Deconstructing Hip-Hop

One of the side effects of getting older is losing touch with popular culture. For me, this has happened slowly over time. I now rarely watch TV, visit the movies, read magazines, or obsess about music in the way I did in the days of my youth. In fact, I’ve developed a growing sense of indifference about mainstream culture. As a result some things pass me by altogether.  I only recently discovered who Alexa Chung is, and – much to the shock of colleagues at work – I don’t care.

In many cases new passions have replaced old ones. I now watch Vimeo and YouTube more than television; movies are streamed via the web to my home; Twitter is my daily news feed, and my children have become the celebrities whose lives I passionately care about.

My relationship with Hip-Hop has also changed over the years too.

From Planet Rock to the death of Hip-Hop

I’ve been a fan of Hip-hop since I was 11 years old when I first heard Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force, Planet Patrol and Mann Parrish. I believe Hip-Hop has changed the world and I subscribe to the view that without it, Obama would not have become the first Black President of the United States.

Hip-Hop is now truly global. From Finland to Fiji, South Africa to Slovakia, every country adds a different spin, creating cultural hybrids that are shared, downloaded and remixed on Spotify, iTunes and YouTube.

On the surface, Hip-hop appears to be alive and well. Artists such as Jay-Z and Kanye West maintain their status as global brands and there is no shortage of interest in newer artists, as demonstrated by the hype surrounding Mac Miller and Drake.

But when the rapper Nas declared in 2006 that Hip-hop was dead, he articulated a feeling shared by many that the genre was losing its way.

Pop or Hip?

There have always been two major forces pulling Hip-Hop in opposite directions.

One is the pull towards commercialization and Pop music. Many years ago rappers such as LL Cool J, Will Smith and perhaps most infamously, Vanilla Ice discovered the riches to be gained by providing a ‘Lite’ crossover version of rap music for the masses. This trend has continued unabated ever since.

Inevitably, other artists have pushed in the opposite direction, producing music that deliberately sets out to offend the sensibilities of the mainstream. From NWA to Eminem and more recently Tyler the Creator, these artists have set out to say the unthinkable and break every taboo.

Much to the horror of parents the world over, young people lapped this up with even greater fervor than the crossover rappers, creating global stars out of Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z.

This has caused problems for the Black middle classes too. Civil rights activists and liberal intellectuals abhor the misogynist and defamatory language that permeates rap music. The debate over the use of the word ‘Nigga’ is testament to this. It represents a fault line between those who proclaim it as a term of empowerment, and those who believe it reinforces all the wrong stereotypes.

Hip-Hop as Pop Art

I’ve got to admit that some of the latest iterations of Hip-Hop have left me wondering where I stand in relation to the genre. For example, I recently came across a music video by Lil B entitled ‘Ho Suck My D**k’. This left me feeling that I perhaps have outgrown Hip-Hop.

At first I struggled to believe that this wasn’t a spoof, as the track appeared to have even less musical integrity than Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’. But on reflection, I wonder whether this represents Hip-Hop’s next evolution to the status of Pop Art.

Drinking from the Fountain

In 1917 when Marcel Duchamp’s exhibit of a urinal sent shock waves around the art establishment, he began a movement that would sever the links between Art and artistry. In time this would give birth to Pop Art, which would elevate the banal and kitsch elements of culture, most often through the use of irony.

Artists such as Tracey Emin have been influenced by this tradition, while others such as Damien Hirst have followed in the footsteps of Andy Warhol and adopted a factory approach to artistic production that pumps out large volumes of work, some of which is of questionable quality.

It’s possible that Lil B is taking Hip-Hop in a similar direction. His vulgar and uncoordinated rapping style is apparently deliberate. He claims to be making a virtue of being ‘Based’ or worthless through his use of the term ‘Based God’, a concept he propagates to his growing number of fans through multiple social media channels, including Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and over 155 MySpace pages.

He has also reportedly recorded over 1,500 tracks, a level of output that would impress even Damien Hirst. Controversially for a rapper, he titled his fifth album ‘I’m Gay’, for which he received death threats.

