Media Snacks
(November 05, 2007) Social
Media is changing the world. That's the premise behind "Media Snackers" a new blog pointed to by Rich Becker,
Recruiting Blogosphere celebrity at Copyrite, Ink. He asked for my opinion on the subject
through a blog based bit of passive aggressiveness called tagging.
(When you "tag" someone,
you ask them to do something on the pages of your blog. Whether or not
they respond is a function of whether or not they discover your
request. Once there is a response, it becomes hard to tell who is the
sadder sack, the blogger or the responder. Happy to wear the badge of Sad Sack, I am responding.)
Media Snackers is a corporate
blog/report/promotional vehicle for the Media Snack consulting
crew. They offer
a range of services designed to keep your organization
hip in the eyes of the younger generation (kids these days). If you
are following the emergence of the Millennial and Gen Why communication
styles, there is something here for you.
There are interviews, podcasts (well not really) and vodcasts (that means video clip). Much of it
is pretty self serving stuff along the lines of "we're hip, you're
not and we can help you for a fee." It's truly delicious to see
the idealistic young mimicking the carnivorous ways of their elders.
But the real question, raised
by Rich and muddied
by media snackers
is "does social media change anything?"
Let's start with Forrester Analyst Jeremiah
Owyang's definition
of a Media Snacker (which refers to a video on the page):
Folks who consume small
bits of information, data or entertainment when, where, and how they
want. If you want to be part of their lives you've got to respect
them. I'd argue that the folks who created this video emphasized too
much that mediasnackers are the youth only, because business folks of
any age are busy, get information from multiple sources, and need filters.
(Web Strategy by
Jeremiah)
In other words, Media Snacker
is shorthand for anyone who uses the internet.
I'll pick up on this tomorrow,
but let me leave you with some top level points:
- The Web is a scanning
environment, social media builds on this
- In a scanning environment,
the rules of proper English are less important
- Scanners read around
the link, not the whole body of the text
- To reach scanners,
write simply.
- by John Sumser
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