more thoughts on social objects

Anyone who has heard me speak publicly lately will know that I’m currently very focu­sed on the “Social Object” idea, which I was tur­ned onto by Jaiku’s Jyri Enges­trom. Here’s some more thoughts on the sub­ject, in no par­ti­cu­lar order.
1. The term, “Social Object” can be a bit heady for some peo­ple. So often I’ll use the term, “Sha­ring Device” ins­tead.
2. Social Net­works are built around Social Objects, not vice versa. The lat­ter act as “nodes”. The nodes appear before the net­work does.
3. Gran­ted, the net­work is more power­ful than the node. But the net­work needs the node, like flo­wers need sun­light.
4. My ove­rall mar­ke­ting the­sis inva­riably asks the ques­tion, “If your pro­duct is not a Social Object, why are you in busi­ness?“
5. Yes­ter­day at the Dar­den talk I explai­ned why geeks have become so impor­tant to mar­ke­ting. My defi­ni­tion of a geek is, “Some­body who socia­li­zes via objects.” When you think about it, we’re all geeks. Because we’re all enthu­sias­tic about something outside our­sel­ves. For me, it’s mar­ke­ting and car­too­ning. for others, it could be cellpho­nes or Scotch Whisky or Apple com­pu­ters or NASCAR or the Bos­ton Red Sox or Bhud­dism. All these act as Social Objects within a social net­work of peo­ple who care pas­sio­na­tely about the stuff. Wha­te­ver industry you are in, there’s some­body who is gee­ked out about your pro­duct cate­gory. They are using your pro­duct [or a competitor’s pro­duct] as a Social Object. If you don’t unders­tand how the geeks are socia­li­zing– con­nec­ting to other peo­ple– via your pro­duct, then you don’t actually have a mar­ke­ting plan. Heck, you pro­bably don’t have a via­ble busi­ness plan.
6. The Apple iPhone is the best exam­ple of Social Object I can think of. At least, it is when I’m trying to explain it to some­body unfa­mi­liar with the con­cept.
7. The Social Object idea is not roc­ket science.
8. How do you turn a pro­duct into a Social Object? Ans­wer: Social Ges­tu­res. And lots of them.
9. Pro­ducts, and the ideas that spawn them, go viral when peo­ple can share them like gifts. Exam­ple: gmail invi­tes in the early days.
10. Social Object can be abs­tract, digi­tal, mole­cu­lar etc.
11. The inte­res­ting thing about the Social Object is the not the object itself, but the con­ver­sa­tions that hap­pen around them. The Blue Mons­ter is a good exam­ple of this. It’s not the car­toon that’s inte­res­ting, it’s the con­ver­sa­tuons that hap­pen around it that’s inte­res­ting.
12. Ditto with a bottle of wine.
13. Once I get tal­king about mar­ke­ting, it’s hard for me to go more than 3 minu­tes without saying the words, “Social Object”.
14. The most impor­tant word on the inter­net is not “Search”. The most impor­tant word on the inter­net is “Share”. Sha­ring is the dri­ver. Sha­ring is the DNA. We use Social Objects to share our­sel­ves with other peo­ple. We’re pri­ma­tes. we like to groom each other. It’s in our nature.
15. I believe Social Objects are the future of mar­ke­ting.
[Writ­ten in the depar­ture lounge of Dulles Inter­na­tio­nal Airport]