Chris Abraham (left) and Robert Bloomfield (right) during Metanomics
Today Metanomics’ Robert Bloomfield interviewed social media expert Chris Abraham for a very live audience, about Second Life, Twitter, GoogleWave and blogging, so you can imagine I was pretty excited for this first Metanomics show of the new season.
Chris Abraham is very much into Twitter but he’s not one of those who claim microblogging means the end of long form blogging. Twitter, so he explained, is very good for fast responses, for instance when crises erupt around a brand. It’s an early warning system, a radar which can be used by companies to pick up signals about for instance complaining customers. This allows the company to defuse the tension by responding fast (so no more lazy weekends for the corporate world, they should at least have people monitoring the social media radars).
These days the social media crowd is waiting breathless for the release of GoogleWave, a combination of wiki, instant messaging, sharing platform, forum etc, which could make email seem so very 20th century. Abraham as a social media guy working for very real life companies and institutions has undoubtedly a realistic view of the potential audience. His take right now: GoogleWave would take over the world if the world would be composed out of only smart people.
In other words: GoogleWave could very well be too complex for those who are not very much into social media.
Second Life and Twitter
Abraham became rather well-known among Second Life “loyalists” because of his negative stance on the virtual world.
The New World Notes (Wagner James Au) reported recently:
Only a few months ago, marketing executive Chris Abraham dismissed Second Life for not being like Internet darling Twitter, “light, cheap, and open” — and I enjoyed pointing out that Twitter was not like Second Life: Unique, sticky, profitable. In an interesting post-script, thanks to a hands-on tour organized by Dusan Writer, Abraham has a highly revised appraisal.
The reason why Abraham revised his appraisal, was indeed because Metanomics’ Dusan Writer took him on a tour in Second Life. Today Abraham sees similarities between Twitter and Second Life. Both are open-ended environments. There are no specific pre-established goals like slaying dragons or leveling up. Twitter and Second Life, so he explained, are more like frameworks, “like boxes versus toys”. So it’s not that surprising that Twitter and Second Life are more popular among an older demographic.
Virtual communities
Abraham has a long personal experience with virtual communities, from Bulletin Board Systems via The Well to Second Life. It’s not easy to convince your friends that those bits and bytes on the computer screen actually are real people with real emotions and passions. Making people “get it” is not self-evident.
As we know, also companies have difficulties “getting” social media and virtual communities. Their first reaction was to spend on bill board kinds of publicity, neglecting the human beings active in those contexts – for instance also neglecting to invest into community managers.
Abraham pointed out that virtual communities are strong in loyalty and passion. He should have known what he did when he attacked Second Life, so he admits now. Being a marketing person, he has some good advice for the “Second Life loyalists”: respond to your detractors with love bombs, not with snarky remarks.
Roland Legrand
