Jordan is a digital strategist for Work at Play. He loves green tea, high fives, and the internet.
Russell is also a digital strategist for Work at Play. He loves fresh air, the collected works of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and tweed jackets. Oh, and also the internet.
It took me awhile to see where Gladwell was going with his keynote.
He first introduced the notion of "Weak ties" versus "strong ties". Gladwell associated weak ties with social media connections and strong ties with personal connections (close friends and family). He argues that weak ties on the internet are more anonymous in nature, and if you have anonymity then you can't have trust. Gladwell believes that trust only grows out of personal encounters.
Gladwell indicates that trust traditionally came from geographic proximity. The Internet is clearly undermining this. Gladwell also stated, rightfully I believe, that the Internet favors spontaneiity over organization.
Gladwell believes that every single innovation has a cost. He asked the crowd to awknowledge that these technologies have a downside, including Social Media.
Since Social Media is inherently spontanious and relies primarily on weak ties, Gladwell's conclusion is that social media may actually come at the cost of social transformative change.
Many people disagreed with his points of view.
Much like my esteemed colleague, I was also slightly perplexed about where Gladwell was taking his audience.
To look first at his point about the "weak ties" of the internet vs. "strong ties" found in personal connections, I felt his rhetoric was a little misplaced.
Admittedly there can be no substitute for the power of close relationships, but I couldn't help but think of the number of times I'd booked a hotel room, or even a holiday, based upon the thoughts of users on TripAdvisor and suchlike.
Gladwell argues that weak ties are meaningless for transformative change, and that weak ties contain at their core an absense of trust.
For the most part, I totally agree. For the majority of ties and connections on the internet, this is true.
However, Gladwell does not hit the mark entirely.
Here is my thesis: weak ties on their own are as 'weak' as Gladwell contends, however, when weak ties are assembled in aggregate, out of the noise emerges a signal or strong tie. Power in numbers.
This is simply crowdsourcing. You cannot trust any individual, but you can trust the aggregate. Rusell: this is why we trust sites like Travelocity, click Digg links on environmentalism, and buy things we don't need from Amazon based on positive reviews.
Many weak ties equal one strong tie. I am suprised Gladwell missed this in his keynote.
I take on board Gladwell's contention that many of the revolutions throughout human history were the results of initially small, tightly-knit groups of people. However, I felt his assertions about the absence of trust on the internet break down a little when you question 'how much trust do you need?' for a particular purchase/activity/etc.
For the fair majority of the interactions people make online, I'd argue that a large degree of trust isn't needed or - more than that - expected.
Of course Gladwell is totally correct in his belief that true trust can only grow from a personal encounter. After all, how many people get married these days without ever even meeting?
Ok. Probably not the best example.
To the point that the Internet favours spontaneity over organization, I can only agree. But I think here Gladwell neglected to acknowledge that a predisposition towards spontaneous behaviour can be a cause AND effect of how the internet is used.
My own view, is that a fairly innate lack of attention span in most people is largely the cause of the Internet's overwhelming use for spontaneous acts; people simple don't have time for deeper engagement online, nor do they appear to want it.
There again, the Internet does seem to be something of a breeding ground for irony; with all our modern advancements in productivity and time-saving devices, most people seem to feel that have less time than ever before.
Which leads rather neatly onto the last key point - that every major innovation has its own cost to society, but that those costs are largely downplayed.
This really does seem self-evident to me.
Find me one example of something perceived as a major advancement made by humankind, for which the downsides are also made very clear to the public.
I think it'll take you a while.
At a guess I'd imagine you don't have the patience to search for it.
Then again, it's not like I'd trust what you came up with anyway ; )
On User Engagement, Digital Experience and the Intersection of Marketing & Technology.
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