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Social media: From prehistoric paint to present-day posts

“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.” —Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American writer and aviation pioneer, 1906-2001)

The desire to connect and communicate is woven into our very genetic code as human beings. We don’t want to be heard, we need to be heard. That’s part of what’s powering this supernova explosion of social media. That’s why it’s not going away.

User-generated content has been around for millennia. The first evidence of social media was the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave paintings in the Ardèche department of southern France. They date back to 30,000 BC. We’re talking Upper Paleolithic era here. Those paintings were people connecting and communicating with other people. Twitter on a sandy wall.

That’s all social media is. The medium has merely changed—from prehistoric paint to present-day posts. The difference is the speed and scope of the communication. Cave paintings reached some, social media reaches all.

Humans have waited a long, long time for this. For thousands of years the church controlled the message, followed by the printing press, then the mainstream media. For the first time in human history, you control the message. These tools of social media—YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs—give you a louder and stronger voice than you’ve ever had. Reflect on that for a moment. Consider how fortunate we are to be alive at this time, empowered by these tools.

Social media is here to stay because people will never give up that power. It’s no dot-com bubble. It’s freedom and democracy. We’ve seen governments try to quell this people-powered movement. It never works. Ladies and gentlemen, the genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in.

Let’s talk about business for a moment, as that is a primary focus of this book. What an historic, enthralling time to be in business! We are in the midst of one of the most seismic shifts since the Industrial Revolution. If I told you ten years ago that technologies would one day exist to allow you to listen to past, current, and future customers in real-time; to let you reach millions of people with your content without having to go through gatekeepers like publishers; to foster lasting relationships with influential figures; or to build a thriving business using a worldwide video platform, with enterprise-level analytics, that would cost you nothing but your time, you would have thought I was an inveterate liar, a quixotic dreamer—or both.

You are empowered with an array of jaw-dropping technologies that enable you to be heard on an unprecedented scale. They’re easy to use and they’re right at your fingertips.

How you use this power is up to you. You can connect with people you would never have the opportunity to meet; you can drive your business to great heights; you can raise awareness and money for a charity dear to your heart; you can even parlay your passion into a viable business. The playing field is more level than ever. We all have access to the very platforms that powered Barack Obama to the White House in 2008. Imagine that.

Social media is now the #1 online activity with almost one billion people taking part. Those numbers are rising at a jaw-dropping rate. In a span of three years, social media has brought together one in six humans on Earth. That figure includes the roughly one billion people who don’t even have an Internet connection yet.

To reach 50 million users, it took:

 Radio: 38 years

 TV: 13 years

 Internet: 4 years

 The iPod: 3 years

Facebook recently added 200 million users in less than one year. Marinate on that for a moment. That’s roughly 385 new sign-ups…every minute.

Social media is no small movement. It has already permanently and profoundly altered the way we connect, communicate and consume content. It is the fastest growing form of communication in human history.

If it were a country, Facebook would be the world’s third largest, with a “population” of almost 800 million. Approximately 300,000 people join Twitter—every day. YouTube serves over three billion videos daily, with more content uploaded in one month than the three major U.S. TV networks created in sixty years. Like the Big Bang Theory, and the expansion of the universe, social media is “banging out” at an accelerative rate. In other words, it has been growing faster, faster.

Social media is a human-powered movement, both in style and substance. The very forces that drive us as humans drive social media. After Abraham Mazlow’s two foundational levels of “physiological” (breathing, food and water) and “safety” (of body, family and health), our most fundamental needs are “love/belonging” (friendship and family) and “esteem” (self-esteem and respect from others). The needs to connect, belong and be heard are primal ones. In this way, social media satisfies our very soul.

That’s where we are. But, how did we get here? Was it more of an evolution—or a revolution? It was both, really. Social media as we know it today has been around for several years now, but a few events tipped it.

The first social president

In 2004, most Americans hadn’t heard the name “Barack Obama.” Yet within a span of four years the man would become the most powerful person on the planet. In. Four. Years.

How did he do it?

Barack Obama has a gift for soaring oratory; few can deny that. But Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Google Website Optimizer helped take him from eloquent senator to President of the United States. Barack Obama rode the wave of social media from Illinois to Washington.

