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26 Responses to “Power Struggle for Knoxville Social Media King?”

1. Walter Lounsbery 
   April 10th, 2009 at 8:30 am

   

   I have visions of social net­work­ing geeks work­ing this out via online duel, per­haps Halo. Not that they are likely to agree on the “per­fect” duel­ing plat­form. Which gets to my real point: social net­work­ing is all about com­mu­ni­ties of diver­sity. Some­body may enjoy the most traf­fic, or the most “fol­low­ers”, but that doesn’t make them Queen or King of the Realm. It’s a mot­ley crew out there. And I’m not say­ing this just because my wife’s blog and Face­book page gets a lot more traf­fic than mine…

2. Gavin Baker 
   April 10th, 2009 at 8:44 am

   

   There’s no doubt about it to me that the Casey Peters is the KING of Social Media in the Knoxve­gas. Close sec­ond would be LeVar Bur­ton, I mean he’s not from Knoxville, but who didn’t love Read­ing Rainbow?

3. CP 
   April 10th, 2009 at 8:58 am

   

   @Gavin Baker: You’re a come­dian Gavin. Take note that Bran­don, king of every­thing, wrote this post.

   In response to the ques­tion, I don’t know that there is a power strug­gle but it does seem that a lot of “experts” are pop­ping up around the area. Sadly, the ones who aren’t pro­mot­ing them­selves are usu­ally the ones I would want to hire as my SM king.

4. Patrick Hunt 
   April 10th, 2009 at 9:09 am

   

   Not to be too seri­ous here, but isn’t social media one of the out­growths of the democ­ra­ti­za­tion of the Inter­webs? Which means thar ain’t no king or queen. And really, thar ain’t no pres­i­dent either, right? Its just too early for this democ­racy to be that mature and orga­nized. Who would be king or queen nation­ally? Mark Z? Biz? Marc and Nina? Nada, that’s who. But I’d vote for Cas Walker locally if we’re vot­ing. He was the ulti­mate social media magnate.

5. CP 
   April 10th, 2009 at 9:11 am

   

   @Patrick Hunt: Cas Walker FTW!

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIGGs0MUIyo

6. Michael Wender 
   April 10th, 2009 at 9:45 am

   

   @CP and @Patrick Hunt: Cas Walker mes­sage to shop­pers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFi-649Uezs

   BTW: I agree with @Patrick Hunt. The great thing about the social media scene around here (and prob­a­bly any­where) is its demo­c­ra­tic fla­vor. Social media is a great tool for orga­niz­ing groups of peo­ple (be it for social­iz­ing, com­mu­nity ser­vice, char­ity, pol­i­tics, all of the above, or other rea­sons) who might oth­er­wise never meet or interact.

   For peo­ple who aren’t a part of the “social media scene,” the cool thing to under­stand is that if used prop­erly, social media is a great tool to build real-world com­mu­nity, con­nec­tions, etc. There’s no need to have a king or queen; how­ever, I tip my hat and am thank­ful for those who have taken the ini­tia­tive to orga­nize “tweet-ups,” blog about the com­mu­nity, and open my eyes to new ideas and things going on in Knoxville.

7. Jeremy Floyd 
   April 10th, 2009 at 10:33 am

   

   Agree with @Patrick Hunt 100%. The gen­eral reac­tion in Knoxville, which I believe has a very healthy social net­work, is to resist any­one that exerts enti­tle­ment in the social space. Con­tent is King. When peo­ple con­tribute mean­ing­ful con­tent to the sphere, then they earn the respect of their peers.

   Also as @CP noted, experts are seem­ingly pop­ping up every­where. In real­ity, these experts are more like the jesters than royalty.

   If I had to pick one, how­ever, we all know that @Gavin Baker secretly cov­ets the thrown of King Knoxville’s Social media, so he can be King (for a day).

8. Gavin Baker 
   April 10th, 2009 at 10:50 am

   

   I’m no king. But seri­ously I think peo­ple the com­mu­nity of peo­ple who are involved with twitter/facebook/blogs is great.

   I’m actu­ally curi­ous what Bran­don was refer­ring to?

9. Shawn 
   April 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am

   

   The great ‘thing” about social media is that you can be King or Queen of your own king­dom. There are so many realms of this medium that are yet unex­plored that to claim domin­ion over it ALL is…well…arrogant.
   Instead of King of any­thing, I’d rather be con­sid­ered the Robin Hood of my own Sher­wood For­est — steal­ing from the rich and giv­ing to the poor (but pro­vid­ing links to the orig­i­nal con­tent, of course).
   I enjoy the band of “Merry Men” in Knoxville (many of them com­ment­ing on this post) and would rather run around cre­at­ing havoc (traf­fic) while the Sher­iff of Nottingham’s of Knoxville (big tra­di­tional PR and Mar­ket­ing firms) try to enforce the laws of the Knoxville Social Media King­dom as defined by them.
   But then again what do I know? Robin Hood was con­sid­ered one of the “commoners.”

