What is social object theory?

You might know a lot about social networks, but what do you know about social objects?

Resources

Social Objects for Beginners (Gaping Void)
What are Social Objects? [I totally forgot I created this random podcast episode…]

Transcript

?Hey. So I think social objects are really important. To sharing information over the web. Or really sharing information in general. But over the web especially. But to start understanding what is social. Objects are, I think we should talk about social networks in general. So you probably already, have an idea of what are social networks.

There are people connected to people to connected to people. And this is how information spreads, person, a person. Or maybe all these people are connected through a school or through some other way. But we don’t tend to think about when we think about social networks is that usually there are objects involved here too.

It’s not just people connected to people. It’s people connected to other people for some reason. They’re talking about something. Social objects. Could be all sorts of things. It could be like talking about a phone. And how the weather is today.

It could be an object. An idea, a concept. It could be something physical. It could be a report. It could be a cartoon. So that’s actually where I got the idea.

I remember a while ago, back in 2007 I used, follow this guy named Hugh McLeod. And he had this cartoon called gaping void and he talked a lot about social. Objects. And in his cartoon. He used to draw on the back of business cards. Shared a lot about creative confidence, marketing, that sort of thing.

But a lot of my, cartooning theory why a draw cartoons stems from this? So I draw cartoons to illustrate a blog post. But then those cartoons can then be lifted from the blog posts and put into presentations. They can also be lifted from the blog post and put into books and put in on social media.

And those cartoons themselves have a life of their own. They, can be a center point for discussion. And ground everything. Social objects are a way too. Export your ideas. So you have an idea, you turn it into some kind of object so that it can travel.

And then you share it out. Across the web or across the world in some other way.

And it’s really helpful. I think when you’re talking about creating a report that you think about it as a social object, what is it about that report? That can create conversation among different people can have its own like gravity. And pull people in and create its own orbit. And that’s, basically it. So I have some links.

In the show notes. And I would say start considering. How your work can be turned into objects that can take your ideas.

Further than just a PDF archive. So that’s it for today. I’ll talk to you soon. Alright, bye.