SAP Global Survey: Doc Searls

[Doc Searls emphasizes a point at Supernova, while Cluetrain co-author David Weinberger listens. Photo by Shel]

In 1999, four technology thinkers, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Christopher Locke and Rick Levine collaborated on a project.  The result was "The Cluetrain Manifesto," addressed to the people of Earth. In steadily increasing numbers, the people of Earth have benefited ever since. While the SAP Global Survey is attempting to examine the varied views of where social media is going, there is universal agreement that Cluetrain is where it all began. The following is an interview with the inimitable Doc Searls:

1. You are one of the founding fathers of whatever it is that is going on now...

And what is that? If it's Web 2.0, I demand a paternity test, and I am sure it will reveal, in the immortal words of Michael Jackson, "the kid is not my son. " If what's going on now is the Live Web, and I think it is, we shall get to it shortly.

2. How would you say the business world has changed since you and your co-authors wrote Cluetrain Manifesto?

First, the business world now runs on the Net, pretty much. Second, the business world knows that it can't get along without the Net, which helps. Third, the biz world is *beginning* to realize the Net brings, as we said in Cluetrain, a revolution in demand at least as big as the one in supply -- and not just because the demand side has joined the supply side with stuff like YouTube and BitTorrent and eBay.

In the original website version of Cluetrain, Chris Locke wrote, "we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it."

Recognizing a situation and dealing with it, however are two different things. The "dealing" has barely begun. Which brings me to what has not changed. First, we have a long way to go in equipping the demand side to express two things:

1) its independence from supply-side customer entrapment schemes -- all that crap that's devoted to "owning" and "locking in" customers, which business (and even customers) still call "consumers"; and

2) new ways to engage with vendors ways that are useful and enriching for both customers and vendors, while respecting the privacy needs of both parties. This is what ProjectVRM is all about. VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management. It's the reciprocal of Customer Relationship Management, which is the field that has been devoted to customer entrapment for far too long, and which has borne nearly the full weight of "relating" to customers -- and entirely on terms supplied by vendors. Customers need to be able to set terms as well, and to relate in ways that work for both sides. ProjectVRM is headquartered at the

Berkman

Center for Internet and Society at

Harvard

University. It's a project I started, though it is no longer mine alone, which is terrific.

[Editor's note--It appears that immediately following subnmitting his responses to this survey, Doc made his current entry on the Project VRM blog entitled--"Why surveys suck."]

Second, in the

U.S. we have come to regard the Internet as a "service" that works as gravy on top of our telephone or cable TV connections. Billing from our local cable/telco duopoly supports that assumption, monthly.

Meanwhile, the Net itself remains as it was designed to be in the first place: a simple set of ways to connect devices over any distance with as close to zero cost and hassle as possible, and with minimal interference from the companies that own the "pipes."

If we were to write Cluetrain today I'm sure we would make a strong case for regarding the Internet as a public good with enormous "because effects." That is, far more money would be made because of it, rather than with it.

This is, in fact, already the case, though it is barely recognized. The telcos and cablecos have Congress, state legislators and even citizens convinced that the Internet is something that belongs to them and that they can do with what they please. This is a Bad Thing.

I'm not sure we require legislation to correct it (which puts me at odds with my friends in the Net Neutrality camp), but I am sure it needs correction. How is an open question. I'm rooting for local action, especially by small new businesses that bring the Net to citizens without hauling cable-type TV along.

3. What is the biggest surprise to you on how social media has developed?

I've got to admit that I don't like the term "social media." When I  hear or read it, I tune out. My problem isn't with the word "social," but with the word "media." It's a loaded word, framed by a hundred  years' experience with pre-Net "media" that reduced everything to "content" (another word I dislike) that was then "delivered" somehow. There is a a sense of distance to "media" that I believe diminshes our understanding of the Net. It's a bugaboo with me, and I'll admit to being pretty much alone with it.

4.You described the term Web 2.0 as the name for the next bubble. Do you still think this is true? Is it true of social media as well?

I've said "Web 2.0 is what we'll call the next crash," as well as the current bubble. and I still believe that. Social Media as a "meme"

may sink with the same boat. The more useful distinction is between the Live Web and the Static Web. The Live Web today is branching off of the Static Web. Much of what we call "social" happens there, though I dislike the "media" term because it's old and freighted with concepts inherited from TV, radio and all that.

To understand what I mean, consider what we're saying when we call the Web a collection of "domains" and "sites" with "locations" and "addresses" that we " build" -- and where we look for "visitors" and "traffic." We're saying the Web is real estate. We conceive it in terms we've borrowed from real estate and construction.

The Web was designed by Tim Berners-Lee in the first place as a way to share and edit documents that we write and publish. Later, we added syndication to that publishing-based vocabulary. Thanks to time-stamped RSS (really simple syndication --thanks, Dave Winer, for that one) feeds, everything in the syndicated section of the Live Web is chronologically based. There is an implicit date-ness to your basic blog URL:http://blogname.com/year/month/day/post. That post has a Permalink. Think about "perma" in a chronological sense.

