Ever heard the term, “one to one, one to many?” Our associate, Barbara Saunders said that last week at a presentation Placemaking Group was giving. Afterwards, we asked her to explain the entire idea it represents and how it relates to Social Media. Here’s what Barbara said…
The gist: One to one: When all we had was the phone and postal mail, our communications were one to one. Email added speed and flexibility to those mediums, but it is most useful for one-to-one communications, or between a very small number of people. This exchange is a good example; you have a question, I have a response, and we can go back and forth. Because people are familiar with email, they use it when it’s not the best tool – like when 10 people collaborate on a document, a manager wants to collect data from 40 employees and put it in a spreadsheet, or 20 people want to pull together a potluck dinner.
One to some and one to many: When you share articles about communications strategies with all of your clients via your blog, that positions you as the primary communicator delivering your message to many others. Even though you might get discussions and commentary going, it’s not a back and forth at the level of each piece you write.
Many to many: Some examples: 1) the user and developer forums set up by some software companies, allowing people who use the product to talk to one another. People from the company might monitor the community, but the purpose is to facilitate interaction among others, 2) social networks like Facebook and file-sharing (“peer-to-peer” networks) like the original Napster, 3) intranets/Wikis when used to enable employees in a company to share information.
Many to one: If a person sets up a blog for complaints about a company, and people start posting there in large numbers demanding some action from the company, the communication has switched direction and become many to one.
Twitter is kind of a wild card! Nobody knows what its best use is, so you can see all of these modes at once. That jargon wasn’t original; I’ve heard it in a few places and don’t know who said it first!
BTW, Barabara write a great social media blog called Entelechy, at http://blog.barbararuthsaunders.com!
