Bill Snyder [A Life Beyond Traditional Media]

#Dear Netflix: This is so 2006!

It’s old news now. Netflix is changing its pricing structure. Well, it’s raising prices. OK, “raising" wasn’t actually the word used.

This was announced on July 12, more than two weeks ago. So, why am I writing about this now? Because Netflix is a great example of how to use social media to damage your own brand.

Let me start with the email sent out on July 12: Netflix announced that it would be “separating [its] unlimited streaming plan from [its] DVD plan offerings." In other words, it wasn’t a price increase; you just had to ... ummm ... pay more money for the same service.

Wouldn’t you know it, people were pissed. And its not Netflix’s first price hike of the year.

Let me use my subscription as an illustration. I have the Three DVD and Unlimited Streaming plan. Back in January (yes, 2011), my rates went from $16.99 to $19.99. OK. Three dollars. Prices go up.

Then, a few months later, the email comes:

Your current $19.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

• Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
• Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 3 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $15.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $23.98 a month ($7.99 + $15.99).

$16.99 to $23.98 in less seven months, that’s a 41% — lets call it what it is — price increase.

In addition to announcing this by email, it did the same on its Facebook page, with no effort to explain the reasoning behind the change. People were pissed. Go figure.

On July 12, angry posts were coming in faster than I could count, and over on Twitter, “Dear Netflix" was trending (and those weren’t love tweets). As I write, the Facebook post has received 81,187 angry responses to the announcement.

Disruptive Technology and the Speed of Nostalgia

Since October 2007, [A Life Beyond Traditional Media] has been cryogenically frozen — like this writer, not dead but barely breathing. My apologies to anyone who missed it, even if you’ve given up and aren’t reading. Running a start-up in New York City has been all consuming, and this blog was a casualty. It’s with renewed commitment that I announce my … um … return, and promise to post regularly, though perhaps not frequently.

I miss the old Twitter. The Twitter without brands, celebrities, and hashtags. The Twitter where using @ before someone name was simply our way of identifying to whom we were talking while saving one of our precious 140 characters. (Yes, young'uns, Twitter stole @user from its users.) I miss the Twitter where a couple of dozen of my friends were following each other and had real conversations.

“What is Twitter?” may be the most dreaded of all social media questions. (Really, just use it and it will start to make sense.) Back in 2007, I described it as the digital equivalent of a café — sort of an IM where others are free to listen. You may be talking with two or three people, but you never know when a stranger at the “next table” will join in. Or, you may see a friend talking @ someone you don’t know, so you follow that person just to hear the other half of the conversation.

This doesn’t describe Twitter 2010, and I miss it because many of those strangers became my friends. Now, when even the most mundane tweeters have hundreds of followers, there’s less conversation and more broadcasting (or perhaps “microcasting” would be a better word).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting we roll back the clock. I’m not like those Facebook users demanding the return of the “Old Facebook” (whichever version of Facebook that user considered the old one). Twitter has evolved and there is no return, but it has shown me a side of disruptive technology I’d never thought about — how it affects my normal cycle of nostalgia.

Has Social Media Changed Your Social Demographics?

These are ideas that sort of wandered through my brain while I was drinking a café miel last weekend. Any resemblance between these ideas and any marketing research is based on nothing more than luck and, perhaps, educated conjecture.

I'm curious. How has social media changed our social demographics? Do you find yourself connecting with people who are more like you in ideas, but are less like you in age, race, culture, gender, sexual orientation, income, and all the other things people use to size each other up?

Traditionally, people tend to "hang" and share interests with those who are outwardly similar to them. In a sense, that's the reason that a marketing effort targets a certain group. Social groups are generally not as interracial, multicultural, or intergenerational, as we like to pretend they are. Even non-romantic socializing between men and women has only become common over the last few decades — especially married people having single friends of the (oh, I hate this phrase) "opposite sex."

Before I get off any farther in my social critique, I'll get back to social media. Though I tend to be a person who has a fairly diverse analog social network, by default, I am more likely to meet people similar in age and skin color. Digitally speaking, though, it's a different game. Through social blogging and Twitter, I put out ideas and read other people's ideas. I find myself engaging in an exchange of thoughts and feelings before exchanging knowledge of skin color, gender, or age.

This is pretty significant. My online network includes people young enough to be my kids and people significantly older than me (though, granted, not many my parents' age). I hear from my friends' teenage kids on Vox and Facebook. I trade thoughts, respectfully, with Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, agnostics, and atheists. They're all there: male, female, black, white, Asian, living in this country, immigrated to this country, living in other countries.

A Preemptive Strike: Death to Web 3.0 (and 2.0 while we're at it)

Bloggers, pundits, and industry analysts have been earnestly debating the question for a while: What will Web 3.0 be? Of course, they have their critics, those who call the term a lot of hype. Unfortunately, their critics need to get harsher. Web 3.0 is worse than a meaningless buzzword; its use is bad for communication, bad for the interactive field, and simply stupid.

I should put my cards on the table: I'm a communications guy, and interactive is my medium of choice. In other words, I can geek out like the best of you, but my concern isn't the technologies themselves but the ways people use them. My best work pairs me with someone who loves the technology and wants it to communicate. My friend Nate is like that. This is a guy who can write JavaScript (or XHTML, Flex, Java, PHP, CFM, and so on) the same way a native Frenchman uses his language to seduce an American tourist. Fortunately for Nate's wife, few women have undressed under the influence of JavaScript. But my point here isn't seduction; simply that I'm the communications part of the equation and quite aware that the other parts of the equation must be in place for everything to work.

Today, everyone is obsessed with Web 2.0. Yes, if you work in "the field," you may say the term is falling out of use. If you take a walk outside of the industry, however, it's actually gathering steam. Organizations are asking to Web 2.0-ify their sites — not quite knowing what they're asking for, but well aware that everyone else is doing it.

As someone who has to communicate with nontech people, I'm tired of explaining that Web 2.0 doesn't require a special browser. I'm tired of explaining it's not a thing but a concept … well, a bunch of concepts, even though people don't always agree about which concepts are included in the bunch.

The Media Makes the Message

Between 1990 and 1995, I wrote an hour-long monologue. Of course, I didn't spend the entire five years writing. It just took five years to gather the material. The first words came to me in a laundromat and were scribbled on the back of a brochure. I had no idea that I was writing a monologue or, for that matter, anything other than an idea.

The process continued in that manner. I wrote in journals and on scraps of paper whenever something struck me. Then I'd sit down and type up the scraps. If the words felt like they belonged, I'd look through the evolving script — though I didn't know for a few years that it was a script — to see where it fit in. The chronology of the writing had nothing to do with chronology of the script.

As pieces emerged, I emailed them off to my college roommate, Tom. I was in Minneapolis and he was in Boston. As he wrote back in response to my thoughts, our emails worked their way into the script. When it was finally finished, I was amazed that it made sense. Not because I didn't trust my writing skills, but because I never intended to write a script. Once things started to fit together, I applied craft to make it work, but the creation itself lacked intent.

This was the perfect way for me to create. I had honed my writing style while I was in college. By that time, a Mac had replaced my typewriter. I developed my writing style by letting words gush onto the screen and then cutting and pasting. It was as much about rhythm as it was content. "If I shift that over there, and move this here, and change that word, and cut that phrase, well it just feels right."

I am a digital writer. Yes, I keep a journal, and I start short poems on paper. But I write by shifting fragments around, and that style, my style, shows the impact of the tools I used to develop it.