Make Marketing History

The views of a marketing deviant.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Social Activities Beget Social Objects.

It may be because I'm struggling to think of anything to write today but, having just read Hugh's latest offering, I was struck how I unusually couldn't agree with one of the points he made.

2. Social Networks are built around Social Objects, not vice versa. The latter act as "nodes". The nodes appear before the network does.

I think there is an intermediate element and would contend that social networks are actually built around social activities.

The activity exists before the network does (as I suggested when I wrote recently that you can't fake community) and before the social object. Indeed, those social activities may or may not actually involve one or a number of social objects.

What you should focus on is identifying those existing activities that you can facilitate and/or enhance by introducing your social object into them.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hmmm. I'm not sure the network always exists before the activity.

The purpose of some networks is to create something and at that stage the activity hasn't even been thought out or constructed yet. So I suppose the network is constructed around the idea of an activity. Are the members grouping together around this idea of having an idea?

Surely social networks can be created at any stage of an activity, even before it's been dreamt up

6:00 AM, October 29, 2007  
Blogger john dodds said...

I'd thought about that Charlie but in the absence of an example to the contrary I decided that those invented activities actually turn out to be variants of existing categories.

11:51 AM, October 29, 2007  

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