Lorri Sands said: did anyone read this forrester report?

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/04/27/future-of-the-social-web/

interesting stuff

Steve Hutson Its interesting to see how people see and explain the development of such online technologies, but I do tend to disagree with certain aspects


"Don’t Hesitate: These changes are coming at a rapid pace, and we’re in three of these eras by end of year. Brands should prepare by factoring in these eras into their near term plans. Don’t be left behind and let competitors connect with your community before you do."


We could look at this from the other end of the stick, each era is a resultant of development and a change in social use of such technologies as each era evolves it goes through an infant stage where people will explore then eventually discover how they are going to take advantage of such systems.


Entities that are well grounded now are in that position usually because they got in first and had the time to experiment, employ experts and implement designed strategies and there is nothing wrong with that, it works and cannot be denied.


But what would happen if you hesitated?
as part of your own strategic marketing plan, I assume the above mentioned hesitation is a reference to the humming and haring of not knowing what to do and with no plans. yes you could jump right in and make it work but you could also strategically hesitate and devise a plan and invest in way than rather building a growing network as incomes streams increase you simply grow your roots in a suttle way that prevents competitors recognizing you as their competitor.

What would happen if you waited or hesitated 5 years before creating a footstep on the world wide web?
and how could you used this time to obtain an advantage over others?

Some would consider this outrageous and a disadvantage, and it would be, if you didn't use the 5 years to be productive. Which I would assume would open many other questions like how would you use this time, what would you be doing and how would you decide when to jump in.

One point might be creating a "true" valued network, eg what if you focused on not being popular in (regarding those around you for example having 100 hits a day on your social network with a less than 1% return but having 10 hits a day with a 200% return.

and thus we begin to understand the commerce of a social currency, hits (not new hey! but an interesting point)
Certain aspect of claimed "new" technologies is not new but in fact a recognized changed in how the community or population uses it, the very fact that it exists lies somewhere in the history and the original concepts why it was created. How we use it is a different story. In fact it only take one person to look at a technology (including online social networking) and use it differently to everybody to gain a positive advantage, it then only takes a few to see how this person is doing it then add in "globalization" and we now have a fad or fashion.

Yes, online social networking is a fad but it is only one element - usually the element that provides the evidence that I'm yet to find somebody who can claim that not jumping in and getting your hands dirty can have more advantage than disadvantage.

Having the understanding of the fad element also adds value and more so if you don't get could up in it (unless it is part of your strategy)

What it all boils down to is there is generally no right or wrong, If you want to jump in now - go for it, it will work
if you choose to "hesitate" I would recommend you devise a plan.

You will notice, I personally and including and ventures I found do not have any social networking accounts other than Hub Culture and twitter there are strategic reasons for this.

It would be interesting to prove that strategically hesitating could have a competitive advantage, but what would happen if the general population discovered this method, would we have a new fad? and would those that did wait have even a larger advantage as they will now have a grounding root in the so called "new" method of using social medias.

anyhow
Steve Hutson