Just got done reading this splendid summary by Erika Block on Technology in Translation in reference to Dion Hinchliffe's post entitled Social Media Goes Mainstream. It is about five very important social media ground rules. Not only could I not agree more, I can't as of this moment think of anything overlooked.

If I were to add a #6, it wouldn't be a rule, per se, but an attitudinal adjustment which would help people meet rules one through five. My #6 would be:

6. You may own it, but it isn't yours.

You can try to lead and shape the conversation, but you'll be most successful if you see yourself as just another participant.

That's not easy. Many people, and almost all corporations, like to be in control. Corporations hate surprises. They have thin skin easily pierced by contrary or negative views. Companies hate sponsoring events, forums and tactics that give air time to critics. But that, after all, is the point, isn't it?

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I would have posted this last evening but I couldn't get my laptop back from my sister Betty Mary Elizabeth. Lest you think she's fourteen or something, she's not. Very much older than me, she is in her sixties. But it was the first time she'd ever touched a laptop.

She's a piano teacher music instructor working from her living room studio in a town she's lived in all her life… so far. She knows everyone and everyone knows her. She didn't know that the town manager the previous evening had been seriously injured in a car crash. I'd heard it on the radio in the morning. The nightly news on television carried nothing about it. Her daily newspaper, of course, wouldn't be able to carry the item until this morning. So at about 7pm I introduced Boop Betty to online news. This is what we found. It is all news, all the time, all about her town. Right there, last night anyway, was the car crash story right at the top of the digital fold.

At this point I said something like, "Pretty neat, huh dummy?" "Isn't that remarkable, dear sister?" and made a move to reclaim my laptop. Nothing doing. For the next hour or so, among other things, I heard her utter expressions like, "Oh, I didn't know that… Oh, look at this… Look here, I know this guy… I never knew this stuff was here… Oh, this is great…"

The point of this story? If you've been in tech and/or familiar with the online world for a long time like me, it's easy to forget how astonishing it is. Watching a newbie in the midst of the revelation is an amazing first time experience all over again.

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