Social Currency

Posted by Rezwan on Apr 21, 2010 at 01:24 PM
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It turns out we’re focusing on the wrong thing.  It’s not about the virus/meme.  It’s not about us using people to spread our fusion ideas.  It’s about people wanting to connect to each other, using ideas as a form of social currency. 

What does this mean?  It means the fusion ideas are only worthwhile if they add value to people’s family, friendships, work and love lives. 

Not the results, mind you.  The exchange of the ideas themselves.

Simple, really.

Our purpose is to help bring people together.  Social fusion.  Social currency.  If fusion (plasma electromagnetic currency!) gets advocated along the way - so be it.

We’re not just trying to promote fusion technology, we’re creating the means for improved social fusion.  Bringing people together. 

Puts your head in a whole different space.

Douglass Rushkoff in his book Get Back in the Box:  Innovation from the inside out explains it this way:

Networks are great, but until we can move through them ourselves, we’ll need proxies in the form of ideas, images, words, and other constructs that can be exchanged through our wires and screens.  Even in the real, physical world, our engagements with one another are almost always predicated on something else.  A party starts with a few good jokes to break the ice.  “Invite Sam,” we remind ourselves, “he tells good jokes.”

What is this about the joke?  Jokes are viral memes.  Or, as Rushkoff puts it,

This is because the joke is a gift – it is a form of social currency that you’ll be able to take with you to the next party. 

…the “water cooler” effect…

Not only did it recognize our desire for connection with other people – especially at work – but it recognized our awareness that accumulating social curency was the surest route toward achieving these connections.

Regarding “Viral Marketing”

…But they’ve got the horse and the cart reversed.  People don’t exchange with each other in order to exchange viruses; people exchange viruses as an excuse to engage with each other.  Media viruses, and their massive promotional capability, are all dependent on the newfound collective spirit of our age and the increasing need for social currency that has resullted.  It’s not about convincing a few key individuals to sell products; it’s about creating products that provide everyone the currency they need to forge new social connections.  Sure, if we analyze the movement of an idea across the community, we’ll be able, retroactively, to determine which individuals gave it the most word of mouth. 

If we want to understand or even replicate this effect, however, we must instead learn to see people not as individuals looking for power or social status, but as parts of a group looking for cohesion.  Media viruses were made possible by the emergence of a networked mediaspace.  They are an emergent phenomenon – a life-form, of sorts, native to this new interactive landscape.  Viruses exploit what we have in common, and, when we have little in common, help to create shared experience.  The best products and brands in this environment do not serve to help people stand out; they have much more to do with helping people fit in.

That’s why, in spite of growing fears that we are living in a materialistic society, social currency almost always wins out over pure ownership as a motivator for buying.  Long gone are the Howard Hugheses, who own massive collections of cars or artworks that never see the light of day.  For the majority of consumers, their cars, electronics and even their sneakers are ways of communicating to and connecting with other people.

With that in mind, the Focus Fusion Society strategy will be built around coming up with activities and events that, above all, give people an excuse to be together and do things together.

Right now, “fusion social currency” isn’t doing too well on the social currency exchange.  Some phrases I’ve heard are “oversold” and “boring”.  A lot of food for thought here as we bring our currency on par with… well, make it something you can bank on.