Why Do We “Connect?”

It’s hard to turn on a tv, read a paper or magazine, or traverse the web without some mention of social networking or connecting. Businesses learned from the site squatters of the mid- to late 1990′s and real estate alike, that online is all about location, location, location. Business, and some individuals, have colonized social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to ensure that their brand is retained. Do Proctor & Gamble, Kimberly Clark, Coca-Cola or other large corporations *really* want to connect with me as a consumer? Or are they just capturing their slice of the social universe and, what the heck, throwing in some posts, “likes” and whatever else the “kids” are doing today?

On one level, there’s always a purpose for doing something. Regardless of whether that purpose stems from corporate strategy, marketing, grass roots or the fringe, a reason exists for action. The first problem is that these actions get fixated on “social technology” or “social media” when they really are comparing the same thing. Often the conversation about “technology” or “media” is more about the platform than the tool. For example, weblogs (blogs) are a form of media. However, there are many blogging platforms. Blogger, WordPress, TypePad each are weblog platforms. They have different capabilities, attributes and underlying or compositional technologies that enable them. To say that one is better than another is often more a function of preference versus capability. (Yes, based on specific tasks or desired functions, one platform may be better than another, but without stating the tasks it’s a moot debate.)

So when it comes to whether or not companies want to “connect” with consumers, it’s not about the tech/ social media question or hype. The more interesting question is why do we connect in the first place? If you look at both the mechanisms (web applications) for doing so or the data (posts) they contain, a somewhat simple paradigm emerges. In 2003, authors Ralph Welborn and Vince Kasten wrote a book entitled, “The Jericho Principle: How Companies Use Strategic Collaboration to Find New Sources of Value.” in the early chapters, they lay out a fairly simple, but valuable way to look at interaction. They quad chart intimacy and dynamism. In this case, intimacy refers to the degree to which an organization’s core values are exposed or shared. Dynamism is the frequency of interaction or exchange.

When applied to normal, everyday personal interaction, you get similar, simple but meaningful charting. Most important, I labeled these as four (4) basic categories of interaction: Sharing, Sentiment, Feedback, and Curiosity.

Sharing is the high dynamism, high intimacy quadrant. Sentiment occupies the high dynamism, low intimacy. Curiosity I assigned the low, low quadrant. And Feedback is the low dynamism, high intimacy. I also started to map existing, popular social media to the quadrants I thought best facilitated  that niche. The result is the chart  below.  I call it the “Connection Cubes.”

I’m looking for feedback and thoughts on these concepts, as I’m going to continue to hone them based on further research. I’ll be publishing my thoughts here, specifically, I’ll be following up with details about each quadrant.

So, more to come!!

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