Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote at the recent F5 Conference was thought provoking – He offered a unique perspective that was a refreshing change from the “dreamy” sensibility that can exist when you get a group of social media types together. Given the audience, it would have been easy to wax poetic about social media, get everybody to hold hands, sing kumbaya and call it a night.

Gladwell’s talk was compelling and a bit of a wake up call. He wove in stories about Obama’s post election popularity decline, Fidel Castro and the election uprising in Iran to illustrate his point that social media is not currently positioned to fuel revolution and affect meaningful change – and that it remains “an instrument of the status quo.”

Based on subsequent digital commentary it appears that there are a number of people who disagree with Gladwell’s take on social media and it’s function as a “tool of radical and transformative change”. Some of us may not want to change the world…maybe we  just want to leverage social media to sell more widgets. That’s okay, isn’t it?

Regardless of whether or not you agree with Gladwell or his philosophy, his themes are too relevant to be ignored. He speaks to the underlying issue that needs to be addressed for social media to take the next step – culture change.

“If social media tools are going to make a meaningful commitment to the way our world is run you have to remember to build trust, to build institutions and to build strong ties.” (Malcolm Gladwell)

Here are my visual interpretations of Gladwell’s three main points:

If you saw Malcolm Gladwell at F5 I’d love to get your take on his keynote.

Back to Main Blog

Twitter still has its share of detractors. Like any social media tool, it can be effective if approached strategically:

• Develop a content plan and detailed work flow
• Understand the time investment and what you want to achieve
• Think about how Twitter ties into your business objectives

Back to Main Blog