Organizing social media: an oxymoron?

Petroff, M. (2011) Social media strategy and business organizational structure .eduGuru, January 31

Thanks to Academic Impressions for directing me to this interesting, short post that suggests three different ways of organizing social media, depending on your organization’s structure/culture.

I’d be interested if anyone has looked at their own organization’s use of social media in this way in the educational world.

I find a certain lack of logic in trying to ‘organize’ social media; surely part of its value or appeal is its unpredictability. It seems to me a bit like quantum physics: if you examine or try to control it too closely, it becomes something else.

What is possible is to ‘ride the tiger’ to a certain extent, by integrating some of the ideas of social media into online learning, but then it’s not really social media, just a way to develop informal learning within a formal context – which doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time. For me, the really interesting use of social media is when learning occurs spontaneously, without any attempt to ‘organize’ it.

(OK, Tony, enough – put the wine away).