10. Walter Lounsbery 
    April 10th, 2009 at 11:36 am

    

    Thanks to every­one for the Cas Walker video links. I saw a lot of mate­r­ial on Cas at the Museum of Appalachia (http://www.museumofappalachia.org/), but the videos reveal a whole other side to the man. Now if some­body could dig up a video of that per­pet­ual motion machine in the museum while it’s actu­ally oper­at­ing, that would be something!

11. Doug McCaughan 
    April 10th, 2009 at 11:52 am

    

    If not, is Knoxville in need of such a figure/institution?

    No! We have the Blog­fa­ther of course but I think putting peo­ple on such pedestals does a dis­ser­vice to oth­ers in the com­mu­nity. We have many excep­tional “social media experts” that for rea­sons of luck or just not know­ing the right per­son or not being in the right place at the right time or not being insta­lanched just haven’t hit the big scene. These peo­ple do not deserve any less credit than the lucky ones.As for com­pet­ing with Twee­t­ups et al these things have been going on longer than many of the peo­ple encour­ag­ing them have been around. Randy Neil (@knoxviews) gets cred­ited with start­ing the area Blogfests and Rich Hai­ley (@rhailey) cer­tainly orga­nized the most. Glenn Reynolds (@instapundit) single-handedly intro­duced Knoxville to Serenity/Firefly via a blog­ger movie gath­er­ing. Oops. I’m draw­ing a blank on the dri­ving force behind the Knoxville Twee­t­ups (@digitarius would know) but they can be directed to a sin­gle per­son. Geek Break­fast was intro­duced to Knoxville by Scott Maentz (@scottmaentz). Cathy McCaughan (@cathymccaughan) has been qui­et­ing plant­ing seeds for a Knoxville Bar­camp. Michael Neel (@vinull) along with Wally McClure (@wbm) and other tal­ented peo­ple brought Code­stock to Knoxville show­ing that tech con­fer­ences can do well in Knoxville. (I per­son­ally hope we see more tech con­fer­ences brought here). Alex Lavidge (@alexlavidge) has really helped get us techies to meet face to face @overground and Leonard Knight (@lrknight) has added to it with Entre­pre­neurs of Knoxville. Knoxville has such raw tal­ent. We have a remark­ably strong social media com­mu­nity. I don’t think any one per­son really should be a king or queen because it is the com­mu­nity that has pulled us all together and given us the stature and respect. I don’t think any of us should be called experts because we are all learn­ing social media as this water­shed event con­tin­ues to evolve. Doug aka @djuggler

12. Michael Wender 
    April 10th, 2009 at 11:56 am

    

    @Doug McCaughan: If our tweet-up from April 9th of last year was the first, then the credit goes to @cpariz­man.

13. Doug McCaughan 
    April 10th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    

    Now if some­body could dig up a video of that per­pet­ual motion machine in the museum while it’s actu­ally oper­at­ing, that would be something!

    The one in the museum is a replica. The actual per­pet­ual motion machine is still down in the cave and has a dig­i­tal cam­era on it for the past 10 years wait­ing for the machine to stop but it’s show­ing no sign of slow­ing down. The first film­ing attempt started in 1954 and ran out of fund­ing in 1968. The orig­i­nal films of the machine taken from 1954 to 1968 were stored in the Nor­ris City Hall build­ing but unfor­tu­nately were destroyed in the fire of 1978.

14. Doug McCaughan 
    April 10th, 2009 at 12:12 pm

    

    @cpariz­man gets cred for the first Knoxville Tweetup then!

15. Chad 
    April 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    

    Go me!

    If we go by who got onto Techcrunch first, that award goes to @jackstrove and @sadcox for this week’s AP fun.

    I don’t think there are any SM kings/queens here in Ktown nor do I think any­one is try­ing to be one. I think Doug appro­pri­ately rec­og­nized key indi­vid­u­als here in town who have done their part to help dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties thrive here in Ktown. Twee­t­ups can be orga­nized by any­one. I just threw an invite out not 10 mins ago for any­one who wants to drink some wine this after­noon. There are plenty of things going on around town between geek break­fast and cowork­ing and net­work­ing groups and code­stock and bar­camp and YPK. I love that some peo­ple par­tic­i­pate in most of those, some in only one. I think theres still room for more things like Social Media Club or 100 other dif­fer­ent types of social groups out there and the 1000s still to be devel­oped. Each one is prob­a­bly going to have its own cham­pion here in town.

