I sat down several times today to write my digest of the social media space, and I felt a little uninspired by the flow of news items. Sure, we had a few launches, like Facebook’s Friendfeed-esque “like” feature and Flickr adding nearby images, but nothing inspired me so much as a single and simple post from Matt Dickman on listening.
Listen has become the new “join the conversation” in the social media world. I find it funny and appropriate that the more subtle and passive direction came after the active one, but maybe 2009 is all about taking a step back. Obviously many thought listening was implied when they recommended brands to “join the conversation”, and it wasn’t until we got our hands dirty that we realized how hard it really is to listen (and don’t even think about joining without listening, we all know how that turns out).
And why is listening so hard? Well, because machines can’t do it for us:

“Data alone without human filtering is useless.”

Besides what I do for my clients and their communities, I find myself sitting here at the end of every week… a human trying to filter through the social data and look for patterns to digest for my readers. But I want to do a better job of listening to the people that read this blog, whether once or regularly. Tell me:
What makes a blog a community you want to return to? To comment on? What could we be doing better to give you the insight you are looking for?
Marta Strickland
Editor at ThreeMinds