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The Evolution of Social Media
Some people look at social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and see incoherent torrents of information, impossible to follow and frequently of no value. And as the numbers of people signing on to those services grows, the torrent gets bigger and the impossibility of following it becomes even more apparent. Like trying to get a sip of water while standing under Niagara Falls.
And because neither Twitter nor Facebook nor LinkedIn has an obvious business model, it is tempting to dismiss them as passing fads.
But people on the outside are beginning to see it differently. Yes, these are vast streams of information and getting vaster by the second. And no one really knows how these services are going to make money. But clever people are beginning to tap into these rivers of news and information to try and make sense of them--to help users navigate their way through the rapids.
Here are some examples of third party sites which are tapping into Twitter to create new services for the legal world or creating social media sites of their own. (I'm sure there are similar sites for the commercial real estate and interactive marketing worlds--if you know of them, please share). I believe that these are the future competitors for traditional b2b publishers like us--we need to watch them carefully and start up our own tests.
The first of these that I became aware of was Kevin O'Keefe's LexTweet (www.lextweet.com). Kevin, a blogger who runs an agency which helps lawyers put up their own blogs, organized a site which captures only the Twitter postings of lawyers. To date he claims over 2,000 lawyers have signed up to join the site--turning the Niagara Falls into a slightly more navigable Hudson River.
A second site to watch is Justia's Legal Birds site (http://legalbirds.justia.com/). This also creates a directory of lawyers on Twitter, but importantly provides tools to sort that list into more manageable chunks. Note in the middle of the page the breakdown by practice area. I think there's a lot of power in that--the ability to follow those who may have something to say about your particular practice focus. And a way to create a nice little community around sharing thoughts/ideas about cases, issues and whatever else may interest that particular practice group.
At this point, neither of the above has what we would call an obvious business model. But I think that's besides the point. They are demonstrating a way to use social networking streams of information to create more useful sites. It is not a big step from there to selling adjacent ads or promoting relevant conferences, books, etc. And if these kinds of sites only compete with us for the time lawyers devote to gathering information--well, that could still be threatening to us.
Another newly announced initiative to watch is Kevin O'Keefe's LexConference (www.lexconference.com). As I understand it, Kevin intends to dispatch reporters to major legal conferences and live Twitter and blog so those not there will know what happened. Those reporters will also be armed with video cameras, so they can post interviews and the like on the site. Part of me thinks this could be great promotion for our events. Part of me worries that people will decide they don't have to attend, since they can follow the conference agenda via LexConference. And part of me wonders why we're not doing something like this on our own.
Not all the action is around Twitter. Check out the LawLink Social Network (http://www.lawlink.com/). They've just launched an area just for Expert Witnesses. Again, I don't know what the business model for this is and at this point I don't care. But creating tools for lawyers and experts to network with one another might be competitive with the more traditional directory model which we've pursued for many years. Again, we need to keep an eye on it.
Similarly, both LinkedIn and Martindale Hubbell are pushing to create networking groups. LinkedIn has over 800 groups just for lawyers. The largest of those is called the "Happy Lawyers" group (I'm not kidding). It has over 2,000 members trading information about law practice.
And, finally, there are rumors of various parties preparing to live twitter and blog from inside courtrooms. I'm not sure how that will work, and whether those reporters will face the same "cameras in the courtroom" restrictions that others have faced. But live updates of big trials or appellate hearings could attract an audience of lawyers (and others) interested in the proceedings. We've done this on occasion as well, (including the Bernie Madoff hearing in NY and the Gay Marriage dispute in San Francisco). We need to watch if others gear up to do this on a more regular basis.
A reporter at one of our newspapers asked me if we were doing enough to combat Google and the threat it poses to newspapers and publishers generally. To tell you the truth, I'm not that worried about Google right now. Much of our content is behind a pay wall where Google can't see it. And for the content outside the pay wall, I'm happy to have Google send us traffic.
But the social networks terrify me. Not because of the torrents of information they represent, or because they have developed killer business models. But because they compete with us for the time and attention of our readers and advertisers. And for that reason alone, I think we need to gear up to fight back.
Bill,
If this is the future, we need to get into this nascent space now and figure things out as we go. Our brands give us a temporary competitive advantage in audience-building.
At the same time, people use facebook and other social sites to share articles from the NYTimes and other publications with friends. I realize that most of our content cannot be shared since it is "locked," but it is one way in which social networks actually draw readers' attention toward, rather than from, papers.
This relatively new twitter account seems another example of what you're talking about.
http://twitter.com/OneSpot_Law
The use of the term "curate" suggests a discussion about the role of editors in a world where the content is not constrained by the distribution medium.
Don't be terrified Bill! :-)
You raise a valid point - the social networks can be competition for us - but I say, “if you can't beat em, join em.”
Over the past month, I've been joining many of the legal themed groups on LinkedIn and posting law.com articles on the pages as a means of driving traffic. I've joined groups with several different themes including legal technology, in-house counsel, IP law, and more general groups like "Happy Lawyers".
I've had success with posting articles to these group pages - not only have the articles gotten page views, but have also sparked many comments and discussions amongst the group members. This is great, because it only takes a few minutes out of my day to post a few articles to LinkedIn group pages (their template makes it really simple), and the result is legal professionals viewing and discussing our content. I know that the group members are seeing this content because not only are the articles displayed on the group overview page, but also emailed to all members in a daily or weekly email.
A few things I try to keep in mind when trying to engage users on LinkedIn, or any other social network, is that it is important to get the users to trust us. The first rule of social networking is to keep it social, so its supposed to be about friends and colleagues and conversation first. A few of the groups I joined are strictly for lawyers, but once I wrote the administrator and explained that I worked for Incisive and wanted to post relevant articles to their group, they allowed me to become a member. Because I’ve been posting content they’ve found relevant, several of the group administrators have reached out to connect with me on LinkedIn. The idea here is not to go directly for the sales “kill”, but to begin by reaching out in friendship, in association through similar interests, and building connections, one by one. By beginning with individual connection, we can turn social networking users into valuable future leads.