First up, our dynamic duo – Sami Häkkinen and Panu Ervamaa – took the stage to share their insights on how social should and will be integrated into web services in the future. Going through the history of web services, all the way from the first lines of code to the current state of web 2.0 moving towards something even bigger, the web and its creation have always been social.
Technology per se has been a medium of contacting one another ever since its inception, and today we can even build the web collaboratively through GitHub, for example. Sure, web 2.0 has given a nice lift to the word “social” and the way people use the internet has clearly changed, but in reality the integration of social to the services we offer to our users is surprisingly shallow. There’s a huge gap between social integration in our lives and in the offered services.
Integration of social to services is surprisingly shallow.
What does this mean, then? To put it simply, people know how to use social web and are keen to do it, but in the mean time the same people are afraid of the social monster when it’s a brand they need to represent. We all know how to tweet or use hashtags, but who can offer actual services that take this behaviour into consideration?
Next, after the insightful presentation from Sami and Panu, it was time to welcome our keynote speaker to the stage. Arman Alizad, one of the most popular media personalities in Finland (if you don’t know who he is, we suggest visiting a site called Google). The guy went from being a fashionista tailor to being an adventurer, a survivor and a social media brand.
A combined media following of 200,000 people speaks for a great social media strategy, of course, but as Arman said himself, it’s his own personality and courage of doing his own thing that has made him so popular. Being banned from Facebook several times, and closing all other channels to slowly learn how to use Twitter, Arman has really earned his followers by ruffling some feathers.
Bowing down or apologizing is not the way to go.
The main message is: bowing down or apologizing is not the way to go. Even though it’s obviously important to understand the difference between organisational and personal communication, social media should be seen as a fun platform, not a stiff corporate network. Courage and balls are what companies should find in order to eliminate stressing about it too much. If something goes too far over the line, you’ll know what it is and you’ll learn from it – that’s the point of social conversation. As Arman pointed out, “when failure becomes your motivation to try again, you’re on the right track.”
All in all, what an inspiring morning! To put it all in a nutshell, we could all afford to be a bit more reckless and dare to take it easy – it’s better to show some emotion in our communication and leave wariness to diplomats. We already know how to use social media in our personal lives, now it’s time to see what possibilities social integration can bring to the business world.
A massive thank you to everyone who joined us for this spring’s Future Day. If you have any feedback, go to Twitter and use the FFD14 hashtag.
