Social Media Club Phoenix
February 9, 2007 by Francine Hardaway
Last night’s meeting of Social Media Club Phoenix veered off into a very interesting direction. During the introductions around the room, one of the attendees said that he wondered if social media were actually dehumanizing, filtering communication and removing it from the realm of face-to-face. The facilitator allowed the discussion to come back to that question, even though the “agenda” was about the various tools of social media.
There were some very vociferous opinions about the dehumanizing qualities of, say, online gaming or social networks, as opposed to the humanizing qualities of blogs, shared content, and shared information. No conclusion could be drawn, obviously, but the question attracted quite a bit of discussion. Squidoo came up in the discussion as a collaborative, unifying force, as did Youtube.
I gave my usual example of sharing the information about my hip replacement in a blog and another attendee asked how people on the Internet were to judge which information was credible on a site or social network consisting of, for example, people trying to get off anti-depressants.
I think the reason so many issues of credibility, rather than technology, came up is that our participants are about half social media experts and half people there to learn. While that strikes me as an ideal situation, it’s very difficult to facilitate so that everyone comes out with some value! Those of us who are engaged in producing and using social media every day often forget how the world at large feels about us 
I’m sure you meant YouTube.com and not UTube.com. Didn’t you?
Thanks for pointing this out Jim – I had not seen it until your comment.
mia culpa, mia maxima culpa! Thanks for pointing it out.
Francine, I was almost wondering if you meant to reference the back story that Utube was suing Youtube for the additional server costs it incurred a while back. Apparently many people have made that same little mistake…
Francine..I think you are fabulous…entertaining, smart, funny and very knowledgeable.
I agree that some people in the room know quite a lot about Social Media..but would bet (after hearing everyone introduce themselves) that most are not and are attending these meetings to learn more.
Although everyone’s opinions/insights are very interesting and provide for animated conversation, may I suggest we stick to the topic presented?
I would have liked to have had someone who is an “expert” (i.e Alan?) present the various Social Media Tools, explain how the work and give examples of how companies are using these tools to grow their business. This would have been much more useful.
Just a suggestion.
More importantly, if you’d like to give your titanium hip a whirl around the pole…give me a call.
“am I bleeding?” (in the vein of “I resemble that remark.”)
I thought this meeting started on a note about how SMC/SanFran said it was okay to talk about “things” and not just tools; besides, there’s no way I was the only person in that room thinking about infinite monkey theory!
(btw, it’s not that I don’t get it, but how amazed I am that you do;~)