Jeremy Wagstaff is one of my favorite observers of today’s world and the technology behind it – along with an intense dose of “not from the US or Canada”, which makes it all the more interesting.
Not long ago he put up an interesting article: Web 2.0 or Social Media? It depends on the Year.
You have to go check this piece out. He includes a terrific graph of the trends of the “terms” used to describe our online global community. The graph is one of those “wow” moments of clarity – kudos to Wagstaff to ask it and plug it into his post.
Why blog about this myself – because Jeremy points to a very valuable trait we all share – we want to name something, use the right terms, be part of creating the new term, analyze the new term. Right? We’ve all been there – its a double header when you play two baseball games in one day but certainly not a single header if there is one. In fact, singles are a hit that usually but not always occurs in the games played and headers are a way of thinking of something called a slide – but single headers do not exist.
We love this kind of stuff.
What do we miss? Why are people at baseball games? What do they do there? Some leave the park not even knowing the score. What do they leave the park with? A buzz? A good social experience? A business contact? A full tummy? What?
We need to be more curious about what is going on around and why its going on around us and stop worrying so much about the easy stuff – like what its called.
We’re marketers and leaders – let someone else worry about semantics. Worry yourself about the world around us.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
I agree – we should worry less about what to call it. Interesting question – who is it that gets to decide what we call it? I was in an interview and I have on my resume that I have been freelancing for the past several months. One of the people interviewing me corrected how I had social media listed on my resume, which I found fascinating. Why correct me? Who says you are right? Well, like a sucker I changed it, but to this day I am not sure why
KC Love this comment. The who gets to decide what we call it point is very interesting. On the one hand, I think “KC is right its a big deal who DOES decide.” Then the more mellow side of me says “and who really truly cares? Would i have named facebook facebook? Probably not – but there you have it.”
The second point is even more fascinating: the correcting of terminology. You’re not a sucker, consider yourself a calm, cool, contained soul who knows that what its called isn’t the point – its how to use it. For the person who said it to you – they’re just insecure. They had a better day being able to correct you. You likely made their day. So good for you!
I think it doesn’t matter how things are called, sometimes. However, what if you were to convey that something in a message and you have to name it? Or if you were to use the name to evoke certain associations?
I’m reading a book called “Made to Stick”. In a chapter talking about how to make a message emotional the authors talk about the semantic stretch. In the example Jim Thompson, the creator of Positive Coaching Alliance, was trying to revive sportsmanship in sport. The problem was that “sportsmanship” no longer evoked the same meaning as the word originally had, so Thomson came up with a term “Honoring the Game”. This term was powerful enough to change attitude of the players.
Now I’m wondering how often I hear the words “web 2.0″ and “social media”, they became so cliché so fast. Web 2.0 used to be associated with innovation in web building, but not anymore, at least for me. Now they have to find new ways of conveying that sense of innovation so that it clicks to people.
I actually lost trace of where my thought was going, but I guess the idea was that names actually do matter, sometimes.
Alex I do think names matter, a great deal. A name like Web 2.0 matters because just like a brand, it has meaning and becomes a shorthand for a concept.
What that name is matters little, but is the point many like to contend. As KC’s comments point out in another comment, you can go to an interview with a knowledge base and ideas, and the interviewer will debate not what it is that you’re skilled to do but instead what to call it – now how is that helping the interviewer understand more about KC’s skills, I ask you?
Now on to books – personally I think Switch is a more finely crafted book from the Heath brothers than Made to Stick. Have you read that one?
I read KC’s comment only after I posted mine – I guess I had to type faster!:)
I agree that debating on how to call certain things is no good, since sometimes there’s definitions that all people agree on. Often describing the activity brings a lot more meaning. However, as names are convenient shortcuts most of the people will keep on using even the ambiguous ones, hoping that the receiver would decode it the way they wanted.
I haven’t read Switch yet, but it’s already in my kindle as well as several others like “Crush it”, “Tribes”, and “Drive”. Can you comment on any of those?
Alex: further reading comments: Tribes I read when it came out. Like a lot of Godin’s work, it is more accessible through his blog. The books don’t seem to add much for me, for while they explain things further, one of Godin’s gifts is that he is concise. His blogs and occasional monographs/papers do it for me. The other two I’ll look to you to see what you think!
Thank you for the tip on Godin, as well as for brining out an important insight in the post and the comments!
Maybe that is why I didn’t get the job – I blame the interviewer for asking the wrong questions! At least I walked out of there knowing that it wasn’t for me
I do agree that we should care, but people assume that it is their duty to instruct others on information in which they are not as well versed as they think that they are. I could ramble for a while, so I will stop! Cheers!