digital vs social (warning: rant)

Feel it closing in

So I was having lunch with a friend a few days ago. She's working in social media but she's finding herself in competition with the digital arms of ad agencies - which lead to a discussion of the differences between digital media and social software. From where I'm at, there's only two problems with the term "digital media" - word "digital" and the word "media".

Digital

Marshall McLuhan observed that when a new technology arises, we spend much of our time treating it like it was what we have already rather than something new. When the internet erupted just over a decade ago, the obvious analogy was with television. They were both spat out of a cathode ray tube into your home weren't they? But hang on, the back in 1996, bandwidth speeds were rubbish, so the internet was mainly words. So it must be a newspaper, right? Coz they're full of words too. So we got stacks of banner ads. Lots of them. Some of them moved around a lot. But this was fundamentally TV and print on the internet. It wasn't a waste of time - it was just, well, dull. Important to note, the current giant of online advertising is not the product of an ad agency. There is nothing wrong with putting cool words, images (and maybe music) in front of people. Studies show that advertising sells stuff. And having no advertising makes it much harder to sell stuff.

Another important point to note: an industry that sells its creativity in content is highly conservative in form. Part of this can be blamed on clients: Please give us something we know that works. But I suspect (and I don't work in this industry so please tell me if I'm talking ****) that it's as much a function of background. If you are a hot graphic designer, then you want to keep on making sexy imagery. If you write arresting words then you want to keep churning out those sentences. If you excel at talked about events then you want to keep them spectacles coming (in fact, I'll have pair, boom-tish). But doing something else doesn't seem to be half as much fun.

So cutting to the chase, "digital" implies simply turning what you had in "analog" (TV/Print) into ones and zeroes. Ideally a really annoying Flash site. ATTENTION: If you need Flash to make you site interesting, you are in deep ****. I mean so deep that your body will never be found in the Macromedia Midan. Let's do some word association here: I say "digital" and you think: Casio wrist watches? Calculators? A long-dead tech company? These are not good connections to be making. If you are digital, you may have hard-coded conservatism into your identity but it's not as problematic as the second word.

Media

The internet is not (just) media. For a start, trad media is one-way, broadcast. The internet is two-way, interactive. I am not stating anything new here, simply repeating the blindingly obvious. Which means that corporate/brand presences on the web can include selling, customer service and aftercare. The metaphor of "internet as TV" only works if the glass nipple expands Videodrome-style to engulf the whole house. Can I use the TV to fix my washing machine? The opportunities for conversation & exchange are so much richer than before. But this richness comes at a price.

Creative types are apt to think of their outputs as their children. They have brought them into the world and laboured to feed and clothe them. As hard-headed and results-driven as some are, there is no one who doesn't favour their ideas above those of others. And here's thing, we're moving to an environment where you send your children out to get raped*. And some of the products of these monstrous unions will die immediately, unfit to reproduce. But others will be fitter and stronger and spread wider than their parents.

So if you want to show me your crazy new viral app for Facebook - cool but it looks oddly like a TV commercial to me. Not that there's anything wrong with TV commercials. And for some products, broadcast may always be the way to go.

But for me it's just a bit, well, boring.

The hallmark of a good host is the ability to listen, to make the guest feel as welcome as possible - not to show how smart you are, which is currently what a lot of online advertising aims at doing.

*Obviously I'm being provocative here. Or am I? This author equates fan-fic with physical violation.