16. Patrick Hunt 
    April 10th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    

    Hey, i was on TechCrunch last year!

17. bcknoxify 
    April 10th, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    

    This post is great not because of the question…but because of the really infor­ma­tive responses and his­toric points of where Knoxville has been and gone to date with Social Media, sure con­tent is king AND queen, its “pc” but ok, note taken.

    Given the com­ments, it seems that King or Queen is still a toss up and its time for some­one to jump off a cliff and GO BIG!!! This per­son, peo­ple, or group will “be” by doing the biggest.

18. Doug McCaughan 
    April 11th, 2009 at 9:35 am

    

    If we changed it from “King” or “Queen” to “Diva” would we still need one?

19. CP 
    April 11th, 2009 at 10:57 am

    

    @Doug McCaughan: What about trump­ing them all and nam­ing a Sultan?

20. Patrick Beeson 
    April 11th, 2009 at 11:54 am

    

    @CP: I pre­fer supreme being myself.

    Not to derail the topic here, but instead of ask­ing who is the head of social media for Knoxville maybe we should ask what social media is actu­ally doing for Knoxville.

    It seems there is a lot of talk, but lit­tle doing com­ing out of Twit­ter, Face­book and their ilk. As Lieu­tenant Deb­bie Calla­han said in Police Acad­emy 3: “In Amer­ica, talk is cheap.”

    I sug­gest we start using our recent advances in Web col­lab­o­ra­tion to start build­ing things. That’s what will pull this coun­try out of the cur­rent eco­nomic funk, and that’s what will ulti­mately improve the scrappy city of Knoxville.

21. bcknoxify 
    April 11th, 2009 at 11:59 am

    

    @Patrick Bee­son: Beengo! Thank you for adding to that…you should have writ­ten this post, not me.

22. Kevin Antoine 
    April 13th, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    

    I’m with Bee­son. When is the next Knoxville Tweetup?

23. BuddyCrossing 
    April 16th, 2009 at 2:57 am

    

    Hello,
    My daugh­ter Syd­ney 10yrs old cre­ated a “Green” Twit­ter, her story can be read on the web­site Bud­dy­Cross­ing, she has been inter­viewed by The Knoxville News Sen­tinel, WATE 6, Metro Pulse and is being fea­tured for the City of Knoxville’s Earth­Fest on April 18th, 2009! Bud­dy­Cross­ing is part­nered with Trees for the Future which plants trees for all of our users! Bud­dy­Cross­ing allows it’s users to con­nect to their Twit­ter accounts, send SMS mes­sages and down­load our Iphone appli­ca­tion to tweet on the go! We are local here in Maryville, TN — Please help us grow our local com­mu­nity and join us at EarthFest!

    BTW– We are also fre­quently men­tioned on CNN’s Rick Sanchez! Look for us! BuddyCrossing

24. Jesse Olive 
    April 16th, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    

    Inter­est­ing arti­cle. I have been uti­liz­ing com­puter to com­puter con­nec­tiv­ity since the days of the BBS (Bul­letin Board Sys­tem) and am quite famil­iar with the social net­work­ing boom. There is no real way to crown a king or queen of social media in my opin­ion. But if one must, they would have to con­sider can­di­dates’ over­all knowl­edge of the var­i­ous tools avail­able, con­ver­sion rates and num­ber of suc­cess sto­ries as decid­ing fac­tors. I believe the lat­ter of the two being the most impor­tant fac­tors, as it does lit­tle good to know social media with­out being able to achieve your objec­tives with it. If one under­stands that, they will prob­a­bly under­stand that social media is only a piece to a much larger puz­zle called inter­net marketing.

    On a side note, I agree with Patrick that social media could greatly ben­e­fit Knoxville, along with other cities and the econ­omy as a whole. Col­lab­o­ra­tion seems to be a com­mon con­cept these days as well. I would enjoy col­lab­o­rat­ing and play­ing a roll in the ben­e­fit of my home­town, and poten­tially any other causes you may have in mind.

25. Kevin Crisp 
    May 25th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    

    I just wrote a blog about this mat­ter. I would think per capita, Knoxville has to have like 3 fam­ily mem­bers per house­hold with a social site! VirtuallyKnoxville.com wants to be a big part, but doesn’t scripps or some big boy usu­ally come along and mus­cle the top. Deep pock­ets, goes along way in “kingdoms”.

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