There was a time in the Democratic presidential primary when Obama wasn’t even factoring in the top three candidates. Slowly but surely he climbed his way into contention with Hillary Clinton, who still maintained a double-digit lead with months to go before the Democratic nomination. Few experts gave Obama a chance. After all, he was a relative unknown up against one of the most well-oiled, well-funded and well-entrenched political machines in generations.

Obama and his team not only caught Clinton but they proceeded to utterly outfox that political machine, and Obama became the Democratic nominee for president.

During his campaign for president, Obama shifted into high gear with social media. While John McCain and Sarah Palin stuck to the tried-and-true tactics of raising money and garnering support—and derided Obama for being a “community organizer”—Obama and his team were getting busy. They were generating millions of views on YouTube; creating a horde of fiercely loyal supporters on Twitter; bursting Facebook at the seams with too many “fans” (Facebook had to re-write code to accommodate it); and using advanced methods like multivariate testing on Google Website Optimizer to hone his website into a money-making juggernaut. In September 2008, within 24 hours of Palin mocking Obama, his campaign reportedly raised $10 million.

Obama won the presidency because he built a colossal campaign fund, and he activated an army of advocates that cut across all segments of society. His theory that digital connections were in fact real ones was right. He put it to the people, and they carried him to victory. Barack Obama’s mastery of public address—and his masterful use of social media—powered him to the presidency.

This is one of the key points in this book: Obama put it to the people, and they carried him to victory. Alone, you can only do so much. Win the hearts of your customers, inspire them to get behind you—and you can make movements.

Mumbai

In November 2008, as gunmen and police engaged in a shocking three-day battle in Mumbai that left more than 100 dead, social media sites were crackling with news, rumors and pictures of the mayhem. Mainstream media outlets fell over themselves trying to catch up with social media’s coverage of the attacks—but Twitter users moved at the “speed of social,” tagging posts with information and commentary on the crisis, transforming a platform normally used to connect with friends into a real-time, human-powered news network.

While the mainstream media was saying, “We’re coming! We’ve got this,” the people were saying, “We’re here. We’re already getting this.” No organization or industry, however powerful or pervasive, can compete with humanity. The new generation of smartphones is transforming people into live print and broadcast media outlets.

That said, with power comes responsibility. The argument that “user-generated news” from untrained citizen journalists is not credible is a valid one. But, we’re still early here—and we’re headed in a new direction. Where it leads remains uncertain, but with each passing day, it favors you.

Kutcher vs. CNN

It was a modern-day David and Goliath. In April 2009, actor Ashton Kutcher posed a simple but historic challenge to CNN: “First to one million Twitter followers wins.”

With its international reach, multiple media outlets and veritable war chest, the smart money was on CNN. Kutcher was one man with a keyboard—and a few influential friends. Moreover, he was behind before the race even began. At the time of the challenge, Kutcher had 896,947 followers. CNN’s breaking news handle had 937,787.

On April 18^th, Kutcher reached one million followers, hours ahead of CNN. His victory was a wake-up call to the world; social media had changed the game. The individual held power and influence the likes of which we had never seen.

“I found it astonishing that one person can actually have as big of a voice online as what an entire media company can on Twitter,” Kutcher reportedly said.

Egypt: Revolution 2.0

“The power of the people is much stronger than the people in power.” —Wael Ghonim, widely-credited as a catalyst of the 2011 Egypt Revolution

The regime was trying to hold back a tsunami with its bare hands.

Egypt is an ancient civilization with a young population. Nearly two-thirds of Egyptians are under 30 years old. After years of oppression, they reached their tipping point.

As the sun rose to warm the day in Cairo on January 25, 2011, an estimated 25,000 people gathered in Tahrir Square. This would become the time and place of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution—one of the most extraordinary in history.

The BBC reported that within five days, 25,000 became 50,000. By February 1^st, the number of protesters had swelled to over one million—peacefully, yet stoically, protesting the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak.

In the nascent stages, Mubarak seemed curious, but cavalier. After all, he’d been in power for nearly 30 years.

