Is This Social Media?

Recently I was in New Orleans for the National Association of REALTORS® Annual Conference, aka NARdiGras. One day while walking the French Quarter (after I grabbed some Beignets of course!) I came across this old, dilapidated building with all of these stickers, which appeared to be your typical “Hello, My Name Is” badges. This of course piqued my interest and I had to get a closer look and find out what this was all about.

Upon closer review, I found that these weren’t the hello badges I thought they were, but an inventive way to get some feedback from those passing by as to what they wish this space would be. Just as with online social media, the space was filled good and bad. Sad that when people are given a voice/platform some choose to abuse it. But many gave positive and insightful comments as to what the space should be.

The project was started by Candy Chang, an absolutely amazing woman. Check out her bio and you’ll agree! The project was started to address the overwhelming number of vacant storefronts in New Orleans and the people who need things. These stickers are an easy tool for them to voice what they want where they want it. Visit the project’s site at IWishThisWas.com. So back to my original question… Is This Social Media? I think too many times we pigeonhole social media into tools like Twitter and Facebook. The world wants to define it as some technical term. My favorite definition of social media comes from Chris Brogan in his book Trust Agents – “Social media extends human relationships.” That being said, then yes, this is an amazing example of social media.