The Nature of Narrative in the Age of Networks

The explosion of socializing and communication tools in the social media sphere has fueled the debate about what is connotative of “context”?

We used to have this simple mnemonic: the five (5) Cs– content, community, commerce, code and context– to which we referred when we were discussing the building blocks of building web-based products.

• Content Anything consumed by the senses: text, pics, graphics, videos, animation, etc.
• Community Any utility/dynamic that connects users to us, or to each other.
• Commerce Any exchange of value (mostly in the form of money, or in time/commitment like ad viewing)
• Code Any technology responsible for “rendering the experience” for the user. The “engine” we don’t see underlying the experience.

But what is context?

Context isn’t so easily defined, I suspect. I’ve thought about it, but haven’t rendered it into a coherent thought-stream yet.  So a little real-time riffing:

I feel like there are multiple “contexts” possible for human beings, especially as they apply to media consumption and socializing/social-media.

1. Content Context

An example was used recently at #crunchup in a discussion about how one of the emergent “real-time” companies was enabling users to sift through information.  The context they described was rooted in the newspaper model: when I’m reading (or want) comics, I don’t want hard-news mixed into it.  The allusion was to Twitter and Facebook mixing all kinds of content together into the respective feeds in ways that’s difficult to parse.

Filter by: tags, categorization on input, keywords, heuristic analytics, etc.

2. Social Context

More often than not, what I may share with my mom is likely different than what I share with my work colleagues.  So far, social media has done a pretty lame job of implementing social context beyond the context of the utility itself– microblogging utility, photo-sharing utility, geo-tagging utility, etc.

The notion of “groups” within a general social media utilities will suffice it for some, but not for most.  Imagine having to build and select sub-groups you’d have to select for every tweet or facebook feed.  No thanks.

Filter by: Clique, Family, Industry, Job, etc. (a bit too obvious… thinkin’ more about this…)

3. Behaviorial Context

These are hobbies, passions and affinities.  I think this relates closely to “social context,” as the behaviors in which I engage very often define my Social Context.  Watching baseball is a behavior that dictates I become a fan of a team (like the Yanks!), which in-turn defines a particular social circle.

I’m not a “social networker” by hobby (though some are). I’m not a photo-sharer by hobby (though, again, some are). I’m a gardener.  I’m a skier.  I’m a scifi aficionado.  I’m a foodie.  I’m a parent.

These are the ultimate contexts that I predict will rule social media.  It’s social nicheworking.

Filter by: offering behavior-centric apps that can service those affinity groups most effectively, much like niche media companies service their watchers/readers (Food Network for foodies vs. CBS for general entertainment junkies).

4. Brand Context

There is relevance and context to those entities with which I associate in my life.  I run pretty much exclusively in New Balance shoes.  I ski exclusively on Rossignal skis.  I love my Toyota truck. I watch the Food Network and HBO religiously. I adore Tillamook cheese (sharp cheddar!), Dannon Activia yogurt and Winder Farms, a local dairy. I think Burt Brothers is the most honest and value-delivering auto service I’ve ever encountered. I’ve had the best credit card customer service experiences with American Express.

There is most definitely a context around those products I consume, and services in which I partake.

Filter by: opt-in brand preferences, and heuristic analytics around what I actually buy (but make it pull/share, not push).

5. Location Context

I live in Park City, Utah. That fact is important to my life, and increasingly important to my social media life.

Social media utilities that facilitate, improve and enhance my “first-life” (real world) instead of encouraging me to build an online “second-life” are one of the biggest opportunities in social media for the next 10 years.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who thinks about it for a minute that geographical context is important– where I live, or where I am right now.  The explosion of smartphones with location-awareness is breaking that opportunity wide open, and location context is a context that has the most value in concert with other contexts.

Compound Context

I like this term: “compound context.”  A single context alone isn’t where the ultimate opportunity lies in social media. Their is power (and amazing revenue opportunities) in the combination of “I’m a skier, I’m at Jupiter Bowl at Park City Mountain resort, tell my posse to meet me here, and have the ski resort tell me if there are discount coupons for food for lunch“; or “I’m a user of New Balance shoes, I’m in Los Angeles, tell me when and where there’s a sales promotion“; or “I’m a golfer, I’m on the 17th Hole at St. Andrews, anyone have tips on this brutal bit of turf?”

Applications that enable this compound context automatically filter the focus of information or knowledge sharing, and provides super-contextual advertising opportunities.  I shouldn’t have to scour Facebook, Twitter, etc. to do it, either.

What if we flipped the model on social media tools? Instead of “utility-centric” (microblogging, geo-tagging, media-sharing, etc) we approached social media “context-centric.”

What if I’m a fan of, say, the musician Diana Krall? There are tweeters who are Diana Krall fans (nearly 5,000 at this count).  There are Facebook users (some 50,000 strong) who are stated fans of hers, too.  And there are myriad fan clubs and message boards dedicated to the same purpose.  But as a fan, why would I want to or need to join a myriad of groups (on Twitter, Facebook, fan forum, message board, etc)?  I shouldn’t have to.  And if I’m the lead marketer for her as a brand, I shouldn’t ask a user to, either.

If I’m the manager of *any* brand, I should be taking a hub-and-spoke (or more appropriate– body and two-way tendrils) approach to building that brand, or interacting with fans/users of that brand.  Building a “group” on Facebook alone doesn’t (and shouldn’t cut it).  Having a Twitter-stream does not a social media marketing strategy make.  We should be co-opting those myriad streams and feeds (both ways), but there should be a singular place back to which they all lead… and that which the brand “owns” in capturing and nurturing their user-base (and monetizing, if that is the aim).

What brand managers have yet to realize is that the “network effect” so powerful within social media is being reaped by others– those social media utility companies.  Those brand managers should be taking a more “venture marketing” approach to their marketing, promotions and advertising dollars (every social media dollar spent is an investment in creating an social media asset, not just creating more awareness for the brand or media property).

There are now emerging affordable “integrated brand-centric marketing apps” that enable this kind of brand-centric, compound-context strategy.

It’s a start that I can use integrated messaging apps like Brizzly, Tweetdeck or Seesmic, but the context there is *still* the utility, a very narrow behavior around general information sharing, not providing the the contexts of brand, social circle, or behavior (beyond the behavior the utility purports).

If you have a “website” from your web1.0 phase of web marketing, then you should have the web2.0 version of that old content-driven website– an integrated social media application that ties together everything that’s going on organically in the social media sphere.  This means you: advertiser brand, publisher, tv network, film, tv show, artist, etc.

That website1.0 should be evolving into a integrated social media center that creates compound context for users, fans and/or customers.