Another addition to this seemingly growing series of how other industries can help the social web grow up, this one takes a walk with photography. I have quite a few friends who are photographers whether by profession or hobby many traits and habits extend pass their disposition. I began looking at how we can take the basics and learn how to interact with the social web more effectively.

Lately it seems as if the market for social media 101 and 102 have hit critical mass, unfortunately I think it’s just beginning to grow. Everyone will get into the business of telling you how to leverage, game, manipulate, and pendulate wants against needs. The more we become a “friending” society the more we need to be reminded that we are still human. Yes, there are ways to help nudge or further expose a desire into a “friending” action but the incessant documentation and rules for social media needs to find a plateau. This isn’t to say that those who are creating materials for those just becoming acquainted with social media are wasting their time or creating useless chatter amongst the internet. It does seem, however, that we are wanting to abandon our humanity for something more enticing. This happened with the advent of email and email newsletter campaigns, still heavily used but often tossed to the side for more social fields, email has been through this and maybe we should learn some lessons.

When I was fourteen I started attending computer classes at my local community college, one of the basic theories was whether computers would ever become self-aware. This fascinated me, at that time I was thinking that all of the sci-fi books I’ve read could possibly come true. In hindsight, that would have also meant the enslavement or extinction of the human race but when you’re fourteen that isn’t on your mind. As we began to talk about every element of what makes us human versus mechanical elements the sense of hearing was discussed. The professor began to talk about how as humans we have the ability to hear everything but can essentially tune out what is not relevant to us at the current moment. Computers have a much more difficult time to distinguish which sounds are relevant and then to eliminate the irrelevant sounds from current processing. This has always fascinated me, we innately understand what to do and how to do it. This got me thinking about the social web, of course, we are all listening to who’s talking about our brands or keyword interests but that still creates a lot of noise.

I can’t tell you how sick and tired I am of seeing all these social media, seo, twitter, etc. experts that are infecting the places we call home. Some I try to give the benefit of the doubt and look what they have to offer but I am only letdown to see that they are schlepping information they pulled out of an O’Reilly or “For Dummies” book. I began thinking about what this means, thinking is this it, is this what this industry is going to become? False hope. Empty promises. These experts are essentially selling services to show you how to simply use, some try to show you how to game the people on them; and for that they should be shot. But it did make me think about what differentiates people from “experts” and the people who really know how to create real results.

While reading The Economist and Harvard Business Review I was thinking about social/new media companies and consultants and their relation/strategy towards rising inflation and market recession. With businesses who deal directly with consumers (B2C), how will inflation and a recession affect their consumers? And businesses who work strictly with business (B2B), how will they address the market when their customers put social/new media on the back burner because funds are not available for non-ancillary projects. Or are they missing the point because social/new media is ancillary to every business?