September 27th, 2008
The Marketer Who Understood Social Media
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(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog: How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)
Before I became the marketer who went off consumption, I was the marketer who understood social media.
Over the last two years, I have been fortunate to be included in conversations around social media thought and practice in India in multiple roles — as a traditional marketer who understood social media, as a blogger who wrote about social media, as an early adopter of new social media platforms, and as a connector of social media thinkers and practitioners. I think that I was able to play the last three roles primarily because of my first role. Much of my legitimacy as a thinker/ blogger and most of the connections I was able to make were rooted in my role as the custodian of a big brand that was engaging with the social media space in a meaningful way.
Over the last few months, my focus has moved away from social media marketing to other use cases of social media in developing countries, especially the use of social media for social change. As I explained in the introductory episode of my fellowship podcast, my research really lies at the intersection of three worlds that (surprisingly) don’t really understand each other — the web 2.0 world, the technology policy world, and the ICT4D world — and also borrows heavily from cultural studies.
It’s not surprising that even as my background as the marketer who understood social media biases my user-centric approach to the research, it hardly lends me any legitimacy in any of these three worlds. Since I have a long enough title — The GU-ISD Yahoo! Fellow in International Values, Communications, Technology and Global Internet — some people assume that I’m more knowledgeable than I really am. It’s tempting to encourage that (mis)understanding, but I think it’s even more important that I remind myself and others of what I do (or don’t) know –
- I know a thing or two about the promises and challenges of social media, especially in developing countries, from three perspectives — a user, a marketer and an observer.
- I also know a few things about the intersection of culture, economics and technology, but only at the micro-level, and only as an autodidact.
- I know that I know nothing at all about either technology policy or development and very little about code.
Beyond that, I know that I’m good at understanding new concepts and making new connections between them. Often, these connections are strictly speculative, but, often, they are also original and interesting.
So, I would urge you to look at me not as an expert in any of these three worlds — web 2.0, technology policy and ICT4D — but as an enthusiast who is trying to explore new connections between these worlds. I think that we are already beginning to make some interesting preliminary connections (see our framework to think about using technology for doing good), and I promise you that there’s much more to come.
