Why the economic recession and social media are a perfect match:

People will be stripped to their bare essentials and forced to think about what is really important to them their friends, their communities and who they are as individuals and this is what social media is all about.


If the economy receeds, so will spending on gadgets, toys clothes and other non-essentials. If the situation gets really bad,

One thing that is all but guaranteed is that the internet will stay on and virtually unregulated. In the U.S. and other Western nations, this would be a political decision. Those that govern can regulate and restrict the internet or make it too expensive to use, but at the cost of having millions of unemployed people at home with lots of free time on their hands and no other outlet but to stay at home and ponder how the American financial industry got them into this mess. The average citizen feels that they have played no definitive role in the creation of the crisis, yet they will be feeling it’s worst effects. This is a recipie for anger and one way to prevent this from going to the streets is by ensuring that people have a non-violent way to spend their free time while the government tries to work it’s way out of the jungle. Like video games (An industry that is likely to prosper during the recession due to a high value/dollar ratio), the internet is cheap. There is a danger that the average person will slowly become educated on foreign and monetary policy, but it is a trade off policy makers will have to accept.

Today, there is a big demand for transparency and accountability, social media fits this nicely because, as many gurus on the subject have pointed out, one’s presence in a group or network is easily cross indexable and reputations/status are an asset that is nurtured and grown over time. It does not have to be refreshed with a new jingle or expensive celebrity endorsement, it is maintained by the quality of the network member and continually audited against competing blogs, accounts or innovators in the field. This is something that anyone with a 5 year old computer can do. Social media provides the straight forwardness and direct accountability to other members that governments are reluctant to provide. Over the next few years, people will gradually give up on their elected leaders and bypass the economic, political and financial institutions that have recently devolved into a means for the powerful to aggregate and share power amongst themselves.

Americans, in particular have been cynically manipulated in recent years, but they are not stupid. They are aware of the licence they have given their leaders and of how that trust has been betrayed. Most do not have any illusions that there will be a massive march on the nations capital and mass guillotining of the House and Senate. Rather, those institutions will be bypassed by people acting in local communities and on the internet through the use of tools that provide for a better parsing and organization of information resources.

Coupled with this movement will be an awareness and waryness of that same cynical element creeping it’s way onto the internet. Fortunately, the distrubution of information keeps it safe, it is becoming increasingly organized and these information consumers are more and more sophisticated in their consumption and evaluation of that data. This trend rewards the knowledgeable and innovative because their articles and input gets tagged and recirculated faster and with more authentic commentary than botted articles or main stream outlets who all tend to carry the same set of revenue generating headline stories, as a consequence of having to maintain a large infrastructure.

Traditional media is a one way assault pointed directly in the face of the listener or watcher, new media and social media in particular is participatory, singular and collective all at the same time. This allows for both community and individualism simultaneously and to whatever degree desired by the end user.

Perhaps the best way to think about the opportunities ahead is to look at it this way, the continuing evolution of the web comes not from immediate financial opportunities. The opportunity is the opportunity to participate and contribute. Those who provide research, insight and imagination will find themselves able to generate dependable traffic as and the consequent direct advertising opportunities. First and foremost, however is participation and contribution. In many ways, America must start again from zero with a raw frontier full of dangers and opportunities. One of the best ways to thrive in such an environment is to ensure that one produces more than one consumes. This ensures your value. If more people produce than consume, wealth is created. This is worth repeating, if more people produce than consume, wealth is created. This is what many constructionists would call first principles. America has no more wealth, but the people are very capable of creating it again as long as they return to self-reliance and leave faith in their government behind.

It can be argued that many boom economic cycles are born of political unrest or turmoil.
These banking and investment Ponzi schemes have underlined the essential nature of real value. That is, people have had it pointed out to them quite clearly that 8% annual returns, like magical SEO solutions, are unrealistic. Online response to the latter is meeting with an ever more critical eye. On networks like Twitter, popularity, reputation and authority are based on such real value. Many of the most popular non-celebrity tweeps are followed because of the information they provide and commentary that they offer, both of which is percieved as having real value. The retweeting and search mechanisms make it easier for this kind of quality to rise to the top. Spammers and bots that Twitter’s team do not catch are quickly identified and ignored by the Twitter community, irregardless of the promises that they make.

The individuals who offer, as the saying goes, $100 worth of value for $10 are followed very heavily. Those who provide links to websites making promises are quickly dismissed This parallels the situation in real-life because with limited monetary resources, Americans will start becoming more shrewd and careful with their cash. They will demand sound logical explanations as to why any course of action is to be taken and they will seek out verification from trusted individuals as to whether an idea has merit. Social networks in the real world will prosper as distrust of advertising, government bailouts and politicians increases. Social media represents a way to gain that trusted information and to verify it on a larger scale than only from a local community. The latter will still have the most clout, but both will work with each other to expand the range of viable options.

This represents an opportunity for anyone who is willing to put the effort into finding out what these real value propositions are and explain them in a patient friendly manner. Like any kind of friendship, the relationships will take time to develop but they will be of higher value because of the reciprocal level of trust inherent in them.

The points to keep in mind are broadening the network, being friendly and providing a unique perspective. People who can do these things and not use them as a tool to entice readers toward a pay to play scheme will be rewarded, at least, by a wider sea to cast their net and at best by direct sales of proven solutions or useful products.


So a summary of effective strategies in the opportunities to come:

a) Approach your memberships online and participatory rather than as speaker/audience
b) Be innovative, others have said that being controversial drives traffic, but controversy is a subclass of innovation. When and if people get tired of contrarianism, and this is likely to occur as demand for real solutions increases, innovation will be valued more highly.
c) Be friendly and supportive, this will be a quality desired of others during a recession and it is also sought out online. The era of flame wars and online insults is fading because it’s lack of value has become very apparent at this point.
d) Don’t push your goods, whatever they are. Let them be discovered. Your free content should be derived from an expertise or knowledge pool that is linked to your revenue generating content, whether your dealing in ad placements or for sale content.
e) Track the pulse but don’t ride it. You wan’t to be providing insight that changes the current. There is currently money in aggregating links, but as social media streams continue to become more efficient, the need for someone to collect ‘The weeks best links’ will decline. As it is, that market is already becoming saturated.

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