Searching for Social Media's Holy Grail

In the Times coverage of Myspace Impact Pages for political candidates, I was struck by the following paragraph:
Some observers believe that such efforts by MySpace and other social networking sites might make them influential among voters in 2008. Or, in tech language, such sites aspire to be the killer aps of this election cycle, reminiscent of what talk radio (particularly Rush Limbaugh) was in 1994, when it whipped up enthusiasm for the Republican landslide in the midterm elections, or what MoveOn.org was in 2004 when it emerged as a potent force to raise funds and drum up volunteers for the Democratic Party. In essence, we're searching for the holy grail of social media. That is, the race in presidential social media is to establish a singular "place", one in which vast swaths of voters can be reached easily and effectively. Obviously, the major vendors like Myspace, Youtube and Facebook would love to be this place - it would be a huge traffic and reputation boon, and no founder of a large consumer-oriented property is going to turn down the chance to play a strategic part in the picking of our president.

The only problem with this holy grail approach is that it, well, feels like it is from 2004, or 2000. Put a little more simply, it doesn't reflect the distributed and open nature of social media. Then again, we all know the challenges of distributed social media - what candidate really wants to (and can effectively) maintain identities in every social property? You can almost hear the campaign internet managers and consultants wishing that all of us would just go ahead and choose a singular vehicle to get messages in the 2008 cycle. If we all decided that Myspace was the place, well that would make everyone's jobs all that much easier.

Of course, this isn't going to happen. If social media has done anything, it has factionalized the audience. Where do I go to find Obama events? Should I go to Barack Obama's website, Eventful or Upcoming? What about video? or social networking? I think you get the picture. Mix in the fact that campaign-generated and user-generated content are generally on the same hierarchical level in these services, what is a social media consumer to do?

The holy grail of social media isn't campaigns throwing their hands in the air and hoping that everyone decides that Myspace (or Facebook, or Youtube) is the singular place to experience candidates. No, that would be too easy. The holy grail (or "social grail", as I just Freudian-mistyped) is actually developing a strategy that leverages the best qualities of social media sites and uses them as effective engagement vehicles. Part of this means ceding control to supporters, which may feel like a dangerous proposition but is actually an undeniable reality.

In the 2008 cycle, some of the most engaging, talked-about content has emerged from the user-generated side of equation. Be it Obama's Facebook Group, funny/embarrassing/scandalous Youtube clips, or homespun social network profiles with thousands of friends, some of the greatest content so far has come from us (in the Time magazine, Person-of-the-year sense). And it will keep coming from us, likely at a pace increasingly feverish as time marches on.

So in a sense, I see this hope that we all agree on a "place" as misguided as the strategy of political candidates paying bloggers. Social media is democratic - and to appropriate the Cluetrain, more of us are coming to realize that "Candidates are Conversations." Social media will afford more of us a voice in this conversation - and we're sure as hell not going to want to give that up.