The next two posts are going to outline what it takes IMO to get a successful social media campaign started so that it can keep going on its own.

The list is based on three pieces of literature and I’d like to tell you a little bit about so we can establish some context:

The first is the article from Alternet, The Growth of Talking Points Memo: A Case Study in Independent Media, which has gone from teeny-weeny personal blog to independent media empire (which is what every well run blog really is). The article is an in depth case study of how technology & journalism can work well together. We can dabble about the semantics of “journalism” later.

The second is a list of Dos & Don’ts for building software productively from NASA’s Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL). I first came across the list in Steve McConnell’s Software Project Survival Guide, which has an excellent summary of the whole list. The next two posts were inspired by, and lean heavily on this list.

In short, the SEL list lays out the foundation for building sound software. And it works well: it increased the quality of their software 10 to 20 times at the same time it allowed SEL teams maintain comparable productivity levels.

Not only is software one half of the social media landscape, it is also the platform where online relationships are built on. It’s not too difficult to see how faulty software can affect the quality of the relationships (think Facebook vs. Myspace).

The third is Seth Godin’s best book yet, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. It’s hard to describe & communicate the potential of the Internet + people & the good ideas they keep coming up with. At it it’s most basic, this is what social media does and Godin puts it all into perspective in this book.

The main ideas in the book that have to do with the following posts are:

• Movements: the only way viable way to turn customers into fans is to start a movement. The fire of revolution dies, people get tired of causes, but movements are a head thing and it’s hard to throw those away. Just ask any Obama fan (better yet, ask a Bush fan and if you are that Bush fan, please let me know).
• Platforms: Movements need a platform, a place to call home. TPM, Google and Apple (to some extent) are places like that. These days, the Internet has the platform part covered so virtually anyone can start their own movement or ind one that fits into the context of their lives.

Admittedly, not much of it is new: the same people that are online are the same people you run into at the coffee shop or at home so the basic rules still apply. The Internet is just another context for these relationships.

It seems like “Google it” has now become the de facto answer to any question with an unclear answer (is it strange that a man-made machine will provide a plethora of options to answer most questions?).

When the Internet became widely available a little over a decade ago, I doubt anyone had the slightest idea how revolutionary this thing would be. Obviously, that’s a different story now: in today’s world, it would be foolish to deny that this “series of tubes” (techno remix here) has had a significant effect on the way we think and live.

In fact, that last sentence is probably the understatement of the year. The Internet has so revolutionized the developed world that there are very few parts of our lives untouched by this force majeure.

The news reader no longer has to wait until morning to read the news, or wade through mind-numbing commercials to get the jist of the situation on CNN. Instead, the news is available to anyone who wants it, anytime and anywhere. All available in a dizzying number of customizable formats: email, text message, RSS reader, and the list goes on.  And not just read the news! They can share it with friends through email, recommend it to total strangers on StumbleUpon or reddit, and discuss it with a healthy vigor (Google even lets you make your case if you’re the subject of an article and there’s more on the topic in this NPR podcast).

Traditional media now has some very, very stiff competition. The behemoths are slowly catching on, lest the Internet leaves them in it’s dust. To be fair, there are exceptions to this. One of my favorites is the BBC, who have always provided excellent content for as long as I can remember, and continue to do so even today.

This radical shift is by no means limited to just the news: almost any topic you can think of will do. The accessibility of the the Internet now means music like Mongolian folk rock (video) is just as readily available as Paul Simon (an even better example might be Finnish band, the Leningrad Cowboy’s performance of Sweet Home Alabama, with the official Soviet Red Army Choir. I’m not kidding). It’s an open secret that the Internet is not so slowly eating up music labels profits (IMO, Janis Ians The Internet Debacle is still a classic on the topic).

The list goes on and on:

Wikipedia has made knowledge sexy again. In what other world can you carry a whole encyclopedia in your back pocket?

Traffic is getting more difficult to battle, and work sites are more expensive (and many other reasons), more people are beginning to working from home. Businesses are also finding that this is more productive (and cheaper), and so more are allowing their staff “telecommute“. Some have never even met their colleagues, even though they work together regularly.

Shopping too has become a lot easier (a slight understatement, I admit). From groceries to books, to shoes, and just about anything you can think of.

The Internet has also managed to destabilize the traditional balance of power of society by allowing everyone to participate. By bringing lots of small voices together, the little man is now making enough noise to make a difference. American politics (with Howard Dean, Ron Paul, and more successfully, Barack Obama) is a perfect example of this. Governments who have tried to control the volume can attest to the difficulty of doing this (Egypt had this experience a few years ago, and more recently is China’s experience with Tibet).

The Internet revolution is here to stay. Will you be a part of it, or would you rather be left behind?