It's a decision they've taken entirely off their own backs and without cost to me (though Amazon does take its pound of flesh in this bargain, which is layered on top of the usual selling price via lulu.).
I hope it'll share the ideas contained to a wider audience - all content remains completely shareable under a Creative Commons licence.
Big thanks to everyone who has bought it either as a download or in physical form so far - it's your action that has readied the Power of the Network for this new launch pad.
And, BTW, would very much welcome your reviews on Amazon :-)
It's not social media if it doesn't change your business - to borrow and adapt from my good friend Ted Shelton (his line, for the record, is 'it's not marketing if it doesn't change your business').
It's a description, a rallying cry - and a warning.
It explains and encapsulates a fundamental truth for any business which has traditionally made its money from mediation. I mean (though certainly not exclusively) those in the media, advertising, marketing and marcomms of all hues (ultimately any middlemen in any supply chain, but that's another story).
Some believe the exodus of attention from mainstream to social media means the peer-to-peer realm of social networks must be the new place to go fire messages at people.
But those who consider what is happening to be just a new channel are at a disadvantage.
They attempt to layer the 'use' of social media on top of what they already do - without allowing it to change what they do.
It's a kind of thin icing on an unpalatable cake. It may make it look better, but it won't make it better. (image courtesy)
This approach creates the single biggest risk to their (and as often their client's) futures.
Media is seeing a decline in fortune for a relatively simple though structural reason: In a world where we can organise for ourselves in webs of co-operation (communities of purpose) there is less and less demand for mediation.
Our increasingly relentless expression of self through digital data (the metadata of ourselves) outpourings via facebook, twitter, blogs, forums etc etc puts the formation of communities of purpose in our hands in real time.
Our peers have become our trusted filters of introductions to things and people we didn't know we needed to know. As we get together we talk, and our talk leads to action. Value created.
In this world there is less need of mediation, less demand for mediation - less value placed on mediation.
So what future for media?
Evolution into social media equals becoming a change agent. Big time.
The value social media brings to the table - if it's done right, if everyone is listening, and if everyone is prepared to change - is not just to reach people where they've gone. It is to adapt your business to the networked world.
And what does that really mean?
At it's cold, hard, business logic (planet saving) guts? Efficiency.
An organisation which adapts to the networked world is co-creating itself and the value it can share in with the people it would otherwise be seeking out (at high cost) researching their desires (at high cost ) trying to second guess how those desires translate into products (at high cost) advertising the results (at high cost) providing customer service to (at high cost) etc etc.
It will join with the people who care about the same things it does to create things they all care about together. They will join together in marketing, advertising, evangelising. They will create what is needed - together.
The people who can make the biggest difference to your company don't work for it. Adapting to the network means they can.
Solutions driven by an adhoc group-forming, peer-to-peer approach
It's born of his discoveries on his own journey to the networked world, from his own heartfelt and passionate beliefs - and from a real sense of what is wrong with what he encounters.
Righteous and right.
I don't oftern quote big chunks, but on this occasion...
-Branding exercises, no matter how much money you throw at them can’t hide that what you say you believe in and what you do don’t marry.
-The only awards worth winning are sales. Clever creative advertising just makes people talk about how clever the ad was and how great your ad agency is and not your product. Just because it’s a clever ‘viral’ ad where people were the channel you broadcast through doesn’t mean the same does not apply.
-Agencies that fail to enforce the required changes on their clients thinking just to protect old margins or be safe in meeting old KPI’s should also be held to account. As a purest it is my duty to show up these failings. If you are wasting 99.96% of your client’s budget you should not have a job. A conversion rate of 0.04% is literally just that. If you need you client to spend millions on getting people to engage with your mechanic they are paying for your incompetencies.
-Client: If your agency isn’t challenging you on a daily basis with these different rules you need to find a new one. The world is changing dramatically why aren’t your KPIs.
-If advertising bridges the gap between supply and demand. What happens when there is no gap?
-When you are left only with your naked product. What happens if it’s not the best one?
-Why isn’t it the best one when social media offers the market research nirvana of non-interruptive voyeurism? Listen.
