One high­light of the Trav­el­ing Geeks’ trip to Lon­don came dur­ing the Econ­sul­tancy Round­table that took place on our last day in Lon­don, in the sto­ried Globe The­atre over­look­ing the Thames.

Patri­cio Rob­les of Econ­sul­tancy con­ducted a Q&A with me about the state of social media. Here’s part of our conversation:

In your opin­ion, what are the two most excit­ing things tak­ing place right now in the world of social media?

The open ecosys­tem that Twit­ter has estab­lished — allow­ing the com­mu­nity to develop appli­ca­tions on the Twit­ter plat­form — is extra­or­di­nar­ily excit­ing. Its suc­cess is help­ing spur Face­book to con­sider dis­man­tling the walled gar­den approach that doomed AOL and other old-school media giants in favor of join­ing the rest of us on the open Web.

The sec­ond cause for excite­ment is the way in which social media, in its var­i­ous incar­na­tions, has bro­ken into the main­stream lex­i­con over the past six to nine months. A cou­ple of years ago, no one knew what social media was. Now, young peo­ple take it for granted as part of their daily lives. There’s some­thing mind-jarring about the fact that social media, in all its lim­it­less pos­si­bil­i­ties, is the new rock ‘n’ roll. Reg­u­lar cit­i­zens now under­stand that when peo­ple break out a Flip Mino or a Nokia cam­era phone to con­duct an inter­view or live-stream an event, it’s not a curios­ity but a shar­ing expe­ri­ence to be celebrated.

Many indus­tries have been impacted by social media and many are now mak­ing exten­sive use of it. Which indus­tries do you think have been affected the most and which do you think have the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties to use social media to their benefit?

Tra­di­tional media com­pa­nies, par­tic­u­larly news­pa­pers, are being hard-hit by the tec­tonic changes whip­ping through the medi­a­s­phere. The mega­trends of nichefi­ca­tion, frag­men­ta­tion and per­son­al­iza­tion do not play well with a busi­ness model based on pack­ag­ing mass mar­ket con­tent for a mass mar­ket that is largely dis­ap­pear­ing online.

Social media is about being human — it’s about con­nect­ing with real peo­ple with real iden­ti­ties. So indus­tries that stand to gain the most are the ones that have tra­di­tion­ally been cast in the pub­lic eye as aloof and imper­vi­ous to the wants and desires of ordi­nary peo­ple. The cable com­pany, the phone com­pany, large cor­po­ra­tions, com­pa­nies whose brands seem beyond redemp­tion may well be among the biggest bene­fac­tors of social media. But they need to begin to engage with the pub­lic and their cus­tomers first.

Are you wor­ried about the level of hype that exists in the social media realm? What advice can you give com­pa­nies try­ing to cut through the clut­ter and nav­i­gate the space?

It’s true that there’s a lot of noise and not enough sig­nal. But I think a lot of voices in tra­di­tional media are secretly root­ing for social media’s col­lapse so that they’ll be able to col­lect their pen­sion on the way out. I’m not sure how one can label the social media rev­o­lu­tion as hype if its fall­out is hav­ing such pro­found effects, rang­ing from how we elect national polit­i­cal fig­ures to how large insti­tu­tions are forced to inter­act with the pub­lic. Yes, social media’s impact has been over­hyped — it won’t ame­lio­rate the eco­nomic melt­down or bring about world peace (though there’s a move afoot to nom­i­nate the founders of Twit­ter for the Nobel Peace Prize) — but in most of the cor­po­rate sec­tor, exec­u­tives are still under­es­ti­mat­ing the impact of the forces at work.

Com­pa­nies that are open to tran­si­tion­ing to the new econ­omy will come to real­ize that social media is not just another dis­tri­b­u­tion vehi­cle but a fun­da­men­tal strate­gic approach that entails a rethink­ing of busi­ness as usual. The pre­cepts of par­tic­i­pa­tion, inno­va­tion and inclu­sive­ness need to be instilled at all lev­els of an orga­ni­za­tion, and social media offers a way for cus­tomers and employ­ees to engage in mean­ing­ful, pro­duc­tive ways.

There will always be a fear fac­tor in mov­ing into strange new waters. You may want to bring in some out­side experts to help nav­i­gate the ter­rain (and bypass the gurus for the com­pa­nies and ser­vices with a track record).

Your book Dark­net: Hollywood’s War Against the Dig­i­tal Gen­er­a­tion dis­cusses the clash between Hol­ly­wood and con­sumers in the dig­i­tal age. Arguably, the news­pa­per indus­try has been much harder hit by the rise of the inter­net than Hol­ly­wood — at least thus far. Do you think Hol­ly­wood will even­tu­ally go the way of the news­pa­pers? What does it need to do to avoid that fate?

I wrote the book as warn­ing call in antic­i­pa­tion of esca­lat­ing clashes between media titans against grass­roots media pub­lish­ers in the areas of copy­right law, remix cul­ture and inno­va­tion when it was becom­ing plain that we were enter­ing an era of media that was becom­ing more decen­tral­ized, frag­mented and per­son­al­ized. News­pa­pers have thus far refused to embrace the idea of read­ers as true part­ners in the news equation.

Hol­ly­wood is a dif­fer­ent crea­ture. Where news has become a com­mod­ity, the tal­ent that pro­duces a ster­ling work of mass enter­tain­ment is still a rare thing indeed. Ten years from now we’ll still be going out to the the­ater and watch­ing prime time TV on the telly along­side the rich stream of inde­pen­dently pro­duced works pumped in via the Internet.

I don’t think file-sharing of movies will ever rise to the level of music file trad­ing. Hol­ly­wood can avoid the fate of the music and news­pa­per indus­tries by con­tin­u­ing to pro­duce high-quality pro­grams with style and heart, but the stu­dios need to take a more proac­tive approach in embrac­ing alter­na­tive dis­tri­b­u­tion meth­ods ($1/day movie rentals, dig­i­tal access to tens of thou­sands of past pro­grams, etc.). Remem­ber how suc­cess­ful King Canute was in com­mand­ing the waves to halt.

Speak­ing of news­pa­pers: you were an edi­tor at the Sacra­mento Bee for 11 years before you made the jump to dig­i­tal media. What are your thoughts on the cri­sis the news­pa­per busi­ness is facing?

The cri­sis fac­ing news­pa­per is one part inevitable — other mass media such as mag­a­zines and broad­cast tele­vi­sion are also expe­ri­enc­ing the finan­cial tur­moil accom­pa­ny­ing the shift to a more nichefied, frag­mented medi­a­s­phere — and one part self-inflicted, given a news­pa­per cul­ture that con­tin­ues to pun­ish, rather than reward, exper­i­men­ta­tion, inno­va­tion and fail­ure (with­out which inno­va­tion is impossible).

The impor­tant point is not that news­pa­pers are pre­served but that public-service com­mu­nity jour­nal­ism, in-depth report­ing and inves­tiga­tive reports con­tinue to be sup­ported by peo­ple who do it for a liv­ing, in addi­tion to those doing it as a hobby. That will even­tu­ally require a decou­pling of jour­nal­ism from newspapers.

For the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion, see the story on Econ­sul­tancy.

JD Lasica works with major com­pa­nies and non­prof­its on social media strate­gies. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact JD or leave a comment.

Tweet It! Buzz This Post Deli­cious Digg This Post Face­book Red­dit Stum­ble This Post