Lil B has been described as one of a growing number of weird-o emcees that are deconstructing Hip-Hop and creating new mutations. I should be pleased about this. After all, mutation and adaption are vital to life and evolution.  But I can’t help wondering if Hip-Hop is eating itself because it is running out of new places to go. Or maybe I’m just getting too old for this…

Don’t look back in anger

The world has changed significantly in the last 12 months.  2011 was the year the media really woke up to the power of social and mobile networks.

The ‘Arab Spring’, the global ‘Occupy’ movement, and the UK riots all demonstrated how technology could be used to connect and coordinate disparate groups of people in ways that made it almost impossible for security forces and governments to keep up.

This phenomenon was by no means new, but it was unexpected. As more and more people became digitally connected, and mobile technology became almost ubiquitous, Clay Shirky’s adage that communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring, proved to be right on the money.

While MySpace continued its steady decline, other social networks such as Tumblr, Instagram, and Google+ grew rapidly, each vying for our attention. But as RIM (makers of BlackBerry) discovered this year, attention isn’t always such a good thing.

The hackers behind Anonymous and LulzSec figured this out too.  Niche social networks such as Path have emerged to enable sharing of information among small groups of people. Other platforms like Silk Road are designed to be invisible to those not in the know.

Unsurprisingly, the techies involved in the Occupy movement are trying to build these types of private networks. This trend has led some to speculate that there will never be another network the size of Facebook. I’m not so sure.

What is beyond question is that mass disruption has been a recurring theme across the globe these past 12 months. We’re also seeing an increase in a consumer trend that has been dubbed “SoMoLo” – Social, Mobile, Local.

Observe the modern shopping experience and you’ll see this being played out. Customers in stores are using their smart phones to check prices, compare products, identify other local shops and consult with friends before purchasing. Soon they’ll be paying for items with their phones too.

This year has also seen the rise of the Urban Mashup.  Oglivy Culture launched in the US and Steve Stoute chronicled ‘The Tanning of America’ – highlighting the growing influence of urban culture on the mainstream.

The Kiss

In June, Canadian photographer Richard Lam took one of the most striking images of the year during riots that erupted in Vancouver.

The image of a couple kissing in the midst of the chaos and riot police became an internet viral sensation. Many saw it as a 21^st Century reimaging of the famous photo of ‘The Kiss’ that took place in Times Square on V-J day in 1945.

For all the momentous changes that took place in 2011, I can’t help but feel that we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Here’s to 2012…

Who’s been sleeping in my Tumblr?

The brands that are missing out on the emerging social network

October 21^st 2011 was a big day for Tumblr. It became the first blogging platform to host President Obama’s blog, launching his social media campaign for re-election in 2012.

Obama’s choice (clearly influenced by socially savvy members of his campaign team) brought Tumblr to the attention of the world’s media, including those who had not previously come across the network or had assumed it was only a place to share funny photos of cats. However this attention is long overdue.

In June of this year the network founded in 2007 by David Karp surpassed WordPress in the total number of blogs, breaking through the 20 million mark. It now has over 33 million and rising.

Nielsen’s State of the Media report on Social Media for Q3 2011 highlights Tumblr as the ‘Emerging Social Network’ citing the trebling of its US audience over the last year.

In the UK its growth has been impressive too with 7.5m unique visitors, 5.4m of whom visit in an average month. London in particular seems to be in love with Tumblr.  Its residents make 1.6m visits to sites in the network. Only San Paulo in Brazil has more Tumblr fans.

Given that Tumblr’s UK audience is more female (52%) than male (48%) and many of its users are in the much coveted demographic of 18-24 year olds, it’s not hard to see why some brands, particularly in fashion and publishing, have been quick to jump onto the network.

Vogue, Life and Vice have all developed Tumblr sites as have many fashion brands. DKNY is a notable example having recently ported their ‘Notes on a City’ to Tumblr following on from the success of their ‘DKNY PR Girl’ site.

