Today's instances of creating are core to mankind. For example:

NEW CREATIONS
Now: Self-made YouTube video submission
Before: Home-made jewelry (Crafts Faire), grafitti
Past: Home inventors

MASHUPS
Now: Google Maps + Craigslist = Housingmaps.com,
Before: Scrapbooking
Past: Hacking Harley Davidson motorcycles (Choppers)

The creation of artifacts and services got us to where we are today. Once institutions took over the means of production, individuals migrated their efforts to hacking the products available in the marketplace.

Today's instances of broadcasting have a colorful past. For example:

Now: Blogging or podcasting
Before: Publishing zines or newsletters
Past: Ham radio/CB Radio

People have always broadcasted their opinions or personality. Even fashion is a potential example of broadcasting, only without words.

Today's instances of opining link to a long history of people voicing their opinions in public. For example:

Now: Ratings and reviews of products; commenting on a blog
Before: Word-of-mouth product advocacy or detracting; letter to the editor of a newspaper; customer service call
Past: Standing on a soapbox; revolutionary words (Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Declaration of Independence); Parlour sessions

While people always have an opinion, the reach of that opinion today is far greater than it could be in the past.

Today's instances of connecting using social media tools simply facilitate behaviors since the dawn of man. For example:

CONNECTING ON SOCIAL NETWORK SITES
Now: Create a profile on Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace, link to friends, share updates and thoughts by posting on friends' profile pages.
Before: Joining a club (Rotary, Moose Lodge, hobby-oriented, etc); Who's Who Among American High School Students (Did anyone ever get any value from this?).
Past: Associations of guilds of like-minded or like-skilled individuals (Free Masons).
Earlier: Tribes gather to share stories and traditions; hunter-gatherer groups ban together to hunt and pass down hunting knowledge.

People have always (and will always) connect with one another. Today's technologies make it easier and broader reaching than the past.

Today's instances of sharing with social media have a long history. For example:

MUSIC SHARING
Now: Publishing a music playlist (e.g., iMix on iTunes)
Before: Creating a mix tape for a friend or blasting your boom box in the park (popping and break dancing, of course)
Past: Music (record) party at your home (1950s)

VIDEO/PHOTO SHARING
Now: YouTube/Flickr
Before: Home movies/Photo Albums
Past: Slide shows or vacation presentations

As I said before, all media is social. These sharing behaviors we see today are not new. It's reach, accessibility, usability, transparency, and recency that have changed.

In my last post I talked about how all media is social. Before I get to my examples in the next few days, I want to talk about the implications of these changes on institutions. Essentially, the process goes like this:

1. Institutions emerge, develop, become successful (or at least sustainable), and eventually become complacent.

    

2. Progressive and resourceful people develop new tools and methods to fulfill needs in an innovative way and do so outside the mainstream institutions and bureaucracy.

    

3. Constituent needs evolve and, eventually, institutions increasingly fail to fulfill those needs.

    

4. Some of those tools and methods evolve and are built upon until sophisticated constituents adopt them.

    

5. Popularity of these new constituent actions reaches a mass audience and institutions recoil in fear because their way of doing things is threatened by the new actions.

    

6. Constituents don't wait for institutions to catch up and continue to push forward.

    

7. Institutions make several failed attempts to change.

    

8. Eventually the change happens, albeit in a slow and painful way.

    

9. Constituents eventually adopt the institutions' solution, possibly with an unexpected player.

    

10. The process starts over again (see step 1).

     

When institutions try and fail to meet the new constituent needs, we witness a deceptive width of the chasm between the current state and the emerging state. In reality, the chasm isn't that wide. The real obstacle is the process and philosophical shift required to operate in an entirely new way.

As my colleague, Pete Kim, so eloquently said it, "many brands secretly fear that connecting with the community will lead to dilution and destruction."

So the real challenge is changing the organization, not meeting the new needs. We see the distance between these types of events get shorter every year, especially in recent years. The 'new organization' must embrace change as part of it's DNA — it's underlying structure must embrace an operating paradigm that enables ease of adaptation.

We've spent a good 6+ years talking about "social media" and how it's an amazing new phenomenon. How the Internet is abound with new behaviors: posting personal videos on the web for all to see; sharing personal information with strangers on social networking sites; using blogs to voice our opinion; etc. It's the topic of many conferences, articles, and conversations across many fields (marketing, IT, business, policy).

However, in reality, none of these behaviors are new. If you think about all of the social tools and behaviors happening today, in almost every case there is an equivalent comparison to activities in the past.

These are the typical behaviors we perceive as new:

• Sharing — Current activities include uploading videos, photos, or other media as well as sharing music playlists with friends. However, people have long had the ability and desire to share with one another such as gifting, commerce/barter, courting, and goodwill.

   

• Connecting — Current activities include creating and maintaining a social network profile and connecting to others (family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances) on social networks, posting messages on friends social network profile, etc. However, people have always connected with one another such as love, mating, friendship, alliance, collaboration, and career advancement.

   

• Opining — Current activities include rating or reviewing products, voting on peer-submitted content (Digg, Dell Idea Storm), or commenting on blog posts. However, people have always had opinions, and channels to voice them such as complaining to friends (WOM), customer service call, letter to editor, or being featured on local or national news.

   

• Broadcasting — Current activities include posting thoughts on a blog, creating podcasts (audio or video), posting thoughts on Twitter, etc. However, people have long broadcasted to others their likes, dislikes, style, and thoughts such as fashion style, product selection and use, blasting a boom box in the park, or telling everyone at a party your thoughts on the upcoming election.

   

• Creating — Current activities include creating videos, altering photos, creating mashups, etc. However, people have been creating things for a long time such as jewelry for sale at a craft faire, home movies, and other craft related activities.

   

As you can see, none of those behaviors are new. But there are several characteristics of today's technologies and behaviors that set them apart from the past, and this is what we really observe as 'new' behaviors. They are:

• Reach — Historically, audiences for the common person have been limited: a tribe, family, friends, neighbors, or the local community. Today's technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.

   

• Accessibility — The means of production for most media used to lie in the hands of enterprises with unlimited resources (financial or human). Today's technologies for media creation are available to anyone at little or no cost.

   

• Usability — The means of production typically required specialized skills and training, both technically and creatively. Today's technologies simplify those processes, or in some cases reinvent them, so anyone can create and operate the means of production.

   

• Transparency — People, especially Americans, historically kept personal information to themselves and had a general distrust of authority (enterprises, government, etc.). Today, people are willing to share anything about themselves (interests, location, family situations, health condition, etc.) in a public venue, and today's technologies make that both possible and purposeful.

   

• Recency — When people did have the means of production and distribution in the past (albeit limited), the time lag between communications was typically long (days, weeks, or even months). It was a limitation of the technology or system in which it operated. Today's technologies enable instantaneous responses and dialog where only the participant determines the delay in response.

   

I'll follow up with several examples soon. In the meantime, what do you think?