His unconcern would be his undoing.

The Egyptian people had been oppressed for three decades, held hostage by a psychological barrier of fear. What Mubarak—and most of the world, for that matter—didn’t grasp was that the playing field had changed. Monumentally. The power balance had shifted. Dramatically.

Mubarak’s regime didn’t understand two key points about social media: 1) That connecting people breaks down the barrier of fear, and 2) That it could move messages and mobilize masses with blinding speed.

Cell phones and email might reach hundreds of people at a time. Twitter and Facebook reach hundreds of thousands. In hours. Those hundreds of thousands can reach millions. In days.

The Egyptian government made the grave miscalculation that they could quell this rebellion just as they had done before. But this time, nothing could contain the Egyptian people. They had the desire for change—and the tools to make it happen.

As 60 Minutes later reported, “Their revolution began not with terrorism and tanks, but with Twitter and texts … an aging autocrat who ruled as a modern pharaoh fell victim to those weapons of the young—out-organized and outmaneuvered by social media, by kids with keyboards.”

A thirty-something Google executive, Wael Ghonim, was an unlikely catalyst of the revolution. In June 2010, police brutally murdered a young Egyptian named Khaled Said, who had uploaded a video to YouTube showing blatant police corruption. Decades of such transgressions built an aura of invincibility among Egyptian police. Once again, they thought they would get away with it. They thought wrong.

Ghonim built a Facebook page titled: “We Are All Khaled Said.” It featured graphic, striking photos of Said’s death and attracted roughly 500,000 members. It struck a chord, and it provided one place for outraged Egyptians to go—to hear and to be heard. It gave them a voice in a society that denied them one. It began to erode the psychological barrier of fear that held them back for so many years.

On February 11, 2011, Mubarak officially stepped down. Imagine that. The dictator who clung to power through scandalous elections, corruption charges—and six attempts on his life—could not withstand the social-driven groundswell that flat-out overwhelmed him. After being in power for almost three decades, he was out…

In 18 days.

While social media did not create the conditions for a revolution, it accelerated it. The fuel was there. Social media merely ignited the fire and fanned the flames for the world to see.

As E.B. Boyd of Fast Company wrote: “Did Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube send people out into the streets? Of course not. Did they speed up the process of protest? Absolutely.”

Boyd further wrote:

There’s been some backlash in the last few days against the idea that either Tunisia or Egypt were brought on by Twitter or a “Facebook Revolution.” And certainly, it takes a lot more than the 21st century version of a communication system to persuade people to take to the streets and risk harm, imprisonment, or death. But that doesn’t mean social media didn’t play a role. It did. Given the magnitude of grievances in each country, revolt would almost certainly have come eventually. But social media simply made it come faster. It did so by playing a role in three main dynamics: Organizing protests … Shaping the narrative … [and] Putting pressure on Washington.

This speaks to a timeless truth of social media: It’s powerful. But, without people and passion, it’s powerless. Social media is not a silver bullet. Social media merely amplifies your message, your business or your cause. It doesn’t create, or save, them.

Social media has become an engine of humanity, jet-fueled by the irrepressible drive we each have for better business—and better lives. With social media, a privileged few no longer control the levers. You do. I do. We all do. That’s what makes it so thrilling.

My parents always told me I could change the world. I always believed it. Now I can do it. Social media makes good on that long-held promise.

Wael Ghonim is case in point.

If social media can embolden enough people, it can trigger a groundswell. If that groundswell gains momentum, it can achieve extraordinary results. This applies to you and your business just as it does to causes and world events.

Some people believe social media is a silly sideshow, the darling of the day, that it will pop like the dot-com bubble. While I concur that social media is frequently over-hyped, there’s a seminal difference here: The dot-com bubble was inflated by commerce and hot air. The social media movement is driven by communication and heart. While today’s titans—Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIN—may be digital dust in two decades (ok, maybe not Facebook), social media as a communication platform will continue changing the world in profound, unforeseeable ways. Social media hasn’t changed one thing. It has changed everything.

One thing is for certain: It’s here to stay. Now, the question is: How can you ride the wave of social media now—so you can reap the rewards later? I’m glad you asked.