The Economist, The Washington Post and IBM have set up Tumblr blogs too, presumably hoping to earn kudos from a younger ‘edgier’ audience than they might usually attract. I’ve even set one up (for much the same reasons).

What is more surprising is the number of brands that haven’t caught on to it yet. I was pleased to see that Bing (a client of mine) has a fully functional Tumblr site, but was amazed to find that Google.tumblr.com is a blank holding page that appears to have nothing to do with the company itself.

Google is by no means alone. A search for many of the world’s top brands using their .Tumblr.com addresses brings up some surprising and sometimes shocking results. Nike, Adidas, Microsoft, Samsung, and Apple all appear to have people sleeping on their Tumblr’s. I find it hard to believe that any of the brand custodians or legal departments would be pleased about this. In the case of Coca-Cola, I imagine they would be horrified to see what is being displayed in their name. I can therefore only assume that these brands haven’t woken up to Tumblr yet. Like the proverbial bears in the story of Goldilocks, I don’t think they’ll be too happy when they do.

Although some brands are rushing to snap up their own top level brand domain names despite the costs involved, it seems extraordinary that so many have failed to register their own name on Tumblr, which is free and is fast becoming the social network to watch.

I expect this will change in the coming months, particularly if Tumblr continues its growth trajectory and builds insight tools for brands and marketers. When this happens, I imagine a few heads will tumble.

Notting Hill braces itself for the 2011 Carnival as Google turns to Grime

In a few hours time Europe’s largest Carnival will take to the streets of Notting Hill for the 45^th time. However it’s not just the poor weather forecast that has worried people this year. Coming so soon after the UK riots, some local residents and businesses in Notting Hill are preparing for the worst by boarding up their houses and shop fronts.

They’re not the only ones who don’t want to get caught out. During the widespread looting that followed the riots, there was some criticism of the police for not keeping up with how rioters were using communication technology such as BlackBerry’s BBM network to coordinate attacks. This time around the police refuse to be caught napping and have already made preemptive arrests, based in part on their monitoring of social media.

While the Mayor Boris Johnson’s call for the Carnival to ‘help heal wounds’ caused by the riots was lampooned by some on Twitter, many of the comments last night were from people hoping that the event will pass off peacefully, or those too worried to attend because they feared trouble themselves.

Google turns to Grime

Meanwhile last week Google released an advert for its Chrome browser featuring Jamal Edwards, the just turned 21 year old rising star of the UK Grime scene who launched his own TV channel, SB.TV and has his sights set on becoming a future media mogul.

The ad, made by the London agency BBH, was apparently produced ‘way before the trouble’ started on the streets of Tottenham, but nonetheless it must have made a few Google Executives nervous given its focus on the UK’s black urban culture, which has been blamed for causing the riots, most notoriously by Historian David Starkey. In my view, Google’s potentially controversial choice of subject matter was no accident.

In Search of Street Cred

One of the loudest advocates for Google’s new social networking platform Google+ is the founder and former President of MySpace, Tom Anderson. In a recent article, he argues that Google+ is destined for success, and draws parallels between its launch and that of other social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.

Of Twitter he writes:

“When the 140 character wunderkind launched in 2006, it was only used by tech nerds. Just one community, that knew each other by name, if not in person. Then John Mayer signed up. Now there was two communities. The tech nerds, and the John Mayer fan club. Then there was Diddy. Suddenly Twitter was of interest to people who liked hiphop & rap. One celebrity at a time started to build sub-communities on Twitter. And make no mistake, Twitter went out and recruited them. Like Facebook, they realized that to gain scale in the social networking space and take mind share from others, they needed to target sub-communities.”   

It would seem that Google has learnt that lesson. By making a hero of a young, black, up and coming entrepreneur, they are following in the footsteps of brands like Nike and Adidas who have long understood the benefits to be gained by associating with urban cool.

