In the film Six Degrees of Separation two desperate art dealers proudly show off a painting by Kandinsky which is two sided. Donald Sutherland’s character proudly holds the painting on a hinge and describes the first side as “chaos” and then rapidly rotates to the second side, contently saying “control.” This is repeated a number of occasions, faster and faster to illustrate the contradictions in the experience of the art. Pretty pretentious but it is a remarkably good metaphor for the world of social media. Much like art can be seen at multiple levels social media has multiple levels too. To properly understand it we need to acknowledge the components we have to interact and play with.
Some of this posting will agitate those experimenting with new media because I am going to talk about the need to think about measures. The reason why it will irritate some - maybe many - is that to make a commitment to social media in budget-pressured environments we need a slightly cavalier or entrepreneurial attitude, i.e. let's get on with it and measurement discourse will distract. Without some sense of metrics we will be doomed to just be a start up form of media - plenty of energy, lots of anecdotal facts but no structure for scaling.