Teach Me the Ways Sensie

Hello friends!

My social media class has moved on to a new book and it's only week four. I just want to yell "slow down," but college does not operate that way. The book my professor assigned to us is Groundswell, written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Similar to the last book we read, I've actually found the reading to be quite tolerable. Li and Bernoff provide valuable information that is interesting to read about and relevant to what I will be doing in the future.

For those of you who view my blog and are not a member of my social media class, I'll give you a brief explanation of groundswell.
The groundswell is:
     A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
     Basically, this means that the people have the power to find and share information through technologies like Facebook, blogs, wikis and other user-generated sites. I appreciate the concept of groundswell, because I think that information should be spread that way. Consumers are the reason why corporations stay in business. They should have the freedom to generate the information that they find to be the most important.

The chapter that I enjoyed reading this week compared groundswell to jujitsu. Like jujitsu, groundswell requires you to harness the power of your opponent for your own advantage. The book then is much like a sensie that teaches the techniques of the groundswell. What I loved about this chapter is that it explained exactly how to use different types of technology. Each category was followed by a brief explanation of how the technology works, how many people use them, how they form part of the groundswell, how they threaten institutional power and what you should do about them.

Due to the nature of this project, I want to briefly talk about blogs, user-generated content and podcasts. These three forms of technology are pretty self explanatory. The feature that makes all of these forms of  expression similar is that they encourage commentary and feedback. I have said before in previous posts that comment boxes are so important. If you give people the opportunity to voice their opinion, they will be much more inclined to give the necessary feedback a company needs to improve.

What I found most interesting was the number of people who either write or follow a blog. I may have underestimated the popularity of blogs because I am new to the world of blogging. The book says that 25% of online consumers read blogs and 29% watches use-generated videos. I feel that those statistics are substantial enough for any company to consider creating a blog. Despite the positive attributes of blogs and podcasts, they can pose as a threat to companies. The freedom that these technologies provide to consumers is risky. Anything is possible because anyone who has a computer and internet access can post whatever they feel like saying. So the beauty of the groundswell can also be a big problem for companies. Blogs and podcasts should be monitored to prevent unauthorized content or false information from being shared with the world.

This chapter was great because I am some what lacking in the technological category. The information was very helpful for me and I think that I have a much better grasp of the different technologies and how to use them effectively.

"It's great to learn, 'cause knowledge is power!"

Until next time,

Katie