Google+ “not broadcasted enuff for us cool kids”

I did a bit of digging around to try and try out what types of people have been joining Google+. Perhaps unsurprisingly the early adopters were largely male geeks from the US. There is an Urban Technorati Google+ group and the odd Hip-Hop celebrity (Snoop Dogg and the UK’s Tinie Tempah). But from what I could tell, the cool urban kids aren’t flocking to the service in droves just yet.

Using my own connections, I also did a bit of primary research via BBM to see how many young people on that network had opened a Google+ account. Only one person responded positively, suggesting that Google has some work to do.  Google+ is “not broadcasted enuff for us cool kids lol to no about it” was one response I received. If the latest advert for Chrome is anything to go by, it looks like Google plans to change that.

However, engaging with an urban audience can be tricky. As BlackBerry makers RIM discovered during the riots, being the brand of choice within this demographic could land you in hot water on occasion. But to ignore them is to risk being left out in the cold entirely.

As this year’s Notting Hill Carnival hits the streets, the eyes of the media will be watching closely to see whether urban youth culture is still too hot to handle.

31/08/11 UPDATE: Fortunately, this year’s Carnival came and went without a major outbreak of violence. The Guardian reports that arrests were only slightly up at 245 compared to 243 at last year’s event. Considering that around 1 million people were expected to attend the festival, this figure is remarkably low. For comparison, 138,000 attended this year’s Glastonbury music festival but there were 123 arrests made – a significantly higher ratio.

It seems that the massive police presence played a role in keeping the crime figures down. But the remarkable photograph of a youth fleeing the scene having stabbed someone in front of a line of police officers shows that for some, the threat of arrest is no deterrent.

This kind of behaviour is almost impossible to comprehend without understanding the mentality of some of the youths on the streets today. It is described in gripping detail in the book Hood Rat by Gavin Knight, and may well be the topic of a future post.

However, like many people, I’m relieved that the Carnival on the whole brought out the best of London.

The UK Riots one week on – The search for simple answers to tough questions

A week ago today a riot began in Tottenham that swept across London and other parts of the UK. That much isn’t in dispute. But as the dust settles and the clean up operation continues, the recriminations as to how and why this happened is causing controversy.

On yesterday’s Newsnight, the Historian David Starkey provoked a storm of protest when he laid the blame squarely at the door of black culture and its impact on white youths.

But as the blame game ensues, attention has also focused on the role that social networks played and what can be done to curtail their use if situations like this reoccur in the future.

For the first time, BlackBerry’s (BBM) Messenger network has been included in this discussion. Yesterday the BBC reported that an18-year-old woman from east London had been charged under the Serious Crime Act for using Blackberry messenger to encourage others to take part in the riots.

The use of BBM as the communication channel used by rioters seemed to take everyone by surprise.  I spent much of the week being asked by journalists how I got the drop on the story before anyone else.

I’ve been thinking about that too, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the reason other people missed the BBM connection was because it was hidden in plain sight.

BlackBerry and Instant Messaging are nothing new. In fact, in today’s world of iPhone Apps, Google+ and Geo-Location services, they are practically old hat, but that’s the point. As Clay Shirky states: “Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.”

The birth of Hip-Hop illustrates this perfectly. According to last night’s Channel 4 programme, Hip-Hop Changed The World. But think back to how it all started, it was DJ Kool Herc who found a new way to use old technology – in this case, two turntables – to launch a new cultural movement. Every subsequent development from graffiti to rapping, scratching to sampling was more about innovation than invention. The kids on the street weren’t creating the technology and they weren’t even using the newest stuff, it was what they did with what they had that was revolutionary.

No simple solutions

A central part of early Hip-Hop mythology involves Afrika Bambaataa, the former gang leader who turned away from a life of crime and used Hip-Hop to turn violent gang rivalry into street dance battles between B-Boys and B-Girls. It was a classic tale of swords being beaten into turntables, which has now become a Hollywood cliché.

It’s tempting to think that if we could only just recreate that moment in time, we could all get along. But as the subsequent East Coast/West Coast rivalry between the rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur proved, sometimes music can breed violence, not quell it.

