Man is a social being, looking for connection
The reason I don't want to give up the term 'social' is because people are social beings. Most of us seek connection with others and we use the means that are available to us. In the past, that was the campfire, the carrier pigeon, a smoke signal. Today, it's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. And now it's precisely those platforms that want to lock us up in all sorts of separate (read 'their') boxes. How (a)social is that?
The funny thing is that we don't even seem to mind their antisocial behavior. We grumble a bit list to data about the latest changes and obstacles and continue our path on their sites. We work around it and when we're really fed up, we move to a new platform, to a new tool and the game starts all over again.
History repeats itself
Perhaps that is the lesson to be learned from all these developments: we humans are constantly repeating ourselves, century after century, offline and online, tool after tool. We are (with the exceptions) social first and foremost in the private domain and find it harder to behave that way when we are at work. Different rules apply there.
jff photo don't be afraid to Nijmegen 2012
There is certainly also a mission, vision, strategy that focuses on the customer and implies social business. But the reality is different. The connections that fit the social being human are often made difficult or even forbidden at work. And monitored anyway.
Organizations hire agencies for that too. Because they see social media as a business risk: all those customers who just shout what they think of you and what they want from you. All those employees who might listen to that and want to respond, because they understand that you as an organization can benefit from that. That was not the intention.
As far as I'm concerned, that was and still is the intention, but if we're not careful, social media will be 'business as usual' again in 2013. Website banners are getting competition from Twitter ads, which don't make any sense. Hashtag spam is just as 'normal' as the old e-mail spam. The 'eyeballs' of the past have been replaced by 'big data' and the tools remain more important than the actual customer relationship.
The other person you can connect with via social media is seen very instrumentally as an opportunity, channel or obstacle. Lovink describes it as follows: 'Connect persons to data objects to persons. That's the social today.' I don't want to go along with him in that idea. I like to give organizations a second chance to ensure that social will stand for social business in 2013. I still see the organization of the future as a connected organization , where technology facilitates and people make the difference.
And what does your organization of the future look like? Does it still use social media or will it do social business? And what role do you see for yourself in that? Will you become a Chief Listening Officer or will you approach it differently? I'm curious!