fact that keeps my company and me very busy.

A while ago I wrote a two part series of posts for the Times in a past life as a blogumist. The first post was titled “Social Media is Dead” and the objective of that post was to point out that the hype behind this New Big Thing “Social Media” had overextended its stay and it was time to see social media for what it is has become: part of the fabric of the Web itself and not some new widget. Instead the Web we came to know as a largely unresponsive mix of media types has evolved somewhat to become more social, interactive and meaningful.

Just like in the late 90s there has been a fair amount of hype surrounding social media and what it represents to the world. To a large extent I think the hype has eclipsed the reality (and a measure of practicality) and we have seen a number of the same types of services springing up in an effort to garner some of that VC funding that seemed to be flowing like water until the financial crisis/panic hit recently. In the space of a couple years we have seen social networks like Facebook explode and the rise of things called microblogging platforms like Jaiku, Twitter, Pownce, Identi.ca … (the list goes on). In some cases we have seen services pop up we couldn’t have anticipated previously and that has been great. Often it is the unexpected new thing that has more of an impact than the planned stuff.

With the amount of available VC funding diminishing it is even more important to start focussing on taking established and tested social media tools and putting them to work. Mike has a few good suggestions on how to do that in his post and I think it is fair to say that Mike has a good grasp of the state of the local market. From my perspective it is increasingly important to start paying attention to some of the more mundane and perhaps even unpleasant aspects of social media implementations too. Here I am referring to the legal issues that accompany this sort of work: things like content licensing, privacy, regulating user conduct on your Web spaces and so on.

These issues aren’t just being taken care of and when the warm fuzzy feelings associated with all this sharing and socialising wear off businesses may well find themselves staring down the barrel of a couple nasty lawsuits for copyright infringement or privacy violations. Not a happy thought at all but entirely something manageable. It makes a lot of sense to lay the groundwork for this stuff and incorporate it into your usual risk management policies and processes early on and avoid any unpleasant surprises later.

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legal, mike stopforth, new media, social media, legal issues, planning

Related posts:

1. A New Media Lawyer’s manifesto
2. Social Media is dead
3. Social media complicating the workplace
4. A measure of success for social media
5. Moving towards an open Facebook?