The whole blogosphere is chronological. What's latest is on top, but what's older does not merely scroll off the page into oblivion. It goes into a time-based archive. What's more, Technorati and Google Blog Search both update their search engines within minutes or even seconds of when an RSS feed is posted. That's live.

For all its texty nature, email is also relatively live, because it is date-based. Same with texting, instant messaging, Twittering and other time-based practices. For an illustration of how the Live Web differs from the Static Web, go to Google Blogsearch. Notice how it gives you a choice to "Search Blogs" or "Search the Web."

Why make this distinction? Are blogs not part of the Web? Oddly, there is new stuff on Google Blogsearch that does not appear in regular Google Web searches. What you find on Blogsearch and Technorati is literally "too new for Google." Meaning: too current, too *live*. Google's main search engine crawls and indexes the entire Web, but regards and presents it essentially as something static.

If a site (a static notion) changes, Google indexes and caches that, and wipes out the old stuff. Then it replaces the last index of that site with a new one if it finds changes. Yes, Static Web search embraces and appreciates the changing nature of the Web's "content," but it treats what's current as a static thing with no history. Google's view is fundamentally static, not live. Blogsearch, however, does have a live view, but it's a secondary one. After you get your result (which is relevance-based), then click on "date view", and there it is, organized chronologically.

Technorati, which was born to search the Live Web, defaults to a date view. It still does not have a relevance view (Google Blogsearch's default), though it does filter by "authority" (a term I don't like, because it's too loaded -- but it was borrowed from Google long ago and is still around).

 

By the way, Technorati was invented by David Sifry as a research tool for a story about blogging that he and I were co-writing in late 2002. The rest is history. I'm still on the advisory board.

Anyway, I'm a voice in the Web 2.0/social media wilderness about the Live/Static Web distinction, but I'll keep yelling. Forgive.

5. How has business fundamentally changed because of social media? How will it change in the coming years?

The walls of business will come down. That's the main effect of the Net itself. Companies are people and are learning to adapt to a world where everybody is connected, everybody contributes, and everybody is zero distance (or close enough) from everybody else. This is the "flat world" Tom Friedman wrote "The World is Flat" about, and he's right. Business on the whole has still not fully noticed this, however.

6.What similarities and differences do you see in the adoption of social media in different sectors of the world?

The big difference is between the U.S. (or perhaps North America) and the rest of the world, in respect to the devices used. Our cell phone system is relatively primitive compared to those in Europe, Asia and even Africa;We text (as a verb) far less. And we use computers far more. Our orientation to the Net is still browser-based rather than any-device-based. I think phones are inherently more personal and social than computers. On the other hand, computers are more open than most phones -- even those overseas. But in the long run progress toward constructive openness will happen on both.

7. What tools do you see increasing in power? Which do you see decreasing?

In general tools that increase freedom and choice are what matter. The ones I care about are the ones we're working on with ProjectVRM. They have to do with independent individual-controlled identity and the ability to express preferences, choices and demand, across whole markets rather than just within vendor silos. I see CRM as we understand it now -- ways to own and manage the creatures called consumers changing utterly once VRM comes along. I believe this will change business itself, and markets along with it. That change will be profound, and positive. Or we'll be proved wrong and join David Weinberger (my Cluetrain co-author and a skeptic about independent identity and VRM) in what he once called his "trough of despair." Right now the VRM glass is .0001% full. I'm looking forward to seeing it filled the rest of the way in my lifetime. Since I turn 60 this month, we'd better hurry up.

8. You have written and spoken extensively on your vision of an Intention Economy. Could you describe it briefly and talk about how social media ties into it? Do you see evidence on it moving from a vision to a reality?

The intention economy is one based on what customers actually want. It is one that removes the guesswork that requires advertising, PR, promotion and most of what we still call marketing. It is what happens when we equip customers with means to tell whole market categories exactly what they want, and have vendors compete to give it to them -- and not to have to enter a privately owned silo or a walled garden (e.g. eBay or Amazon or Orbitz) to get it. It's an open market ambition of mine. And it's part of what VRM is all about.

The upside for customers is getting what they want,without having to fly like a bee from flower to flower, visiting a series of vendor silos that are all customer traps. The upside for vendors is getting rid of guesswork about what customers actually

I think it will work because the Intention Economy is based on what people with money in hand actually want. Not some kluge based on creating demand" and "managing attention" and other marketing jive like that.

9. Do you see social media emerging differently in d ifferent parts of the world? Please describe.

 

I think cultures are social in different ways. As the Net opens up and gets cheaper everywhere -- especially on mobile devices, we'll see how that plays out. Right now I can only guess. And I won't because it's the 4th of July and already the guests want to kill me for sitting in a room typing rather than coming out to the pool and drinking beer and getting social in the real world.

10. Do you see social media adoption taking different routes in small and medium sized businesses, v large enterprises?

Sure. But again, the time thing.

11 Additional comments?

Let's have a beer sometime. Thanks for the chance to ramble and rant!

Ramble and rant all you want, Doc. Just name a date for the beer. I'll buy the first two.