I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel at Social Media Week on the topic of Social Graph Optimization. It’s a complicated subject and one that I really should write a full post on and I promise I will in due time. While this particular post isn’t exactly about that topic, it is driven by some thoughts I had as result of the panel.

I have been thinking more and more about the concept of “friends on the Internet”. Look over 6,000 people follow me on twitter- it’s impossible for me to truly be friends with every single one of them. However, by current social Internet standards – I am. They have 100% access ( except in some circumstances) to my social activities and behavior. Sure I prefer some of them to others, but they have no way of knowing this digitally. In Social networking sites currently all relationships are generally created equal.

Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, & etc were all built on this weird concept of validity of numbers. The more people I am connected to, the more power and value I have. While the SIN complex -get it? Strength In Numbers -will always apply, we need to progress to some type of way to establish the strength and validity of social relationships. Who do we consider friends, and what connection are more about status & fluff? With out some way to divide these two camps ( simplifying & assuming their are only two levels of relationships) maintaining well balanced virtual relationships is overly complex. In essence, the current social structure as it stands now is not built to support enduring virtual relationships.

As social society continues to adapt & mirror the best parts of in person communication enhanced with technology, this becomes more and more import. For example, in real life- those who have larger social ecosystems are naturally casually connected to a myriad of people. While these large physical ecosystems exist, people do not transmit all of their likes, dislikes, behaviors, habits, & emotions to the ecosystem as a whole, but rather selectively to various sub communities within the ecosystem based on the trust, relevance and strength of the relationship. I see adapting this type of communication structure into the social space and as a crucial next step for digital communication.

Here’s a peg shot video from just after the panel at Social Media Week. I think it sums up my thoughts nicely.

Okay, I exaggerated. A little. But there was some yelling and some harsh words being said. In the thick of it, it hit me. I felt bad for these large corporations.Never have I felt more left of center than in that moment. I’ve always be a perpetual advocate of the underdog, a product of what I like to call”picked last for every team in high school” syndrome. Now my brain was overflowing with thoughts that led to sympathy for these companies and more importantly the people in charge of their Social Media. I feel that if the walls of America’s fortune 500 companies could speak openly about their social media programs, this is along the lines of what they would say:

“Courtney Treebird from Muskingum, AL I understand your pots arrived broken. I saw your tweet about. I also saw that you wrote a blog about it. I know your friend Sherri also wrote about your pots and about a similar problem she had with our brand. I know you then both joined a group on facebook called “I hate brand X.” I want you to know I saw ALL of this. I even told my boss Sam, who forwarded me to Mike who’s in charge of customer satisfaction. Mike referred my to Allison who manages shipping, who told me this was out of her hands and referred me back to Mike. Mike then sent me to Alex who’s the head of digital marketing. She said that she thought our company had someone in charge of requests like yours. A week later she wrote me an email referring me to reach out to myself for help. As you can see, Courtney, I’ve tried to resolve your issues. I’ve tried to reach out to people and make you feel more satisfied with our product. I have. We want you to be satisfied. The problem is, my company is just not quite sure who’s in charge of meeting your needs.”

Classic social media success stories like Jetblue & Zappos have it easy. They’re newer companies and have been able to build customer centrality into their sales model from the get go. Older companies do not have the same advantage and they struggle to bring the same level of service to their customers because of it. To compete they must retrofit a modern customer centric model onto internal working system that just doesn’t cooperate with that way of thinking. So what you are left with is a bunch of people who think service and communication with consumers is important, but no clear leader or process to ensure actual customer needs are met. Even when there is a defined leader in charge of meeting customer needs, that person is not likely to have the power necessary to demand the change needed to meet disgruntled customers needs’. So, what you’re left with is a whole lot of mess.

The only way these companies will be able to overcome this mountain of an issue is to build internal communication that mirrors their outward goal. How do they do this? There’s no simple or easy answer. I suppose it’s what makes their situation even more difficult.

Never did I expect I would find the urge to stand up and fight for the big dogs, but today I did. I ask you to give the big corporations a little bit of a break when is comes to social media. They’re still figuring out how to make it work. They want to catch up. They’re going to make mistakes. The important thing is they are trying and that deserves some credit.