What do you mean websites are outdated?

Lately, I’ve been having something on an ongoing argument with my boss about the internet being important. You might wonder who my boss is, and why he would think the internet is not important. I can’t hyperlink to him or to my company because he doesn’t even have a website.

Hence the argument.

Websites themselves are fairly outdated technology, and we don’t even have one of them!

While discussing this with a co-worker, I said something to the effect of “I can’t believe we don’t have a website. I mean, the whole idea of website’s being necessary is old- websites themselves are fairly outdated technology- and we don’t even have one of them!”

This comment struck my co-worker by surprise.

“If websites are outdated- and we haven’t even really gotten a grip on that yet, what in heaven’s name is current?”

Thus insued the following discussion- begun as an email message, which I thought would be a decent, if incomplete, introduction to some of the fundamental natures of Web 2.0 and Social Networking- what Doc Searls calls “The Live Web.”

Mind you, this is not for my friends who are geeks and following me on Twitter. They understand all this the same way a salmon understands that this clear, cold, wet stuff is gonna keep them alive. This is a description for non-geeks. For people like my mother and my boss.

Presence is Passé

It was the early 90s and the world was heady with the smell of free money on the internet (this is in contrast to the early 00s when the world was heady with the smell of free money in the real estate market). The catchword of the day was presence. There was this thing called The Web (which everyone assumed was the same thing as the internet- some still do).

Most companies and organizations felt that they needed the web as much as they needed some old fish carcasses rotting under their desks.

In the 90s, the idea was that you needed presence on The Web. This was a tough sell at first because most companies and organizations felt that they needed the web as much as they needed some old fish carcasses rotting under their desks. Basically, the thought was that if you were a computer company, you’d have a website, otherwise, you have a phone book.

Then Yahoo started allowing people to search, and soon the web was a phonebook. There’s the turning point. Presence became crucial because people were using the web to find stuff, and you needed a sign in that landscape if you wanted to be found.

And that’s the key. A website became your sign, your entry in the computerized phonebook. Without it, you were missing a hell of a lot of opportunities (for instance, super qualified people would look for organizations they want to help grow in tiny little cities in the Columbia River Gorge- and they wouldn’t find them… for instance).

Eventually, this sign became a storefront for many, and free money rained down on all of us like manna from overexcited VCs.

What replaces presence?

So life was great. Everyone had websites and everything stopped progressing, right? Well, not quite. Eventually people got bored.

You see, the problem is that there are signs everywhere now, and 97.3% of them say nothing more than “Hey! Look at me! I’m a sign!”

You see, the problem is that there are signs everywhere now, and 97.3% of them say nothing more than “Hey! Look at me! I’m a sign!” People want more than a web search engine and a phonebook entry. They’ve already heard of your organization- and if they haven’t, they’re certainly not going to listen to the Dilbert-quality proto-typical marketing mumbo-jumbo that your overpaid MBA copied from your competitor’s website two days after graduating college. They’ve heard it before and they’re smarter than that.

For organizations to be successful into the future, they have to be willing to do more. It’s not about presence anymore- it’s about engagement and communication.

But mostly, it’s about trust.

The fundamental point here is that I want to know who you are, and if I know who you are, I can begin to trust you. If you put yourself out there in ways that are- let’s face it- vulnerable, I’m going to more easily connect with you. Why? Because I am an individual who is interacting with multiple organizations. Whether it’s real or perceived, I am inherently vulnerable.

So we have things like company blogs. When done well, a company blog is a way for me to learn what’s going on inside a company- both personally and professionally. It’s a way for me to see that the company is  not only made up of real people, but that it is connected with the overall field in which it works.

When done well, a company blog is a way for me to learn what’s going on inside a company- both personally and professionally.A pertinent example. If I put up a static website for my company, you’ll visit it and get the company line: “We’re X company and we do environmental consulting.” Now, the marketing team will put all of this jive in writing about how well we do environmental consulting, and about the fact that “we do environmental consulting just so you’re safer and happier,” yada yada. It’s all jive, and you know it.  Unless I preface “happier” with pictures of topless women, you don’t even see it. All you get out of that interaction is “X does Y.”

