Those who twitter and /or use other social media are aware that the hot topic currently is the relationship of commerce to Social Media. The start of this discussion was Chris Brogan’s taking a $500.gift card from Kmart and talking about Kmart in his blog. He was upfront about the fact he’d taken money and each reader could do with that information as they chose.
Some seemed fine with it, others were outraged, and not a small number wondered how they too could get paid. In the resulting brouhaha, it seemed as if no one looked at real life or at history to see what happens in the social world.
My father joined a small city law firm in 1946. I grew up in a household where many of the social events included clients. I remember being told shortly after my father made partner that we would be joining the new less prestigious country club because the firm needed representation there. Neither “benevolent: nor “protective” are words I would apply to my father, but he joined the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks because there were business connections to be made. His firm represented the best woman’s shop in town; my mother and my sister shopped there regularly. I could fill two or three more paragraphs with similar examples, but you get the idea.
My description implies that I believe the only connection among these people was, in Marx’s words, “the cash nexus.” The lived experience was quite different. Many of these people became friends. Some, the fathers of my friends, I got to know well and some served as mentors as I grew up. No real business was ever done at social gatherings. Anyone who tried would have been thought crude. Although “come by the store” or “call me at the office” were acceptable practices. There was no deception here. Everyone knew what the others’ businesses were.
Social life and business life have intermingled perhaps as far back as medieval guilds. We should not be surprised that it’s happening in Social Media. Which came first, business or socializing? I would suggest that they are inseparable in the modern world. Twitter, Blogging et al. have roots in commercial enterprises, are the result of a technology created for business, and so far as I can tell populated mostly by people who market something. Possibly Social Media makes up for a lack of sociability in many parts of the workplace. One does not imagine that Wal-Mart’s lawyers shop at Wal-Mart.
In such a space, honesty about our business and some reticence about what we are selling seems necessary to preserve the social aspects of the virtual space. Chris Brogan offers a step toward that honesty. The many tweets and comments are the struggles to define taste and tact in this virtual space.
