It is an interesting time for social media.  Fifteen years ago bulletin boards and  forums were the only platforms available.  Three to five years ago blogs, MySpace, YouTube and Facebook were carving out a niche.  This week Google announced Buzz which was added to the internet social landscape along with Twitter, Side Wiki, Wave, SlideShare, Vidler, Vimeo, UStream, Ning, MyBlogLog, FriendFeed, etc.

The entire web is getting more social by the second and user generated content is king.

Social media is still looked at as a fad by some, a necessary business tool with unproven value by others and a deeper way to discover great people to have great relationships with by millions.  Marketers and PR folks are racing to figure out how to use the tools, but are mostly using old school tactics and ignoring the strategy needed for long term gains.

A handful of companies are actually using social media to authentically deliver better customer service, listen to people and make their businesses and bottom lines better.  A mountain of critics who don’t use or understand social media are still ignorantly claiming that it’s stupid because it’s just people announcing when they go to the bathroom.  (Note to self  – don’t criticize what I don’t understand.  And definitely don’t do it as if I have a clue about what I’m talking about or I’ll look like an idiot.)

The revolution in communication is being ignored while the focus is on the revolutionary technology.  After the mainstream called social media stupid for five years, the pendulum swung to claiming that it’s the new great hope for advertising, marketing and PR.  Now we are now making our way to the middle.  This is where we start to realize that daily use of social media is like daily use of a cell phone or a car.  It’s just part of how we live today.

Websites have become media properties (which most have not realized yet), publishing is  now dominated by individual passionate influencers, and social media is lubricating a massive transition from top dogs having power to passionate participants creating what matters to the public.

In five years the term social media may fade away because we’ll wake up to realize that: 1.People are inherently social (well over 75% of your day is spent communicating with other people), and 2.  All media has become social (even CNN and newspapers use blogs, Twitter, etc. to connect with viewers and readers).

Calling media ‘social media’ is like calling water ‘wet water’.  The more you use it, the more you’ll live it and the more connected, tuned in and turned on you’ll be.

Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts senate seat is filled by conservative Republican Scott Brown so “Americans are sending a message.”  In a word, No.

Obama was elected after President Bush & Congress bankrupted the country with an unnecessary war, corporate welfare (which Clinton did too, by the way), and laws favoring the 1% of wealthiest Americans so “Americans were demanding change.“  In a word, No.

Brushing with broad strokes to manufacture correlation for ones views is a common malpractice, despite ones particular political views. Since the majority of people in the US don’t vote, it’s a misnomer to ever say that the outcome of an election is “Americans sending a message” as if all Americans (or any group) are fully aligned.

Outcomes of elections are the result of who spent the most money on the best marketing to manipulate voter emotions enough to create the reaction they wanted. I’ve been in marketing and psychology for 20 years so I see through the machinations.  Don’t be fooled by the blind influence of corporate media stories.

Have you ever heard a politician say “The American people want…” and not heard it followed with a lie to help them get what they want for personal gain?  Why do you think there are 237 millionaires in congress making a salary of $174,000 a year?  To help their constituents or to increase their personal power and wealth?

As an example, President Clinton earned $40 million in speaking fees alone his first 6 years out of office.  Sarah Palin left a $125,000 a year Governor job for a $1.25 million book advance and a commentator position at Fox News though she couldn’t construct a sensible sentence without reading a teleprompter as a candidate. No matter how much expected change President Obama does not deliver on, he’ll be doing fine when he leaves office and so will your nationally elected representatives.

Politicians are not saviors or agents of Satan, they’re people who act on self preservation and self interest as a first defense. Enemies will be manufactured and no matter how scary situations seem or how many demons politicians, religious leaders and mainstream media puppets cook up for us, we will survive.  Believe their actions and ignore their words.

So please stop saying that “Americans are sending a message” as if 1) It’s true and 2) It matters.  Most of us can’t even agree on where to find the best burger in town much less agree on a message to send to politicians who usually vote for their personal and corporate interests anyway.  …but never underestimate the power of groups of committed individuals to generate needed change.  We are a nation of unceasing innovators.

P.S. Another reality check – today the Supreme Court solidified corporate influence to dominate U.S. politics even further by eliminating limitations on funding elections.  We appear to  live in a corporatocracy by, for, and of multinational corporations profits, not a democracy interested in it’s people or their messages. …until the people decide to stop following their influence.