-If you have to spend millions on trying to convince the consumer its what they need it obviously isn’t.
-Don’t be so afraid of being seen to be real people? I can trust a fallible person far more than an apparently infallible one. Even if they were infallible how could I, a fallible one, ever connect with them? People buy people.
-Closed models of any sort won’t save you. The only restrictions and limitations you are imposing are on your own business.
-The only way most shareholders will realise this is when all that they possess has been stripped of any or all value.
-Marketing in social media is only just a bit better than marketing any where else because marketing treats things as ‘channels’.
-Business leaders that neglect the opportunities that the network presents to their company should be held responsible for gross misconduct. Even if their limited view of it is as a market condition they still failed to account for it.
The only thing I'd add to his list is Generosity: Before you can take, you have to give.
Go give him your support or shoot him down in flames here.
The reporter who contacted me said there was some concern that this node-connecting role, this leader of democratizing democracy and breaking down internal and external silos, should have some form of social media creds.
The most critical factor in success in social media is not having been CEO of Facebook or similar. It is being human. Andrew Stott most assuredly ticks that box.
So what else might be helpful for the Andrew Stott's of this world?
I take a Darwinian view about success in the networked world - it is dependant on your adaptation to the new environment. And one thing is certain about adapting to an environment; first you have to live in it.
You have to flip your fishy self out of the receding waters of traditonal media (and traditional non-networked approaches to comms and value-creation, full stop), and try gasping for air on the edge of this new land.
You have to start developing the rudimentary stubby legs required - and adapt to breathing air - if you want to start leading others into this new landscape.
So, I hope Andrew Stott has been blogging away for years, learning the new ways of distribution and the epic fail of total control when making widgets. I have fingers crossed that he is Mr Two-Way Comms on twitter, where he is joining in the adhoc forming and reforming of communities of purpose on a daily basis.
And I look forward to bumping into him because surely we'll be expressing similar metadata at some point...?
You have to experience the biggest shift in communication and value creation since the printing press for yourself to have any chance of adapting to it and leading others through that adaptation.
Now, I can hear the stubborn old-school business bosses even now making the argument that you didn't need to be a book printer to understand the impact the book would have on society. You could academically dissect what was going on and predict what was likely. You could buy in a management consultancy to advise and you could make the right business decisions as a result.
Perhaps you could with books.
But the revolution of the web of co-operation is more complex, and arguably even more seismic, than Gutenberg's contribution. It is less mass and more niche. Less supply chains - more adhoc communities of purpose.
Long tails reach everybody and everything, hits don't.
The web of co-operation empowers everyone it touches. Broadcast media informs everyone it touches - in one direction only. The power flows in similar ways. The network is different - a web, not a chain.
If you could have had a stab at post-printing press rules for business success by analysing the supply chain of book publishing then for our latest revolution you must look at the shifts in who produces content, who distributes it, who controls the user experience, who controls the way in which people organise - to achieve any and everything. You have to think about all the twists and turns of the coming Eighth Mass Media.
In the eighth mass media we are the connections and how the connections are made. If you are neither a node nor a connector and have not experienced the value in bringing one extra node to a network (to a community of purpose) then I fear you'll struggle to understand how different life is up here on the dry land.
Looking with your fish eye from below the surface of the water you're going to get a very distorted view of this emerging new land.
To try to direct activity on it from under the waves seems a little optimistic.
I got asked yesterday for people who it would be good to follow if you wanted to learn about social media.
This is a list that could be 1000s long for me. Everyone I follow, am a friend of, read, link to, talk to... everyone teaches me about social media.
But I was asked for a list of 10. Not wishing to disappoint, here they are, completely as they fall from my fingers and onto the keyboard). I'd love to see yours shared as a list in the comments below. More people we can learn from.
Seems appropriate for a #FollowFriday on twitter... (Picture shows Euan and Stowe in London last week...)
Clay Shirky (@Cshirky on twitter) - Doesn't blog and tweet often, but when he does...
The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
Those lovely people at Lulu have decided to list my book, The Power of the Network, on Amazon.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5c648a27-d014-4fab-bf6e-f13b2eb5b6c0)
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