Posted on Saturday, 29th November 2008 by Bill Bean

Chris Brogan offers perspective on the conversations happening via social media and their impact on the marketing landscape.  This is my kind of thinking!

Excerpts from Cafe-Shaped Conversations

I think what social software is setting us up for are cafe-shaped conversations.

I only know Paris through the words of others, but here’s what I see: little coffee shops with no more than ten tables. I see little bags of groceries, you know those types in movies, with the baguette sticking out? (Always with the baguette). Everything there is neighborhood-sized. People walk or at the worst ride a bicycle. The mod use scooters. But they don’t span the whole city. They stick to their bank, their tribe, their cafe and their cheese shops of reference.

I don’t know much of anything about Paris but “neighborhood-sized” is a great phrase.  Our problem, one of many, is the loss of neighborhood, specifically, the physical neighborhood.  After many years of building networks in the cyberworld I’m still not willing to jettison the importance of geography and physical proximity.

I think some companies will want big conversations, mass messaging, when what we’re offering are cafe conversations. We’re offering the intimate, the personal, the chance to talk in numbers of dozens and hundreds, and to make the appropriate kind of impact.

An “appropriate kind of impact” suggests a broader motivation than mere profiteering.

I think that full page ad in your local newspaper is nowhere near as impactful as what I hear about on Frugalous.

The notion of paper-based news is going to be filed alongside the mimeograph.  So, if you’re asking to compare the impact of the local news website with Chris Brogan’s website…that’s a different issue.  Could be the Springfield Daily Gazette website is more impactful than what Chris, or anyone, hears about on website X.

I think the cafe is where the action is. I think that your $15,000 an hour film crew can’t beat my Flip Mino and a personal touch.

Regardless of where the action is, my kind of action is definitely in the cafe.  Besides…there’s coffee readily available and, in some places, baguettes.

The cafe-shaped conversations that we are finding through social media are more meaningful, more impactful, and have a chance to spread and overtake other mass methods. And yet, they need tending.

Tending.  I think that’s what I do.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: ,
Posted in Miscellaneous | Comments (0)

Leave a Reply