Week 2 Pub355: Clay Shirky

Online Marketing:
Clay Shirky
by Monique Trottier

monique@boxcarmarketing.com
You should follow me on twitter @boxcarmarketing

3 Big Lessons

twitter: @boxcarmarketing

It’s not the tools,
it’s how we use them


We plan so we can measure...
We measure so we can improve.


The Culture of the Web
means we behave diﬀerently today than pre-internet


Online marketing is...

• Conversation

• Collaboration

• Community

Clay Shirky
writer, consultant and teacher on the social &
economic eﬀects of internet technologies


Our Behaviour Is Diﬀerent
Today Than It Was Yesterday


There are 4 Revolutions in
Social History

• The introduction of the printing press
(changes reading and writing)

• The telegraph and the telephone
(changes communication)

• Recorded media
(changes music, records, radio)

• The harnessing of broadcast media
(changes how we view images + sound)


We Are Now Living Through a 5th Revolution:
The internet revolution


Key Points
This revolution is a combination of the 4 previous
revolutions.

• Printing Press: The web brings us Movable
Type, Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, Blogger
and many other digital printing presses that
allow anyone to become a publisher.

• Phone: VOIP, voice over internet protocal,
allows for companies like Skype to bring us
telephone and teleconferencing.

• Recorded Media: MP3s, RealPlayer and others
brought us streaming audio, podcasts and
peer-to-peer ﬁle exchange.

• Broadcast Media: And the web is images, text
and sound. monique@boxcarmarketing.com

Freedom of the Press, Freedom of
Speech & Freedom of Assembly

1. Sharing

2. Conversation

3. Collaboration

4. Collective Action


1. Sharing
• Think of delicious.com and other social bookmarking
tools like StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks

• Social bookmarking is an example of how we do
something for ourselves that benefits the group.

• By social bookmarking, we have an easy way to see our
bookmarked webpages from any computer. If we make
the list publicly available, then we help others filter for
good content based on the wisdom of the crowd. i.e., if
more people bookmarked this article vs. that article,
then I’ll check out this one first.

• Tagging allows us to see the commonalities, which
means tagging becomes a platform for organization.

2. Conversation
• Example HDR photos: Totally lovely, diﬃcult to
produce. In the real world, it used to take 7 years for
a technique like that to move into the hands of the
masses. With tools like Flickr for online photo
sharing, it now takes 3 months.

• Online, groups get better together.

• Comment ﬁelds, like tags, are a platform for
organization. Threaded conversations are
communication and sharing.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/953669278/sizes/s/in/photostream/ twitter: @boxcarmarketing

3. Collaboration

• Shirky uses the example of Aeqisub,
which is a group dedicated to
captioning Japanese anime and
bringing it to the US.

• Another example of collaboration is
Wikipedia, where there are 175
different language groups working
to add, refine and update wikipedia.
In some cases, Wikipedia is the only
encyclopedia in that language.

• Both are examples of individuals
synching with the group.
Photo Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeeperez/2453225976/sizes/m/in/photostream/ twitter: @boxcarmarketing

4. Collective Action
• The hardest to get going.

• Shirky paraphrases William James, "thinking is for
doing." Our brains are for deciding courses of action.

• Publishing is, therefore, a course of action.

• But the media publishes not for action, but for a
journalistic notion of the news.

• Bloggers, however, leverage attention to aﬀect change
or to reach a shared goal.

• Kiva.org or the Zombie Walk would be good examples.


Shirky points out that in
highly democratic
environments, new tools are
used for entertainment.
Whereas in low democratic
environments, new tools are
a potent element used for
collective action.

http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/wigwam/1460462925/sizes/l/in/photostream/
http://www.ﬂickr.com/photos/irisheyes/5417964426/sizes/o/in/photostream/


The Tools Have Changed

Source: Darren Barefoot monique@boxcarmarketing.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbarefoot/1814873464/sizes/o/in/photostream/ twitter: @boxcarmarketing

Points to Remember
• Revolutions happen, and will continue to happen

• The tools don’t change the game, our behaviour
changes the game

• Understanding behaviour (or the motivating
factors) of why people do certain things is more
important than understanding how the tool works

• Conversation, collaboration and community are the
fundamentals of online marketing


Group Exercise
In groups of 4, you are going to use online collaboration tools to create
a page for a cookbook and share with me. 40 min.

As a group, agree on the type of recipe (appy, main, dessert). 5 min.

Assign each member of your group to a different task (or do together):
1. Find a recipe online. 10 min.
2. Create a Google doc (http://doc.google.com) (or use another
collaborative document tool) and share with the group.
3.Enter the Recipe Name as the filename.
4. Write the recipe description. 10 min.
5. Search for a creative commons photo to use on Flickr.com and
embed it in the Google doc. 5 min.

http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

6. List your group member names
7. Share with monique@boxcarmarketing.com

Next Steps
Readings

• Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine, "The
Cluetrain Manifesto," http://www.cluetrain.com/
• Kelly Mooney and Nita Rollins, Open Brand

You should follow me on twitter @boxcarmarketing

Week 2 Pub355: Clay Shirky

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