How to survive the web 2.0 loss of control
- Mon, April 27 2009
- Filed under: Social networking and web 2.0
This is a big theme of the conference here - you don’t have control over your message, brand, conversation, etc. in today’s Web 2.0 world. So what do you do?
Here are some thoughts from Clay Shirky (see previous post) here at the Nonprofit Technology Conference, in a Q&A with NTEN mastermind Holly Ross. I paraphrase a bit for clarity here.
Q: What’s the value proposition for nonprofits in a world where people can more easily organize themselves? If experts don’t matter, what’s our role?
A: There is still value in expertise – what’s changed is the relative value. Where the power is, is in convening the folks out there – be a platform where the members discover each other, not just where you’re the expert.
Q: What makes the convening power work? What if you set up a place to convene and no one comes?
A: It’s mysterious what takes off and doesn’t. What you want to go is where the people are, not start a new place to congregate. Ask your members what they are already doing. Where are they already congregating? Do a search on your organization name and exclude the results from your website – you can learn where people are that way. Don’t be the person who goes into a crowded bar and says “Hey, look at this! This works! I’m going to start my own bar!” Instead, go talk to the people in the crowded bar.
Comments
I’ve still been absorbing all the terrific brainstorming that came out of SPARK last weekend. One of the key bits that was agreed upon by all almost immediately was the utter centrality of the user. I’ve been a big believer of this since early in my software career and I’ve made this point on my own numerous times, probably most famously in my widely read and subsequently slash dotted Five Reasons Why Web 2.0 Matters. Every time that software creators get far from this mark, they lose the software ingredient that matters the most: us. Now, at SPARK we framed it in slightly stronger terms, specifically that the user is the center of the universe.