2009: The Year Social Media Creates Violent Disruption

We started 2009 with a new President who leveraged social media to influence the electorate. Don’t believe it, read Barack 2.0.

The new President faced massive economic turmoil and the death of long standing American Industries: automobile manufacturers, Banks, Wall Street, Newspapers, Retail, Real Estate and the list continues to grow.  Subsequently the government stepped in and “bailed out” many of these industries in order to avoid total global economic collapse.  Our national debt continues to grow in the trillions of dollars now equaling $1 million per American family.

Meanwhile on the global front Europe is also feeling the effects of our debt and inflation continues to rise at a rapid pace.  In addition the continuing saga of the middle east perpetuates the airwaves like a never ending cold.  Then the Iran election erupts and grabs global attention but the attention has shifted from main stream media to new media. Social media creates a disruptive global conversation.

While traditional media continues to disseminate the “doom and gloom” of the current economic state and our global woes,  the citizens of the world are reaching out to each other for solutions. The turmoil in Iran has propelled “Twitter” as the primary source of moment by moment events in Iran. Instead of relying on traditional media the worlds focus is now on “reports and video’s” produced by global citizens wanting to insure that the actions of Iran’s dictatorship become transparent to world.

Fox News recent report said “I guess all of us are just now learning the power of all this social networking stuff”. Shepard Smith said “We used to rely on professional journalist to report the news now the people in Iran and people all over the globe are relying on Twitter and Facebook to report the events in Iran”. These events have awoken the world and traditional media to the power and influence of social media.  The awakening will now accelerate and create even more change.  What will change? Everything!

Violent Disruption Created By Conversational Currency

The power grids of the past have been contained by the few but now the “grid” has shifted to the many. Television viewers are moving to viewing videos produced by people. Newspaper and magazine readership has shifted to not only digital but to content produced by the people and not the institution.  Don’t believe it? Read “Which Old Media Gets Social Media?” The market has clearly shifted to conversational currency, the value created by peer to peer conversations about anything and everything.

When change accelerates markets begin to shift.  The velocity of change accelerates market disruption. When market disruption is accelerated economic and political disruption follows. When there is economic disruption demand for innovation increases.  Communications  now engages more people into the dialog. The more people whom are engaged in dialog about anything and everything the likelihood of violent disruption increases. Disruption means to thrown into confusion or disorder. Violence is marked by, acting with, or resulting from great force.

The people of Iran learned the difference between a dictatorship and democracy from the conversations fueled by social media: they read, watched and listened to conversations. What they learned created a desire for change. Their desire created violent disruption from the governing powers. Change can be disruptive.  Innovation fuels change which can create violent disruption.  Don’t believe it?

In the first six months of this year we’ve witnessed violent disruption of the economy, all major industries, politics and politicians and last but not least communications.  Still don’t believe it?  Read, watch and listen to other accelerated changes coming throughout the remainder of this year. Then just maybe you’ll believe it.

What will non belief cost you? Everything. Get it?

What say you?

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Tagged as: business change, business disruption, business transformation, conversational marketing, innovation economy, jay deragon, Relationship Economy, social capital, social commerce, Social Media