One of my favorite books about community is a work by Nobel Prize winner Elias Canetti called Crowds and Power. It’s a beautiful and thoroughly insightful study on people assembled in different ways and for a kaleidoscopic set of reasons. I turn to the book often when thinking about how social media both separate and connect us, using it as an imaginary frontier of sorts for what mediated crowds might or could do. A piece by Tim Leberecht reminded me of Canetti this morning. Got me thinking about converging streams and how conversational media sometimes produce that effect of being together at the same time.

Which is really a matter of paying attention at the same time, more than of being together, for the medium only connects across our individual spaces and times. The Germans have a nice word for the sense of being with others: “Mitsein.” “Being with” is contrasted with contiguity, or being “next to” or adjacent to one another. We’re not in one another’s stream of consciousness when we are just next to one another; we are when we are “with” one another.

There is no “Mitsein” online, but there is a sense of something that approximates it. But it comes not through being together. It comes through talk. Talk that indicates we are here and now, paying attention. The response is its signal flare.

In a medium so perfectly suited for a kind of self-talk, or talking aloud in front of others, it might be strange that there are occasions when we get a sense of Mitsein. Approximated, of course, in the medium’s own peculiar kind of proximity, or proximate intimacy. An “approximity” perhaps. A blend of the real and the imagined, of memory and expectation.

Verbal communication, not the language of bodies sharing space as in Crowds and Power, produces this approximation online. The kind of talk that appeals for a response. The kind of talk that runs out a line with hooks.

Hooks are important for conversation. I much prefer dialog to monolog. Hooks, in the form of “and you?” strung out along the thread of a good conversation are what call me into the world of people. I listen, I pay more attention, when conversation is drawn by the two of us. I like interruptions and clipped sentences, finishing one another’s thoughts, and mutual effort of threading out a good line together.

I wonder if the brief moments of simultaneity that pass now and then across our webbed social spaces will result in stream convergence. If the community of talk media might lie not in distributing messages but in the sense of sharing time. And if the point of doing more to make streams — of messages and update and activities — more interesting is also to create more hooks by which to connect them. If streams, like people, not only want the greater flow of the river but also the shared flow of time.

Top image by Demi Brooke

The last few years the Internet has changed from a monologue into a dialogue. People have started blogging, discussing, responding, commenting, etc. This resulted in a digital version of ‘Power to the consumer’, where we decide what to do and buy upon the opinion of other consumers. But where were the companies? Until now they stood at the sideline, not sure what to do. In 2009 this will change, it’s time for Feedback 3.0.

That’s what Trendwachting.com is telling us in their latest trend report. They believe that in 2009 companies will finally join in the conversation. When customers start writing about their products, they will listen and respond. But even better, the companies themselves will start up conversations… asking for the thoughts of their customers. They will finally understand that being open and showing interest doesn’t cost money, but earns you money.

Although I’m hoping that Feedback 3.0 will happen in 2009, it’s still much to late. Ten years ago Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger already preached the need for companies to start listening and conversate in The Cluetrain Manifesto (read the book online for free). They stated:

Markets are conversations
Talk is cheap
Silence is fatal

But let’s not stay negative. Listening too late is still beter then never. As long as they are really willing to listen and learn. Not when they see it as a good PR method.

Here is a good breakdown of the different fases of Feedback, according to Trendwatching.com:

• FEEDBACK 1.0 (one of those early web phenomena) saw outraged individuals posting scathing reviews, feedback and complaints, often to the delight of other netizens. Brands remained unaware or chose not to listen, dismissing these outbursts the way they’d dismissed any kind of customer dissatisfaction for decades.
• FEEDBACK 2.0 (which we’re in right now) is about these rants—and some raves—having gone ‘mass’(no, make that MASS!). The long-predicted conversation is finally taking place, albeit amongst consumers and not, as intended, between corporations and consumers. Companies have started to take note, but to a large degree still choose to listen, not talk back, trying to ‘learn’ from the for-all-to-see review revolution. Which is surprising, to say the least, since a quick and honest reply or solution can defuse even the most damaging complaint.
• FEEDBACK 3.0 (which is building as we speak) will be all about companies joining the conversation, if only to get their side of the story in front of the mass audience that now scans reviews. Expect smart companies to be increasingly able (and to increasingly demand) to post their apologies and solutions, preferably directly alongside reviews from unhappy customers. Expect the same for candid rebuttals by companies who feel (and can prove) that a particular review is unfair or inaccurate, and want to share their side of the story.

Photo by Orange Beard