On the other side of the argument, I’ve heard journalists referring to BlackBerry’s BBM as ‘the weapon of choice’ for the rioters. This seems to suggest that there was a coordinated master plan to use this ‘covert’ network to organize the attacks. I think this gives too much credit to the rioters. The truth is far more worrying.

BBM and other instant communication channels allow people to organise more like Bees. It doesn’t require a ‘command and control’ structure, or a criminal mastermind stroking his white cat to orchestrate attacks. Instead it relies on short bursts of information that can be read and passed on quickly.

This is what Benjamin Ellis refers to as ‘barely planned behaviour’. Simply put, modern technology makes it easier for people to do more and plan less. As we saw during the riots, this created real challenges for the police as they tried to keep up with the disturbances.

So with no single force for good or evil to turn to or blame for the week’s events, we are left searching for simple answers to tough questions. There is perhaps one undeniable conclusion that has been underlined through all the events of the week. Whether we like it or not, more than ever before, we are all connected.

The London Riots and BlackBerry’s BBM (part 2)

Today has been an extraordinary day. As I write this, more and more areas of London are becoming engulfed in flames, violence and disorder.

It’s been a pretty strange day for me too. The blog post that I published in the early hours of Sunday morning caught the attention of the media resulting in the post being republished, quoted and adapted across online international news outlets throughout the day. I’ve also had various journalists trying to contact me for interviews, most of which I missed (sorry guys, I was at work).

The reason for this interest was because I appear to have been one of the first people to notice that young people were using BlackBerry’s BBM network to communicate with each other prior to, and during the riots that began in Tottenham on Saturday night.

I have to admit that while I thought it was an interesting angle to take, I didn’t expect it to become quite as big a news story as it has. My insight came from the urban young people I’m connected to, for whom BBM is the social network of choice. I outlined the reasons why in my original post, so I won’t rehash them here. What the young people I’ve spoken to today find amazing is that this is a revelation to people.

“BBM is standard issue.” One said to me. “Of course. It’s all about BBM. This is our network!” I was told. The fact that journalists have just woken up to this fact is interesting in itself, but it has led to some sections of the media coming to bizarre conclusions.

To be clear, BlackBerry did not cause the riots and is not responsible for them. BBM is simply the preferred communications network for large numbers of young people, and as I said earlier when young people are angry and organised enough – the results can be explosive.

BBM’s private nature is I’m sure of concern to the police. Earlier BlackBerry issued a statement via Twitter to let people know that they are cooperating with the authorities, presumably in response to media interest in this story.

But calls for the use of BBM to be curbed are, in my opinion misguided. As others have pointed out, social networks don’t cause riots – people do.

 

Photo credits: Ed Yourdon via Flickr and TechCrunch

The unlikely social network fuelling the Tottenham riots

Saturday the 6 August 2011 and the streets of Tottenham are set ablaze by rioting.

As many people will recall, it isn’t the first time this has happened. On 6 October 1985 a notorious riot occurred on the Broadwater Farm Estate that led to the murder of PC Keith Blakelock.

On both occasions the disturbances were triggered by deaths caused by police. In the first instance it was that of Cynthia Jarrett, an African Caribbean woman who died during a police search of her home. This latest incident was sparked by the shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29 year old man killed during an alleged gunfight with police on Thursday.

As I write this in the early hours of Sunday morning, the disturbance is ongoing and it is not yet clear how serious an incident this will become.

In recent public disturbances such as the Student protests, commentary has focused on the role that social networks such as Twitter and Facebook have played in the planning of demonstrations and coordination of protesters. By contrast in this riot it appears the social network of choice is one provided by none other than BlackBerry.

Blackberry’s have been produced by Research In Motion (RIM) since 1999. They were originally associated with busy office executives who needed to access their emails on the move, but in recent years they have become increasingly popular within youth and urban cultures. I have to admit that I found this puzzling. It took my far cooler 17 year old nephew to explain that the main reason for their popularity is due to BBM – BlackBerry Messenger.

