The sight of Carey Smith (aka Ray White Real Estate) in today’s Sunday Star Times got me thinking about my first meeting with the man at a public relations seminar a few weeks ago.

I didn’t know him from a bar of soap, but clearly he got into my consciousness and now he appears to be everywhere.

The seminar paraded a range of speakers, most talking on the subject of social media. Many presentations covered the theory of Facebooking, Tweeting and viral campaigning together with a scattering of case studies.

Carey turned up with a lively virtuoso performance hewn from the edgy world of residential real estate. Here’s a man who is discovering how his blog [www.careysmith.com] and social media activity is merely an extension of his lifelong need to have rich relationships with his family, friends and of course… business clients and prospects.

Refreshingly, Carey’s enthusiasm for social media seems to see it as a huge opportunity but not something to gaze at in gob-smacking bewilderment.

Praise be! Social media is spawning a bevy of overnight gurus who will have us believe that the processes are more important to understand than the ideas that are needed to make it work. I’m sure that when the telephone was invented, there were people offering themselves for “how to best dial to make the telephonic experience a rich and rewarding experience.”

It seems that a blog and Facebook were invented for Carrie Smith. Good on him and he sets a fine example for us all. Next time I sell a house, I might just call Carey.

I’ve just spent a couple of days attending and presenting at a conference dedicated to media campaigning.

A wide range of speakers and panelists presented on a wide range of subjects from the social media revolution to crisis management in public relations.

A theme that occured time and time again was the subject of ‘traditional’ mainstream media and the impact of the internet and, in particular, social media. It’s an area that is a particular focus for us in our FRESCO business and in our web enterprise sites, Issues.co.nz and Wotzon.com.

It struck me during the discussions how much history repeats itself with every new media development. Early adoptors may imagine that the processes involved in the new medium have never been seen before – rather like teenagers thinking that they are the first to discover sex. Think of the printing press, telephone, radio and television? Each ones early development had people obsessed with the processes rather than the real benefits once people settled down and learnt how to use it intuatively.

But of course, there never has been anything quite like the internet and we young teenagers may just be right to be so excited. Social media promises to enable people as never before and connect them to a world we are just starting to imagine.

Let’s fill our boots?

This week my company, FRESCO, released a new website. Issues.co.nz is live but not yet formally launched while we load in more content – I expect a launch within the next week.

 The website has been an idea of mine that has simmered for years as we witnessed the explosion in current affairs online. But while many newspaper websites leave control with the media, and ‘citizen publishing’ is diluted with a mass of fragmented blog or information sites, Issues.co.nz brings much of the fragmentation together and, in doing so, gives ordinary people a chance to be heard.

 The Issues.co.nz website is completely unique in New Zealand. In a nutshell, we’re setting up a platform where anyone has the chance to run their own website on a burning issue and run it within a large online community.

 Take a sneak look at www.issues.co.nz and let me know what you think?

Recent discussions about Google’s ambitions to take over the world via the internet run a shiver through many. Certainly, it does seem to be a human condition to assume an imperialistic position when confronted with such opportunity, but I sense that it won’t quite happen as some might fear. (more…)

My friend at Internet on Crack Blog argues that the “all seeing eye of the internet” (Google), is putting the whole thing at risk.

As always, we’re challenged constantly by apparent contradictions in the galloping age of the internet – what are the forces of good (to be enabled) and what are the forces of evil (to be controlled beyond our personal control). (more…)