In 1996, Clifford Stoll wrote a popular book entitled "Silicon Snake Oil: Second Thoughts on the Information Highway." It was well received because it was contrarian, made us second-guess our assumptions about computers, and contained a warning for those looking to benefit from this new thing called the internet. In retrospect, Stoll was dead wrong. He suggested the internet would never be good for commerce; that people would always prefer playing card games face to face; and that the acoustics of a working typewriter were in many ways superior to a keyboard and word processing program.
A similar argument is raging in the blogosphere, and has been for some time. The latest installment is from the ABA Journal: "Social Media or Snake Oil: Does Social Media Measure Up to the Hype?" My friends at Great Jakes Marketing Co. noticed a similar trend in their article, "Brace yourself for the backlash against social media marketing." Why does it seem this topic keeps resurfacing?
Contrarian views are always popular because they make the Luddites feel safe. But the people making decisions at your firm need to take care not to dismiss social media based on a reliance on the old ways, or they may be setting themselves up for failure. It was this kind of thinking that almost put the Eastman Kodak Co. out of business when digital cameras came out. This same backwards thinking has led to the failure of countless businesses, as documented in Clayton Christensen's book, "The Innovator's Dilemma." Time and again, businesses fail when they refuse to recognize the importance of disruptive innovation. Clifford Stoll made that mistake in his book, and now many law firms are falling into the same trap over social media.
To Continue Reading: Click Here
---------------------------------------------
Source: law.com
By: Adrian Dayton
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment