My Interest in Social Media

My passion and motivation for exploring social media and its use in business came as I was thinking about the primary ways in which we advertise: Typically, through a paid, planned interruption. Whether it occurs on TV, a magazine blow-in card, through a phone call at dinner, or a pop-up demanding my immediate attention (to close it, if nothing else) as marketers we've gotten in the habit of interrupting people as a way to get our message across.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with an interruption per se, especially in a medium where the interruption is expected. Most of us understand, for example, that TV is free because an advertiser has paid for it. Same with most of the content we consume on the web.

At the same time, however, I started to think about some of the early Forrester and Intelliseek research that suggested viewers were starting to push back hard on interruptive advertising. And as they did, advertisers sought increasingly clever ways--e.g., the pop-under--to ensure that their message got through. It occurred to me that in a protracted battle like this, there'd be no winners. Put simply, If I have to interrupt you, how receptive are you really to my message? As a marketer, that's fatal.

Kids are funny in the way they change you: as a new parent at the time, I started thinking about the world I wanted my kids to grow up in. That's when it hit me: "A world without interruption." As marketers, let's find a new way to participate with customers instead of talking at customers. I started looking at advergames and similar forms of participative advertising, and this led me to what would later be called "social media."

What's your story? How did do you come to be reading this and to be interested in what social media and the larger Social Web can do for you?