BBM as it is known, is an instant messenger system that has become popular for three main reasons: it’s fast (naturally), it’s virtually free, and unlike Twitter or Facebook, it’s private.

Blackberry recognized the appeal of their products to the urban market and has had a long association with Jay-z in the States. In the UK, they recently hosted a ‘secret gig’ in Shoreditch Town Hall featuring Tinie Tempah, Wretch 32 and Devlin.

So what has all this got to do with the riots in Tottenham?

Well, it appears that BBM messages have been circulating since Thursday’s shooting of Duggan by the police. These have fuelled the anger of the youths that have taken to the streets. BBM was also the channel used to spread the word that the riot had started, and from what I can tell on Twitter, it appears to be the means by which communications continue to be shared.

The key point here is that although these messages are spreading virally, by being shared via BBM they have been less visible to the outside world, making them harder to track.

I am not a security intelligence expert so I don’t know the extent to which the police are able to monitor the BBM network, but Canadian police officers have previously complained that criminals prefer using Blackberry Messenger because it is harder to wiretap.

As we have seen throughout the world this year, when angry young people utilize social networks to communicate and coordinate publically or privately, the results can be explosive.

Photo Credits: LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images via Flickr

UPDATE: It appears that the Daily Mail has found a way to pin the blame for yesterday’s riot in Tottenham on Twitter. This is because ‘a picture of a burning police car was re-tweeted more than 100 times’. However, as pointed out here, the logic doesn’t quite stack up, as the Mail (and every other news channel) was also responsible for sharing these images with far larger audiences.

Still, it’s prehaps not surprising that journalists defaulted to blaming the usual suspects.

From Super Heroes to Social Media Super Stars

Scrolls of Imhotep front cover

If a week is a long time in politics, a year in social media must be close to eternity. During this time the world of social media has changed considerably. Questions about whether it can really generate ROI have been replaced by brands scrambling to be part of the Facebook gold rush.

Personally, I’ve gone from being something of a social media outsider to an inside man by joining Jam earlier this year. In some ways this has been a natural progression, but it’s not one I saw coming.

I was reminded of the strange career path I’ve taken when I read this blog post by Dave Coplin.  Dave is now my client at Bing, but it turns out that he’s a fellow comic geek. When I saw the Forbidden Planet image by Brian Bolland, memories came flooding back of weekend trips up to that store and many of the surrounding ones such as Comic Showcase, Gosh, and LTS – the tiny upstairs shop tucked away around the corner of Denmark Street that broke almost every rule of retail by being nearly impossible to find and cramped inside.

Since I read my first Spider Man book the age of 10, comics had dominated my life. They inspired my passion for illustration, graphic design and reading.  Authors such as Alan Moore, Chris Claremont, and Frank Miller informed and challenged me, while artists such as Simon Bisley, Jamie Hewlitt and Frank Miller (again) were my heroes.

The only other cultural force that occupied such as central role in my life was Hip-Hop. But if you’d have asked me what I wanted to be during this period, the answer was simple – a comic artist.

Through my Secondary School years, I spent every spare moment I had drawing, and after Art college I enrolled at the London Cartoon Centre where my tutors included ‘V for Vendetta’ artist David Lloyd and colourist Steve Whitaker among others.

Up until this point my career path into that of a comic artist was on track. Hanging out at ACME Comics in Brixton I met Alan Mitchell, a comic writer who worked on Third World War with Pat Mills, published in Crisis.

This led to our collaborating on a comic called the “Scrolls of Imhotep” that was published in an Africentric magazine called The Alarm. Eventually, I got to meet the editor of 2000AD, who – when he saw my work – promised me a try out in the magazine. I was at the cusp of fulfilling my schoolboy dream, so what happened?

Two things changed my plans: technology and the need to be ‘social’.

Technology began to play an increasing role when I was introduced to Apple Macs and Desk Top Publishing at Art College. This spurred a growing interest in design and communications more generally, influenced in part by the work of Neville Brody and the design aesthetic of groups like Public Enemy.

