ResearchGoddess

These spotlights are opportunities for you to get to know some individuals who were recommended to me for the article I recently wrote for Mashable, 4 Essential Traits for Social Media Success in Your Career. The purpose of my project, detailed here, is to profile some social media professionals to keep an eye on in the coming year.

Spotlight:

What Brian had to say about Venessa: “Venessa is a philosopher and a futurist, exploring the advanced art and science of human connections and conversations and bringing observations and revelations from the edge to the center. ”

Venessa earned a BA in Psychology from Miami University of Ohio, and currently she is pursuing an MA in Media Studies through the New School, a progressive university located in NYC. Back in 2006, a friend asked if she wanted to be involved in a social media start-up company he was planning to launch. At the time Venessa had never even heard the phrase “social media” before, but was eager to explore a new direction. She spent the next year just learning the basics of how technological developments were affecting the way we communicate and understand the world. Since then, she hasn’t been able to stop. Each new evolution of the social web is allowing unexpected behaviors to emerge that are challenging the norms of how our society operates. Venessa believes it’s only going to get more disruptive as time goes by.

What interests Venessa about social media: How we can better access and use information, and how we might leverage the power of social networks. Unfortunately, the internet is rife with marketing and spam, and the noise is growing exponentially. Venessa believes we need systems that will help us quickly cut through the crap to get to the credible, quality content. Then we need to know what to do with the information. She has been experimenting a lot on Twitter and is finding that by building a network of knowledgeable people in her interest area, she is being exposed to information and ideas that she wouldn’t have been able to find from a quick Google search. As a result, there’s a really interesting informal learning process that’s being recognized there. Venessa has noticed a lot of people taking advantage of it in order to stay on top of what’s going on in their industries and to exchange ideas with peers around the world. She believes it’s going to become clear that businesses that aren’t integrating social media into the culture of their organization are going to be at a disadvantage against the competition. And not just because it isolates them from the opportunity to interact with their customers, but also because they’re going to have a less educated workforce.

With that in mind, she also thinks there’s a tremendous opportunity now for people to do things on a scale that has just never been possible before, from facilitating innovation in businesses to sparking movements that will lead to true social change. She had the opportunity to share some thoughts on this recently on Nokia’s IdeasProject website.

Where Venessa sees social media going in the future: Venessa says, “It’s easy to get caught up in the tools themselves and forget about what it is that the tools enable. Social media is just a means of communication. People are interested in sharing knowledge and information, in making life easier, and in having fun and being happy.” She thinks we will see some of the following stem from these interests:

• The mobile phone will play an increasingly important role as the medium for connecting online because of its portability and reduced cost in comparison to purchasing a desktop computer.  We’ll also see more tools emerge that will enhance the mobile experience, from augmented reality apps like Layar to portable credit card payment systems like Square to location-based services.
• We begin to embrace a new oral culture. Venessa thinks social media has established a new type of communication, and businesses and individuals are still figuring out how to use it effectively. But people have always enjoyed a narrative, so we’ll begin to see approaches to business that move more along the lines of storytelling and visualization. It’s not enough to sell a product or service anymore. People want to see messages that are visually appealing and understandable, like infographics, and they want ideas packaged into stories, whose foundations are built on values instead of material things.
• Tools will be built that make tasks feel more like fun and games. There’s a site called thefuntheory.com that has some really neat videos embracing this concept. Same with Foursquare – why would you want to constantly be updating your location for anyone to see? Because you can earn badges and become Mayor of the local cafe, of course! Whether for educational purposes or on the job, Venessa believes that there are going to be interesting social media tools developed that give us incentives to complete tasks because they feel more like games than work.
• Better tools for search. As mentioned earlier, information streams are already polluted with noise, and there isn’t enough time or attention to be given to filtering it. Tools will be developed that do a better job of catching spam and enabling us to find the kind of content we want.

Connect with Venessa on:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Blog