The social media earthquake hit and it hit hard. It caused, and is still causing, massive disruption that can mostly be felt in the worlds of media and marketing. But the core of business – business as usual – hasn’t been hit yet. Not really.
It’s about to.
Tired and Lonely
The supports that hold up traditional organizations have been shaken and weakened and are about to be hit by a massive aftershock that will finish the job. Business as usual will cease to exist except in the most laggard, niche markets. Org charts will get thrown out the window and MBA programs everywhere will quickly turn into business history classes.
Anytime someone tells you “We HAVE to do it this way,” run. Run far away. You don’t HAVE to do anything. If someone says “You Can’t do that, it will never work,” you’re probably on the right path, keep going.
While I am as excited as ever about these tectonic shifts happening in our world I’m also really tired. I love disruption more than any healthy person should. I thrive in chaos. But I’ve been doing this for a while now and sometimes it’s exhausting, lonely work.
I feel like I’ve just sprinted as fast as I could to the finish line only to realize that it was actually the starting line to a marathon. Go.
Even though I’ve been right way more often than I’ve been wrong over the last 5 years, most people aren’t going to believe me. Even those that believed me the first time are going to be skeptical, and the ones who do believe me and aren’t skeptical are tired too. Some of them are sitting this one out.
But that’s enough complaining, it’s time to get back to work. I’ve got massive destruction to prepare for.
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The trouble with being ahead of the curve is often you need to keep pounding at the curve until other people catch up. And by then you're ahead again.
This is boring. What's next?
Posted by Jeremy Meyers | 19. Mar, 2010, 1:06 pmSometimes I think the goal is to get ahead of the curve, put a pressure-sensitive beacon there, move on, and when the beacon is triggered, go back, set up your table, and be ready to help.
-J
Posted by jason moriber | 19. Mar, 2010, 7:37 pmToday, no. You're absolutely right. And 5 years ago people (even smart people I still respect) told me blogs wouldn't have the kind of the kind of disruptive effect I predicted. A year ago people (including Steve Rubel) said Twitter was done when I predicted it was about to go super nova. I'm not always right. I predicted Brightkite would be big, it wasn't BK that made a splash with location based services), I predicted FriendFeed would be big…anyway.
But what I'm talking about it much bigger than what we've seen to date.
The technology is just the enabler of the change, it's not the driver. And the technology that will enable the kind of change I'm talking about doesn't really exist in it's current form. There are huge societal and cultural changes coming.
Our current businesses are built on control, they don't have control anymore and the more control they exercise the faster they lose it. As soon as everyone realizes that (I mean really realizes that) we'll start to see that shift. But seriously, don't believe me, I'm used to it. Any sane person shouldn't believe me.
Posted by tacanderson | 21. Mar, 2010, 1:53 amWe'll see how it goes. I would like to see the control mechanisms removed that stifle true innovation from happening. My skepticism comes from the fact that there are millions of little fiefdoms built around business as usual. I think the degree of difficulty is much higher than any of the previous predictions and more people protecting their turf for very personal reasons.
Posted by David Heller | 23. Mar, 2010, 7:18 pmSocial Media will never destroy businesses as long as the company knows how to deal to customers professionally. I know people can use social media to destroy your company's reputation, but there are many ways to counter it.
Posted by Home Business Ideas | 15. Jun, 2010, 2:06 am