It wasn’t long after this that I was encouraged to start my own design agency and my career began to head in a different path.

The other more fundamental reason was social – or rather the lack of it. One of the notable features of my life as a comic geek is that it was often an isolated one. Although comics provided stories that fuelled my imagination, in the real world, comic collecting was often an individual and competitive pursuit.

Being a comic artist in many ways was worse. I would sit by my drawing easel into the early hours of the morning, not interacting with anyone outside of my pen and paper. After a while I started to go stir crazy, and it began to dawn on me that the life I had dreamed of may not be the one I wanted to live.

Looking back then, it’s no surprise to find myself immersed in the world of social technology as it connects to my passions and reflects my personality in a way that comics in isolation couldn’t.

Is there still a part of me that wonders what would have happened if I’d stuck to my original vocation? Of course there is. But I believe that The Creator has a Master Plan, and so far it seems to be working out.

Confessions of a Like Minds speaker

If the buildup is anything to go by, Like Minds on the 26^th February promises to be an exceptional event. I was both surprised and pleased to be asked to deliver a keynote speech, but if I’m honest, as the event approaches, I’m wondering whether they asked the right guy.

If you take a look on the1000heads website promoting the London Tweetup tonight you’ll see my name sandwiched in between Chris Brogan and Yann Gourvennec. That’s Yann with almost 1,700 followers on Twitter, and Chris with close to 123,000!

Compared to them, I feel like an inadequate schoolboy in the gym locker room after a cold shower. In fact, I’m sure I can hear the collective sound of ‘who is he?’ every time someone sees my name on the Like Minds conference agenda.

Because if the truth be told, I’m no social media guru. I’m a Director of a Management Consultancy – the two words you don’t want to hear when you meet someone at a party. I haven’t been Tweeting religiously since day one, and I only launched my personal blog last November. If that wasn’t bad enough, most of my work in done in the public sector, which is not generally regarded as a hive of innovation.

You might think that none of this matters in the new world order, that people don’t make value judgments about you based on something as trivial as the number of followers you have on Twitter. Don’t be fooled. The idea that social media destroys hierarchy is a fallacy. It doesn’t, it creates new ones.

Ego is alive and well on Twitter. It seems that every social media guru; PR or marketing expert; consultant or innovator, exudes one universal trait – supreme confidence.

To have really ‘arrived’ on Twitter having 1,000’s of followers isn’t enough. You need a ‘back-of-the-book-jacket’ style photo, and a customized Twitter homepage displaying your social media credentials to let the rest of the world know (if they didn’t already) that you are one of the new rock stars of the digital generation.

I’m afraid I don’t quite fit that bill.

It’s not as though I don’t have an ego – anyone who knows me will attest to that fact – and lets be honest about this, like many others, I use Twitter partly as a promotional and networking tool. But I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m still getting to grips with it, and in many ways I still feel like an outsider.

I’ve learnt that despite appearing to be simple, learning to use Twitter takes time. Whereas joining Facebook feels like a walking in on a school reunion or a family gathering, Twitter is much more like entering a bar on your own where everyone else seems to be engrossed in conversation that you can only catch snippets of. You’ve got to come up with a few opening lines just to get someone to engage with you, and it’s daunting. No wonder so many people head straight back out and never come back.

That said, on the whole I’ve found using social media to be a positive experience. I’ve made new connections, and have been able to tap into pools of knowledge I would not otherwise have found. I’ve also shared jokes and experienced big and small events collectively in ways that simply were not possible before.

But social media is not an entirely benign place. In fact, as the founders of Like Minds discovered recently, it can be pernicious, hostile, and abusive too.

So as I prepare to give my presentation next week in front of the great and the good in the world of social media, I don’t mind admitting that I’m a little nervous.

But I suspect that I won’t be the only person feeling like an outsider at the Tweetup tonight, or the main event in Exeter next week. In fact I’m hoping that Like Minds will be a place that outsiders from all walks of life will be able to meet and make connections.

