Rethinking "Social" in 2012

Source: Spiegel.de

I am passionate. Passionate in all things that allow us all, the humanity, to make the world a better place. But since that's kind of a tall order and a huge field to work in, I chose Customer Relationship Management back in 2000; don't ask me why. It was a visceral pull, not something that I thought through much. I really believed in the R for relationship. But soon, as I began getting involved in real world projects I got to see that R stood little more than Revenue, for the most part.

And then came along Social Media, with its promise of being able to get the customer into not only the conversation but also in almost all aspects of a business - building customer relationships, developing new products and services, and producing and distributing them.

But the frenzy around social media by the so called gurus, the hype from the marketers and the buzz from many well meaning yet misguided analysts meant that "social" has been relegated to either a feature that you add to your apps or a layer that you drape over your platforms. And thus I think, time has come to rethink "social".

What is the Social CRM interface of the future?

I am following the #scrm11 hashtag on Twitter to be informed about the Social CRM event in Paris, France and then I see this tweet (being reported from the event, not the person's question, I presume):

Is the identity of the Social Customer at risk?

Assange vs Zuckerberg

Paul Greenberg posited well over two years ago (and more than those many years in the making) that the social customer had taken control over the conversation and that the businesses needed to respond to that. Businesses did respond and how! Not only the businesses, but also the politicians. And if the current state of affairs continue, there would be no Arab Spring ever. Let me try to explain.