Now, if I have a company blog that I take seriously and I spend an hour on Friday writing about the news that Oregon DEQ is about to announce that Ethylbenzene and Napthalene are carcinogens (true story, by the way)- you start to perk up. Why? Well, it’s not because the news is inherently exciting. What the hell is Ethylbenzene anyway? But you would get excited- or at least interested- because someone in the company already writing about and analyzing news in their field that hasn’t even hit the media venues yet.

Now, imagine that the blog is written specifically for people who don’t know what the hell Ethylbenzene is? Imagine that you, as an individual, can learn a little bit about gasoline and diesel contamination, and how we assess whether an industrial site is “clean” or not? Now, you no longer have merely “X does Y.” Now, you have “X knows so much about Y that they are breaking news stories in it, and teaching me about what the news story means.”

Social Networking

So, we have blogs, but it doesn’t end there. People, as individuals, are connecting to each other in strange ways that (honestly) they don’t even understand. Social networking has even surpassed pornography as the internet’s most popular activity- something some analysts thought just wouldn’t happen.

Granted, some aspects of social networking will always be out of the realm of utility for an organization, but most social networking platforms are exactly what organizations should be targeting.

Wait. Read that again:

Most social networking platforms are exactly what organizations should be targeting.

Why? This goes back to trust. The most interesting thing about the Social Web is that you can immediately connect with a person or an organization. In any number of spheres, it is possible for two people on either side of the world to have a conversation and for another person to join them immediately.

Think about that for a moment. In fact, go try it. Go to Twitter Search, and type in a search word or phrase- something pertaining to a subject you know or are interested in. You’ll see what people on Twitter are discussing in relation to that subject (There are myriad ways to do this, of course, this is but one).

Because of what I do, I typed “groundwater.” Immediately a post by @VicAdvocate pops up about the local municipality developing a groundwater management plan. Now, not only can I connect with @VicAdvocate (don’t feel shy on Twitter, by the way), but can read the story and connect to other similar events. I can even blog about this and how it effects Oregon and Washington aquifer planning. For another example, there an excellent post on The Los Angeles Fire Department’s (eh hem) blog about the success that the LAFD has had using a Twitter account to post announcements and requests for information.

If you can’t see how powerful this is, then you’re already losing ground.

If you can’t see how powerful this is, then you’re already losing ground. Home Depot, Jet Blue, Dell and others routinely use Twitter and similar services to connect to customers and individuals. Why? Because a Dell employee can get a continually updated feed of all occurrences of the word “Dell” that happen globally. Someone buys a Dell computer in the US, takes it to France and it craps out- they Twitter to their friends that they’re “Out of commission because their stupid Dell crashed,” and half and hour later there’s a Dell employee contacting them asking how they can help.

Don’t know about you, but if that happened to me, I’d be thinking a lot more about Dell computers.

And don’t think that this is only for huge companies and organizations, either. Many businesses in Portland like @pdxgreendragon use Twitter frequently to announce events and meetings- and Twitter folks love it.

The Finale

This is, of course, very simplified, and focused on my argument with my boss- which is focused on why our company needs a website. Thus, the description is fairly marketing driven. But you shouldn’t think that Web 2.0 and Social Networking is about marketing, because it is emphatically not. It’s about interaction and communication. And it’s about trust.

But you shouldn’t think that Web 2.0 and Social Networking is about marketing, because it is emphatically not.

If you have a blog only to sell your product or service, only to tout how amazing you are, I’ll smell it. We all will. We don’t want to hear an organization yelling “Choose us!” so steer clear from that kind of message unless you’re directly competing with me.

We want to hear an organization saying “Hey, we’re doing this because we really think it matters and it’s important to us, and here’s why…”

Blow that whistle, and I’ll follow like a happy little mouse.

The basic point is that if you are there interacting with people, finding ways to help them, then the rest will fall into place. It’s not marketing, it’s involvement. If you tell me you can solve my problem, I may (but probably won’t) trust that you can and will. If you simply solve my problem or help me in another way, or even just connect with me on a personal level, I may (and probably will) trust you and continue to build a relationship. It may not lead to a financial gain from me immediately, or ever, but it will be a relationship.

And those relationships are what will help you survive and grow.

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