Search Engine Strategies San Jose 09 Keynote

The Search Engine Strategies convention kicked off yesterday in San Jose, and the Opening Keynote was Clay Shirky. Shirky gives an overview of his book “Here Comes Everybody,” and delves into the details of how Media has evolved over the years.

According to Shirky, “Group action just easier, people can come together share and get things done.” This change in user behavior has changed the landscape of communication. He went into an example about a promotion HSBC had for students. The program was a penalty free checking program, not forcing students to pay penalty fees. HSBC felt they had a great promotion, too great actually and they began to lose money. So HSBC pulled back the offer and gave the students 30 days to get out or fees would be in tact.

HSBC was not expecting Facebook and someone started the Great HSBC ripoff. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2371122959. Other students wrote about how to get your money out of the bank and get it to another bank. There were multiple media complaints and HSBC was getting negative publicity. Online protests were occurring and the group against HSBC kept growing.Then people organized to plan on going to London and have a protest in the Street at HSBC headquarters.
Needless to say HSBC pulled back and changed the policy because the customers were coordinated and not in an individual scramble.
Shirky states, “Facebook and other social media sites are sites of coordination not just information. That makes the Internet medium different, every URL is a latent community. You can put people in contact with one another. We are living in the largest expansion of expressive capability.”

He goes on to explain that Prior to now there were four great periods with media expansion; The Inventions of: Movable type and the printing press, The Telegraph/Phone, Recorded Media, harnessing of sending electronic waves through television and radio.

The major difference is that none of these could create groups. It produced the same message center to the edge. Communication was one to many, or one to one, and not many to many. Internet is the broadcast pattern of reaching large groups. It provides Organizations without organizations. That’s what HSBC ran into.

Computers and phones are symmetrical and give the option to the user, do you want to consume or share? Every time a new consumer is added to Facebook a new media producer is created, it’s one media to another without changing.

Technology does not cause the change, it’s not the shiny new tool that arrives and people just adopt it. Tools are shiny and new but are wasting assets…nothing can last forever. Internet access has been around 20 years but it has been the last five years that have had the greatest impact. We have new tools with apps and the social media networks but tools only change society when they society is motivated to make a change.

I'll be attending more sessions and posting updates - so stay tuned.