Phase IV

Here we go. The final week of the experiment. I will be stepping it up this week with a whopping five tweets, follow five new people, subscribe to five new stumblers, review five new websites, and as always, update my Facebook profile. Thanks for staying with me, it seems to be working out as expected with some pretty staggering returns. Five updates per day is quite a bit. The work during Phase III was pretty hectic as it was with three. It is certainly a full-time job. I find this unbelievably exciting. This is a job that didn't exist five years ago.

So, who fills this position. You knew these kids in high school. I will call them the "social nerd." You know, that hipster-type that happens to be really interesting and funny and people seem to hang on their every word, but happen to have some knowledge of technology. "Knowledge" might not be the right word. Let's use "love." I know, it is a strong word, but how else do you describe it. It is not that they are 100% computer nerds, but they get excited about a new piece of software, or a new way to use a new technology. I use "new" a lot, but you know these are the kind of people who claim that the original Nintendo is the greatest system of all time. The throw-back is important. Maybe that is how they use the nerdyness to relate to people. Let's get back to the concept of "new" and I will go ahead and separate that term from "cutting-edge." It is not on the social nerd to necessarily develop the next big technology, but to use it in a new way. Facebook is a good example; a true social network meant to connect people to eachother. It seems like a simple step, but a profound one to use it to connect businesses to the users. Let me explain the "how" and "why" this works in one sentence. And please quote the hell out of me.

"The business is a user."

You all have a Facebook account, most of you have a Twitter account, even some of you use StumbleUpon (in the "correct" way) and you know what they are for and how to use them. It is NO different if you are doing it from the perspective of a giant corporation. That is why it works. Pretend the corporation is a person who talks the same way a person talks. People don't want to connect to big businesses, they want to connect to people who have something interesting to say. The social network presence of the business is then concentrated into one position, one person, one social nerd.