Nonetheless, your comment merely begs the question whether ALL the rules are the same for social media (online) as they are for cocktail party-like social interaction (offline). I pointed out that the legal rules are different (all laws are rules) and in the non-legal context, stand by my earlier comment:

“For example, if I have a conversation with a close friend(s)at a cocktail party, we can exchange confidences and very personal information. You would not do this on social media, even with your close friend, because of amplitude and permanence. Social media is not an intimate medium and I think we can agree that what the rules permit in an intimate context are not the same on a public street corner. Different context, different rules.”

BTW, my name is Joe, not Jeff.

The key thing may not even be the whole “amplitude & permanence” deal — as important as those are. The key thing, in my mind anyhow, is that social media is media. I disagreed with Ari Herzog on this point, and I haven’t seen anything to change my mind.

FaceBook is media just like the New York Times is. YouTube is media just like NBC or CNN. Twitter is media in much the same way that a Reuters feed of stock prices is media.

So I see a lot of symbiosis between PR and social media, with each transforming the other. Best PR practices now are about authenticity, personality, and no-bullshit; and best social media practices are aware of the fact that what you are putting out to the Web is public relations or communications of sorts.

It’s almost like asking yourself, “If I were on a reality TV show, how would I act? What is private, and what is not? What does the viewer not get to see, and what does she get to see?”

It’s a tough question, and a tough line to draw.

-rsh

For example, if I have a conversation with a close friend(s)at a cocktail party, we can exchange confidences and very personal information. You would not do this on social media, even with your close friend, because of amplitude and permanence. Social media is not an intimate medium and I think we can agree that what the rules permit in an intimate context are not the same on a public street corner. Different context, different rules.

I had this buddy that lived in a Frat house near the UT campus, last I heard they still have pictures on the wall…

But that’s really neither here nor there. Joe makes some great points. I’ve often used the “cocktail party” analogy, and while there are some similarities, what Joe points out is REALLY important. And it’s something I’ll remember in both my talks on social media/networking and in how I go about it myself.

But I want to dispel the popular notion that social media is like a cocktail party. There are 2 big differences between offline and online interaction– amplitude and permanence. I shall pontificate, at your leave (huh?).

At an IRL cocktail party, we cozy up to someone (or a small group) and start sharing. As we connect with THAT person or group, we open up more of ourselves. But there is not a microphone broadcasting our conversation to everyone else at the party, as well as those outside the party, thanks to Google. And even if there were eavesdroppers at the party, they are few– those eavesdropping on social media/Google number in the potential millions. That ability to amplify is one distinguishing feature of social media. That is unlike any cocktail party I’ve ever attended. (Although at the Crazy Country Club in Brooklyn, they used to have microphones in the bathrooms, but that’s another story.)

Also, the IRL cocktail party is transitory, it ends, and conversations vanish, like words writ on water. There is no permanent cocktail party record– only a memory. And memories fade– most folks will forget you danced naked on the bar to Super Freak in a drunken haze. Social media, on the other butt cheek, makes permanent your conversations, etching them in Google’s cached memory. That twitpic of your booty on the bar will be there in Google perpetuity. Again, I don’t recall a cocktail party where pictures of your past indiscretions are kept on the wall.