This is the start of a much larger professional piece… I just want to get this stuff down.
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I am buried in thought about what social media equity is, how much the micro level activities actually mean in the general scheme of things in social media – and the fact is that brands are memetic and the minor players are simply vessels for the autonomous information that is a brand, product, or idea…. which has a lifespan, at time for the best of them, 10x that of a human. However, singular people brands, like bloggers or “intellectual thought leaders”, etc, within the context of the modern infrastructure, they don’t really matter at all… if you remove one completely it doesn’t have any real impact or effect in the overall outcome within the network. This information will be processed in another way. The pool of knowledge will still be filled with or without single brands. But the overall macro level interactions, the incredible map of data of networks and information… that is unbelievable, and what this is all about. You are watching the migratory patterns of a consumer animal, and you will be able to make life easier for both them and yourselves. I can’t wait until Network Science can better conceptualize exactly what a network hub is with a quantified understanding of how they exist and where to find them.
I get brand talk, I get the cynicism that drives the concept that we are all brand “me” and what not…. I get it. It might be real insofar as we don’t have a better way to relate to the complexity of creating human interaction and communication into a hard science.
But a personal brand is finite, a corp/product/service brand is infinite. I am not sure I see the connection. Humans expire in many ways… whether mortal or through time…. being washed away like the tides eroding rock. Chopin said, “time is the best censor”. Tis true.
The most powerful human brand in our society will fall into obscurity within a few generations. It isn’t often people bandy the name Rockefeller about. Gates, Buffet – the most powerful men in the world will be vague notions in 60 years. Who was the 19th president of the US?
But the company? The product? The name…. that brand is ubiquitous and eternal. It scares me sometimes…. that my name won’t outlive a knock knock joke I told my niece. The power of a meme can be really humbling in context of our ego.