We have definitely hit the age of participatory media.  Old mass media is very sick and broadcast methods of interruption marketing have gone from annoying to impotent, but I don’t agree with the idea that mass media will die.  It will be re-engineered like all industries must in this time of change.

According to the loud mouths in the media, the birth of TV was supposed to kill radio.  Then cable TV was supposed to kill standard TV.  Then VCR home recording was supposed to kill visits to movie theaters.  Now the internet and video games are supposed to kill TV.  It’s just more ‘look, the sky is falling’ hoo-hah.  (And any opportunity to use the word ‘hoo-hah’ is one I’ll take because it’s fun to say.)

Even newspapers will never die.  The industries of the past are crumbling and newspaper subscriptions will continue declining, but they’ll always be around in some fashion.

That said, the era of participatory media is in full force.  It was a babe when blogs and YouTube hit the scene, but  now it’s how young people get most of their news.

As generation Y is poised to dominate the population in a few years, all communication and business marketing methods are shifting to two-way or multi-channel platforms like blogs and Twitter.  Gone are the days where advertisers could win the day by shouting unwanted messages to an unsuspecting public or when you had to wait until TV told you what was happening in your world.

I’s all about community, transparency, trust agents, authenticity and tribes.  Although, for now the signal to noise ratio is still way off as old school people and companies still try to use new multi-channel platforms to broadcast obnoxious marketing messages no one wants without being genuine contributors to conversations people are looking to have.  If they aren’t helping, they’re hurting.  But they’ll learn, or they’ll die.

On another note, you probably remember the famous “Wassup” superbowl commercial in 2000.  What you may not know is that is was originally a short film done by a college student and then Budweiser hired him to remake it into a commercial with beer.

Watch the original ad below and the follow up to it in 2008 with the same actors.  Note how this user generated content (UGC) powerfully conveys information about how the world changed in eight years.  Then think about how much information you’ve learned in the last week or month from UGC videos, blog posts, Twitter tweets and other sources.  It’s a brave new world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As the old phrase “technology is killing face to face communication because everyone is buried in a computer or mobile device” continues to be spoken by some, it simply doesn’t ring true for people who are actually using social networking sites.

Yesterday we saw a stunning example of this in Australia with emotional tweets bringing people together through the disaster of the major brushfires they experienced.  How do you not have a visceral feeling reading: @Ingenue_Em: “I’m crying over the #bushfires – how can whole towns be decimated? Over 100 souls lost now, could be up to 200.”

That’s the power of 140 characters of text read by friends and strangers alike.  Anyone who has a pulse, and didn’t work in the Bush administration during Hurricane Katrina, will feel a connection and empathy reading tweets like that.  And because Twitter is both instant and international people near and far were able to connect and help each other.

It’s interesting to read the the ABCNews.com article on this to see how traditional media is following social media because no news outlet has enough reporters to be on the scene of an unfolding event, but citizens with cell phones and Twitter accounts are everywhere now.  Old and new media are converging to give us the best of both worlds.

On a similar yet different note, on Thursday, February 12 over 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals – meet ups for people on Twitter to tweet, meet and give.  For $10 you meet up with others on Twitter, get a free drink and raise money for clean water charity.  Visit www.Twestival.com for details on the city nearest you.

Here’s why this is a must attend event:

• On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals.
• The events are raising money for charity and the chosen charity is clean water.
• The Twestival is organized by volunteers who twitter and 100% of the money goes to charity.
• It all started in London under the idea of drinking and socializing and doing good for others.
• It was mainly organized in less than two weeks using Twitter.
• 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water. 1/6 of the world. 80% of all sickness starts here.

Have you watched your local nightly news lately?  Probably not if you’re like most Americans under the age of 61, but you’ll still get my point.  I’m guessing you’ve watched more financial news in the last month than usual in reaction to fear around money, stocks and the economy in general.

I accidentally saw the first few minutes of local news recently and noticed that it looked just like it did when I was a kid and my parents watched it.  They have the same formula as always: An intro with visuals that include flashing police car or fire truck lights and an audio track of a reporter talking in that ridiculous reporter-sing-song voice telling you that the content they’re sharing is VERY important and significant.  If they’re lucky they can splice some security camera footage into the piece too for an extra scary effect.

I’m sure they still cover the weather at exactly 17 minutes after the hour too, but for the sake of this post we’ll stick with the intro.  News, whether it is on broadcast or cable television, on the web or in newspapers, generally leads with some story aimed at reminding you that the world is not a safe place.

It’s probably even a little worse since they created the oft-used phrase, “In a post-9/11 world…”  The truth is that we don’t live in a country where suicide bombers are blowing up cafes and you’re more likely to get hit by lightning or win the lottery without a ticket than to be harmed by a terrorist in America.

This truth is exactly the same now as it was 5 years or 50 years before 9/11.  That’s just a fact and it has nothing to do with how much our president has or has not protected us or that you aren’t allowed to carry a regular sized can of shaving cream on to an airplane anymore.

It has to do with the low number of terrorists who have the inclination or means to harm us.  We don’t live in Columbia or Israel where terrorist violence is a reality. We live in America where impoverished drug addicts with guns are actually a bigger threat than terrorists.  And when was the last time you or someone you love was car jacked by a crack addict or directly threatened by a terrorist?  That’s my point.

Back to the media, it’s not that they like to scare people.  (At least I hope not.)  It’s because consumers are reactionary creatures that respond to emotional content.  That’s also why they always ask the asinine question of, “How do you feel?” to the woman whose son got killed an hour ago in a car accident or the guy who made the 3 point shot to win the basketball game.

Have these interviewees ever given a surprising answer even once in the history of the world?  Nope.  Guess what, the guy whose house burned down says “I’m in shock and upset that I lost everything, but I’m grateful that my family made it out in time.”  Surprise!  You never here him say, “I’m excited and going to Disneyland on the insurance money.  It’s a godsend that my shack is gone and I can cash in!”

The fact that many news consumers forget is that the news is a product.  Therefore, if you study advertising you’ll understand why the product of news is sold with the same methods as selling the product of beer or the product of voting for a politician.

Consumers are emotional creatures that unconsciously react to advertising.  Add to this fact that people react more strongly to negative advertising than positive advertising.  If my news program makes you afraid by making you think crime is up it concurrently attracts you to watch my news because you think I’ll give you information on what’s happening that will make you feel safer.

I create the problem that you should be afraid while positioning myself as your answer to feel safer.  It’s the same schtick for self help gurus who tell you they have the answer for your health, relationship and money issues.  The day you feel safe is the day you lose dependence on being a daily news consumer and the day you believe your life is not broken you lose the desire to spend money on books, CDs and seminars to fix yourself.

Ironically, crime in America has consistently been going down for well over a decade even though most people who regularly consume news think it’s always going up.  If you see a petty crime reported as the lead story every night the images of flashing lights repeated daily is what your brain remembers.

Perception is reality when you’re being blindly influenced.  If they want good ratings they need to give you a perceived threat so you’ll tune in to “stay informed.”  It may be worthwhile to question how informed you really become blindly consuming what others determine is “news.”

Tonight is the night of the second presidential debate.  This seems like as good a day as any to launch a blog on how you are marketed to by advertisers, politicians, experts, media, and sometimes even your friends. If you think you might hear at least one lie, fabrication or stretching of the truth by Barack Obama or John McCain tonight raise your hand.  (Wow!  That’s a lot of hands!)

Even better, we’ll sometimes cover ways you influence, sell to and market to your friends and sometimes even to yourself.

You are blindly influenced many times a day and you blindly influence others at least a few times a day.  Have you been told an interesting “fact” from a friend today that fit into your beliefs?  Maybe it was about Barack Obama, or John McCain, or Wall Street or any number of newsworthy topics.  Chances are that the “facts” you heard were somewhat truthful and somewhat dubious.

This isn’t a slam on you or your friends.  It’s simply a result of how the human brain works and how our marketing-saturated culture operates in 2008.

Blind patrotism is an obvious example of this.  The first few years after 9/11 we witnessed blind patriotism on steroids.  Emotions ran high which concurrently made critical thinking run low.  This resulted in Americans swallowing gallons of lies that fortunately became obvious in only a few years instead of a few decades.

Again, this is nothing personal, it’s how the human brain operates. Why do you think Tony Robbins and others using NLP (Neurolinguistic programming) have done so well?

As this blog grows we’ll explore how our minds deceive us and how others can use this against us.  By realizing how this happens you’ll be one of the few who isn’t going to fall for the B.S. – well, at least not as much of it as your neighbors.

So as you watch the debate tonight, and politicians speaking on any night, keep your critical thinking hat on and put on your glasses to see through the blind influence.