What I learned from the Social Networking Toolkit

One must approach an alleged "geek" breakfast taking place before 10:00 am with a hearty dose of skepticism.  Especially at a "world famous" diner in Union Square (tourists will buy anything).  Nonetheless, I trudged over to Union Square with Julie Crabill of SHIFT at 8:30 a.m. this morning for a Social Media Club Breakfast.  Was actually a bit fun, though the pancakes were unremarkable.  The crowd consisted of a strong faction of PR peeps, flanked by hi-tech marketing slaves, and social media wonks.  However, my favorite part outside of the excellent chatter was certainly the Social Networking Toolkit, thanks to Mr. Jeff Pulver.

The SNT contains a pen, two Hello tags (for one's username/message and one's bio), stickers for "tags," and Post-It Notes for a "wall." This simple formula schooled me in social media:

• To find out if a person is interesting, talking to them is quicker than reading all of their stickers.
• Those with the most stickers were usually the ones that gave the most stickers.
• A corollary to the above is: the more stickers on you, the more you're expected to stick other people.
• Attractive people attract other attractive people; but loud people get the most attention.
• Birds of a feather tend to flock and form cliques.
• People tagged me with words that would only be helpful to that person.
• At least 50% of the total stickers were written by their owners.
• The more tags you have on you, the more you look like a MySpace page.
• Usernames are ridiculous and conceal your identity.
• I mostly talked to the people I knew.
• And, most importantly: it takes an offline metaphor about stickers to teach me the fundamentals of social media.

Sincerely,
philosophygeek (photos @ Flickr)

tags technorati : blogpost markjohnson smc socialmediaclub breakfast thingsilearned socialnetworkingtoolkit snt jeffpulver cliques bymarkjohnson thispagehasalotoftags

Comments

[Michael Bailey]

TAGGED: fishbowl

;^)