It has been said that “The web” was invented 20 years ago…but the platform/entity we have access to when we use our browsers was actually only invented yesterday.

Tim Berners-Lee did indeed first develop the WWW in 1990/91 but since then, although the basic elements of the protocol remain the same, the actual functionality of the web has been in continual growth and change.

As for “the internet”, this is simply the term for the vast network of interconnected computers across the world that the “web” sits on. It’s the network supporting, and providing access to, whatever new functionality and tools can be created.

This is a very different medium to televisions, telephones, faxes, newspapers etc. Since they were invented, there have been minimal changes to their actual functionality. Sure the TV evolved from grainy black and white CRTs from the 1920s to the 3D HD OLED behemoths of today, but the function is essentially the same.

The idea that the web is a platform, not a medium (and an OPEN platform at that) goes some way to neatly explaining the INSANE rate of change in the functionality of the tools that are available. The web, or should I say the functionality of the web as we know it, was only invented yesterday. In fact while reading this I’m certain that what you can do online has changed and evolved and adapted.

This realisation probably isn’t news to you. You’re perhaps used to thinking along the lines of “how will I/we ever keep up with the new tools and new features/fads/methods/../../” And the answer will always be the same. You won’t. So stop trying to.

All you need to do is get your strategy in place and evolve that strategy as new possibilities open up. So…

1 - Decide who you want to listen to, then go out there and find the best places to listen that exist right now

and then…

2 - work out what you want to say in your conversations and go out there and find the best places to converse.

At the risk of repeating pretty much every other post on this blog, forget about chasing the latest tools. Just get yourself out there and start building your network. The rest will follow.

There’s been quite a bit of chatter recently about how many friends - real, organic, squishy ones or screen-based, poking, tweeting ones - anyone can juggle in their lives. Clearly no-one can agree on the figure - estimates come out between 8 and 150 depending on classification and location.

This post is related to the cause of this limitation - TIME. In general, the more friends you try to juggle, the lower the quality of each relationship and the less time you have for each one. In the end, you have to take decisive action and perform a cull to get things to a manageable level.

With this in mind, how many online communities do you think any one person can be an active member of a still derive compelling value from each? No-one knows for sure but I reckon the answer will be pretty low. Just because there are some great social media apps out there, it doesn’t mean we magically have 25 hours in a day.

Joining and taking an active part in a new community may mean a web-user having to allow another part of his ‘active community portfolio’ (hmmm ‘acp’ - I think I’ve just coined a nice one there) to fall away.

So, if you’re going to build a community on your site and under your ownership then you had better be sure that it will be seriously sticky and ‘outpost adoptable’ (Not so catchy but I’ll consider that coined here too!). If you’re not 90% certain and above, then perhaps it would be better to focus your energy and resource into taking an active and meaningful part in the winning communities that are relevant to your niche until you are.

You will hear a counter argument to this being the 90-9-1 rule and how the people who do adopt your community will be developing SEO on your brand’s site. This may be true but if you’re not adding value even the 1% will bugger off somewhere else, leaving your precious in-house resource to try in vain to keep things looking fresh.

Shutting down your own community can be an embarrassing u-turn, so if you do commit be sure you know what you’re committing to and, more importantly, why.

The following video is taken from the rushes of the BBC documentary The Virtual Revolution, presented by Aleks Krotoski.

It’s great to have access to this unpolished video and also to hear Mr Fry’s comment

”..let’s get real about this. Connection is what humans crave, it’s what we are all about, it’s something that separates us from animals. It even comes before … language, because language is an example of … a neural technology that we have created to answer this need for connection. We are the social animal par excellence.”

Great minds and all that! —-> http://www.peteshannon.com/post/199164244/when-will-they-stop-talking-about-the-toolkit

This is an ongoing story similar to the last post about sodapopstop.com but subtly different.

This isn’t a video about personal branding but about providing information and opening up to your niche customers.

I’m sure that Duncan Page is a great bloke and is passionate about his industry in his own quiet way but it is his knowledge rather than his passion that he has exploited to market his products using social media.

It’s also a demonstration of the fact that there can be a real lack of awareness in using social tools in SMEs - Duncan had clearly been lucky to have a relationship with an agency and to be led by the hand by this agency to get the ball rolling as it is now.