Social media is not a fad
Posted by Jeremy on May 19, 2009 · 2 Comments
I just sat in a couple interesting days of presentations and discussion here at the Reynolds Journalism Institute. Dean Thorson and RJI hosted a gathering of scholars that was provocatively titled ” How Newspapers Could Have Saved Themselves and How Some Still Can” and brought together both academics and industry leaders to talk about marketing, econometrics, and research needs for the industry.
It was an intriguing couple of days and I learned a ton. I’ll post some more developed thoughts tomorrow as I get some time to ponder it during my travels to ICA in Chicago, but I did want to highlight one thing.
There were a few statements regarding social media that stuck out. One presenter referred to Twitter and Facebook as “fads” compared to the staying power of newspapers. During discussion today, when the integration with social media was brought up, several pointed out that Facebook isn’t profitable and thus doesn’t present a viable model for newspapers.
Two thoughts on this.
First, my pet peeve when I hear newspaper folks talk about social media is that they judge the trend by what it is now. What Twitter and Facebook have in common was they built something of value from scratch, and from the ground up. Facebook has created the ability to never lose contacts again in a way that regular e-mail cannot. Twitter has created live user-generated search capability. Those things have value, but there are problems when trying to sell advertisers on the value of something new.
Sure, Facebook and Twitter aren’t making money, but neither did Amazon in its first six years of existence. Amazon’s investors screamed for years about the company’s slow growth, but it paid off. This doesn’t mean this always happens, obviously, but innovative ideas that are built out of nothing take time to reach profitability.
Will Facebook and Twitter be profitable? I don’t know. But it’s a mistake to dismiss the potential of these sites because of current lack of returns, and especially not when there might be opportunities for news outlets to partner with these sites in ways that help each other reach profitability.
Still, newspapers are in a hole and need something to stop the bleeding now, and in that sense Facebook isn’t the answer if it doesn’t offer a way to make money. The sense of urgency in the room was palpable; a long-term plan for newspapers to make money is now measured in months, no longer in years. The time horizon is just shrinking too fast.
So I get that initial reaction. For me, I’m not interested in saving newspapers so much as I am in saving journalism. But the thing is that, as National Newspaper Association executive director Brian Steffens pointed out, community newspapers are struggling but doing OK, and they have a window where they can still turn this thing around.
Community newspapers, which serve smaller communities are a niche product built on local coverage. Social network creation that comes with social media seems like a natural fit for these types of outlets. They have the time to ride out the storm while Facebook works out its profitability issues.
Local news helps create social capital, the glue of the communities that local community newspapers serve. Social networking creates a form of “virtual” social capital for people across geographic area (My Dissertation, 2009) but online presence also can create it locally (see Norris’ “The Bridging and Bonding Role of Online Communities”). Having the newspaper invested in the creation of social linkages between people seems like a perfect fit.
Part of my issue with those who decry the decline of the newspapers is that journalism as a whole (as you’ve said) doesn’t appear to be in nearly the dire state that print journalism is. It strikes me that there are a lot a parallels actually, between the emergence of certain social networking sites over others and the relationship between print media and journalism. Though we’ve now been through a few shifts of the dominant venues the boom of social networking, the overall trend is toward a much more user-driven media experience, not away from it, making those who see it as a fad seem out of touch, to say the least. The journalistic project is alive and well, and although the venue seems to be changing from print to online, user-driven stuff, I don’t see much cause for alarm on that front. Very few people are going to Twitter and Facebook for their news at this point, and from my perspective, there doesn’t seem to be much confusion at all as to the slant that certain blogs are posting from. The beauty of online media is the awareness of all parties, readers and content producers, that people can go anywhere for their information, and that places a bigger burden than ever before on reporters to report the truth, it seems to me. More outlets equals more choice, and more choice means a higher level of competition amongst journalists, which can’t be a bad thing for the flow of information to consumers.
I think you raise really good points about the perception of social media. So many people I know in the business seem to scoff at social media, raising many of the objections you highlighted:
1. Twitter doesn’t make money. (So what. If you had the support of venture capitalists and the freedom to experiment for a few years, wouldn’t you. I would.)
2. Social media won’t save newspapers. (Of course not. There’s no magic bullet. No one thing will save newspapers if even they can be saved. I agree with you; I’d focus on saving journalism. But social media can contribute to the engagement news organizations provide for their readers as a way of helping them make sense of their world.)
A few other anti-social media ideas I hear a lot.
1. I only have 900 followers on Twitter … how can that change anything? (It can’t. But if you keep growing your followers and follow smart people, they’ll sell your ideas for you. A way to quadruple your blog hits is to have this posse around you through social media who retweet your blog posts because they think they are worth a wider audience. That’s how you really make an impact, but it’s a cumulative effort.
2. MySpace was hot; now it’s not. Won’t the same happen with Twitter, Facebook? (Probably. But so what. Use them while they’re here and be engaged in the new media conversation enough to know what the next big “it” app is.)