So if you’re planning to be at either one, feel free to come and say hello. I’ll be the guy looking slightly out of place.

Photo by Britt Warg @ Flickr

Social Media etiquette: How to lose friends and influence people

A few things have got me thinking about the etiquette of Twitter recently and the social norms that are developing around it. Many of these themes were addressed at the ‘Social media – a force for good?’ event held at NESTA yesterday that featured Biz Stone, co-founder and Chief Executive of Twitter; Reid Hoffman, Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn, and the inimitable Stephen Fry.

You can watch the whole event here, so rather than rehash their discussion, I want to highlight three instances where the unspoken social norms of Twitter were brought out into the open.

To Tweet or not to Tweet

The first was a reaction to my use of Twitter.

Earlier this week I launched the Urban Mashup blog with a post on the  ‘Social Media 09′  Mashup*event where I had been one of the speakers. As I was keen to get a debate going, I used Twitter to send a Direct Message (DM) to a number of the other speakers and participants that had attended the event. I also copied the DM to a few people that weren’t there who I thought might be interested.

I didn’t figure this was a big deal. After all, you didn’t need to be at the event to have an opinion about what I was discussing. However, I figured wrong.

I soon received this public rebuff from a recipient of my Direct Message:

1. I wasn’t at the event. 2. We’ve never spoken. 3. You DMing me a link to your write-up not exactly *social* media genius it?

Although I issued an immediate public and private apology (via DM) to the offended recipient, there followed something of a ‘Twitter spat’ between us that required an intervention from @paul_clarke, who knows us both, to help calm things down.

The harder they come, the Harder they Twitterfall

The second situation occurred at another Mashup* event where this time, I was not present. The story goes that during the panel discussion there was a delay in connecting the live Twitterfeed to the overhead display.

While this was getting set up, a member of the audience used the #mashupevent hash-tag to criticize Tony Fish, the Chair of the panel, using a four letter expletive and making a derogatory remark about his physical appearance. Moment’s later, the feed went live and the remark was made public to everyone in the audience, much to the shock of everyone in the room.

What happened next was interesting.

Emma – one of the Mashup* organizers – was so incensed by the remark that she identified the individual concerned through his Twitter ID (@swith) and attempted to confront him immediately after the event finished. His rather sheepish looking colleagues all claimed that he had legged it, but that didn’t matter because the Mashup* team had all the details they needed to get in touch with him and his employer (who had paid for him to attend).

Sure enough the next day, @swith sent a deeply apologetic email claiming that he was horrified when it appeared on the screen. But you’ve got to wonder why did he use the event hash-tag if he didn’t want it to be seen? Given that his company had paid for him to attend the event, who was responsible for his message? If the comment had been sent by email, would the consequences have been different?

The court of public opinion

My third observation comes from the national response to the appearance of the BNP’s Nick Griffin on Question Time.

According to Tweetminster (who did an excellent job of providing live stats throughout the broadcast), 99% of Tweets expressed anti BNP sentiment.  However, the comments received by message boards such as the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’, were far more varied, and apparently the moderators were overwhelmed managing the flood of offensive comments.

Why the difference between sentiment expressed on Twitter and elsewhere? A recent YouGov poll points to a different Twitter demographic, but I think there could be something else in play.

Unlike a message board that enables you to post messages as ‘Angry from Aldershot’, Twitter displays your personal identity to the world. As a result, I suspect that people Tweet the version of themselves they want other people to see.

As Stephen Fry and the other participants at the #svuk event acknowledged, Twitter is blurs the public and personal even more than Facebook. If you break the unwritten social etiquette – as I discovered – there is a powerful and immediate feedback loop.

The Twist in the tale

Ironically, it seems my public spat on Twitter led to more people viewing and commenting on my original blog post. So was it a case of  ‘lose friends and influence people’?

Photograph: Stephen Fry and Biz Stone at Social Media – A force for good? Courtesy of NESTA via Flickr