Okay. I know there are many brilliant people out there in the marketing, social media and enterprise business arena - not to mention their customers - who are, like me, simply tired of the "e's" and "i's" and other alphabetical prefixes, acronyms and nonsensical words stamped on products, processes and even in the names of organizations (forget the iPhone and eHarmony, look no further than "nMash"!).
Well, with 20 years in as a tech industry marketer, operator and consumer, I think I can represent many of us when I say "e-nough"! As kitchy and catchy as these tags are, they served a purpose at the dawn and juvenile stages of the Internet revolution: they helped identify and explain a new way of doing business (e-business); integrating systems (e-enterprise - c'mon, really? There's already an "e" in enterprise!); conducting government (e-gov); and, connecting to customers, friends, family and remote locations (e.g,. Wi-FI, GPS, tMobile (?). With next step into the reality of "Social Media" and "Social Business" we're now subjected to countless threads of "Web 2.0" and "Enterprise 2.0" (a new marketing twist to help us identify the latest phoenix) and, my personal favorite, "SocNet," ugly techno-slang for "Social Network" (really, I think of it as lazy slang for bloggers that is a result of years of "writing for the web").
What does it all mean?
Who knows, for sure? Certainly, additions to language are continual and new ideas, concepts and inventions spark the fire in entirely new genres of word families and usage. Unfortunately, there is an expiration date on language that hypes versus language that helps.
The time has come for us to drop the "e" and all of its baggage. Today, we need to help EVERYONE along and within the value chain (from manufacturer to retailer to consumer) understand and integrate their EVERYDAY life and work with these tools that were once "other worldly," but which are now "our worldly." (See further discussion on this, particularly Bert DuMars comments in Jennifer Leggio's "Social Business" blog at ZDNet.com)
"e" and its brethren promote a false differentiation between business and communications online compared to those in the real world. Worse, extrapolations of these simple prefix monikers, which are pounded into our heads at every advertising and branding opportunity, further differentiate the meanings of the words they modify in an age when we should be focusing on how it all fits together, instead of on silos (of data, language, politics, budgets, demographics, etc.).
Just consider the difference in meaning we attach to the term e-commerce versus its original form, commerce. If you're in business today, or even if you're a consumer, don't these two ideas "mash" in your head (sorry to further the problem with a "mash" metaphor)? As a business consultant, I can tell you that a company that hasn't integrated some form of "e" into its commerce by now is in big trouble - "e" left the station 5 years ago, "SocNet" is making its final stops before rocketing into its own orbit. Just drop the "e" already!The two terms are synonomous!
I could continue ranting about million other "e's," acronyms and nonsensical words/names in this post, but you'll probably just shoot me notes asking about the whole other universe of symbols (@, #, ^, _ , etc.). Right?
Let's not go there....Instead let me know if you agree that the time for these prefixes and nonsensical terms is done, and that - as we organize and envision this new popular concept of the Social Web, inviting all of us to engage in conversations, together - perhaps, we can make our language more social again, too, helping instead of hyping.
~LP
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