360DigitalInfluence

On November 23, 1787 James Madison wrote:
“A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.”

When he wrote those words, social media was nowhere on the horizon, nor was the telephone. At that time, getting messages out in a timely manner was much more challenging than it is today… significantly more challenging. The smaller the society, the easier it was to make sure everyone was informed. Today’s technologies make reaching thousands of people in real time no challenge at all.

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Ten years ago, sharing photographs and videos meant snail-mailing content to family and friends. Now, sharing photographs and videos are a digital activity, with online sharing sites and smart phones applications like Instagram, Path, and PicPlz being quickly integrated into daily social media regimens.

Enter Color: the latest mobile photo application drawing mixed reviews about the application. Prior to Color’s launch, Sequoia Capital, considered “one of the highest caliber venture firms” by Wall Street Journal, invested $25 million,  Bain Capital invested $9 million, and Silicon Valley Bank provided $7 million in venture debt, presenting Color with an accumulative $41 million in funding.  Since its launch, the application has received 2/5 stars based on over 600 reviews on the iTunes App Store. Commentary has noted the application’s function as a stalking mechanism, others have expressed that the user interface is not very intuitive, and the most reoccurring question I’ve encountered is, “is Color worth $41 million?”

Despite this feedback, Color attracted adoption and positive reactions from technology elites, including Tristan Walker of FourSquare, Joshua Williams of Gowalla, and David Heinemeier Hansson of Ruby on Rails. Within a week of its public debut, Color is ranked second in number of downloads for social network applications, just behind Facebook. After having the opportunity to use this application over the past few days, I have come to two conclusions: 1.) I am shamelessly addicted and 2.) It is indeed an important product that has high business potential.

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We wear a mask that grins and lies
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes
This debt we pay to human guile
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile

- Paul Lawrence Dunbar

It begins when we are children. As Steve Hein of EQI.org points out, “Children start out emotionally honest. They express their true feelings freely and spontaneously. But the training to be emotionally dishonest begins at an early age. The child is told to smile when actually she is sad. She is told to apologize when she feels no regret. She may be told to kiss people good night when she would never do so voluntarily.” In short, she will slowly be influenced to conform to a social structure that attempts to control what feels true.

But what does emotional honesty have to do with WikiLeaks and Digital Influence, you ask?

It’s simple really. We are still struggling – as individuals and as countries - to break down the walls of ‘protection’ that we have been brought up to believe we must build. We have not yet replaced those walls with the bridges necessary to fully transform society.

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The rise of the internet over the last fifteen years has resulted in remarkable new possibilities for government and citizen engagement. Leaders inside and outside government are using social media tools to realize the principles of participation, collaboration, transparency and efficiency to address the challenges facing our country. This movement, often called Gov 2.0., is explored each year at a two day event I attended called the Gov 2.0 Summit.

Jules Polonetsky, Co-chair and Director of the Future of Privacy Forum, led a session titled “the Future of Privacy” and he shared a particularly interesting point of view on responsible data practices. Throughout the Summit, there was disagreement regarding the use of data; some demanded privacy while others advocated openness and easy distribution. Jules, however, had a more unique perspective: citizens will be more comfortable with their data being shared as long as there is an obvious and relevant purpose that benefits that citizen — what he calls “featurizing data use.”

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Transparency, access, engagement, participation, and collaboration are the common themes that tied together the nine different presentations during today’s Gov 2.0 Summit session “Fueling the Innovation Economy“.

During the session, representatives ranging from the U.S. Department of Education, to TED (or, as this month’s Fast Company calls it - “The New Harvard“) shared their respective formulas and designs for creating a more open, collaborative, engaged world that match our nation’s democratic ideals.

I have to admit that I was most excited to listen to June Cohen, executive producer of TED. During her 18-minute speech, she shared the wildly influential non-profit’s secret to success: radical openness.

Sound familiar?

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For PR Week Labs a few weeks ago I recorded a 15 minute presentation on 5 Steps to Conversation Management. Conversation Management is an 360 Digital Influence program for helping our clients establish or manage social network presence with the dual goals of grassroots engagement and business impact. Based on a dual theory of influence, our team uses Conversation Management to promote advocacy on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The steps are included below and you can watch the video here (for more videos check out our YouTube channel- this one was too long to be included).

360 Digital Influence- PR Week Labs- Conversation Management from Ogilvy 360DI on Vimeo.

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It would be impossible to wrap up the first day of TED in 1 post.  Themes emerged around the power of diet (to do everything from prevent angiogenesis leading to cancer to reversing childhood obesity), taking scientific lessons from space and spiders to improve our daily lives, and the Nobel-winner-documented delta between happiness and economics (hint: means, not end).

The theme that is most relevant to our ongoing discussion here, however, is the possible societal echoes of the transparency that social media facilitates.   continue reading