South Africa’s early adopters: Sages or Zealots?
Author: Heidi // Category: That internet stuffSage: [seyj] (noun)
1. A profoundly wise person; a person famed for wisdom.
2. Someone venerated for the possession of wisdom, judgment, and experience.
Zealot: [zehl-uht] (noun)
1. One who is zealous, especially excessively so.
2. A fanatically committed person.
The fringe fanatics who hide in caves because The World is ending are right. The World is ending, and the whole of civilisation will be wiped out. But what they seem to have wrong is when this will happen. They are so concerned with what the future holds that they forget to live in the present. People often wonder how supposedly ordinary human beings are still caught up in this fanaticism when the date they predicted for Armageddon passes. The reason is they still believe; they just adjust their calculations.
The US, Europe and Asia are ahead of South Africa on the web & social media curve and with over 3 million Americans on Twitter alone, it is easy to see where we, as a country, are headed. It is already happening; large corporates are starting to take the medium seriously, even hiring the most respected web 2.0 gurus to lead them into this digital revolution.
But does this make us, as South Africa’s early adopters, sages or zealots?To you it might be clear – of course we are sages! We know exactly what is going to happen here because it has happened elsewhere. But, the future the religious zealots have mapped out is also right, it is their actions that make them seem weird to ’normal people’.
We often preach only to the converted few. In the last 3 days, I have heard 3 different media being given as the sole reason for Barack Obama’s historic victory; Direct Marketing, Mobile Marketing and Social Media. His victory was because of none of these things. He reached out to his country and spoke to them in a way they could understand, it was not about the media he chose to do so.
Please do not judge me before the end of this post – I am not saying we are lunatics. What I am doing is cautioning us (me included) not to get too evangelistic about our specialities, when our country has only a 10% web penetration, and only a fraction of those people actively engage and understand social media. Most of my friends think Facebook is the beginning and end of Social Media, and dismiss me as a total geek for Tweeting my every move. I am a geek and I am proud of it, because I, like you, see that the web is rapidly changing. But should I just dismiss my friends as ‘tech-Neanderthals’ who need to wake up and smell the 21st century? Or should I actively try and get them involved, to spread the knowledge and grow the medium myself, instead of waiting for it to happen?
If we just wait for the rest of the country (and continent) to catch up with us, while we evolve with the established nations, how can we expect them to? We write lists of what companies are starting to do right in this space and lament on how far behind everyone really is – but do we actively teach them? I am not talking about mapping out corporate strategy. The only people who will engage with you in your brilliant social media initiative are the people already on social media. Maybe each of us should bring a ‘non-geek’ friend to 27dinners, or introduce them to Twitter/Blogs/RSS and teach them what the medium can do for them. This might flop – but if it works we will have doubled our community. And the viral nature of social networking will then hopefully accelerate the change.
Disclaimer: I do not mean to offend, please do not take it that way. I respect the early adopters enormously and hope to make a future in this industry. I do hope this sparks some interesting discussion though. 
