The setting: Venture Capital Alley, aka Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.
The gracious hosts: O’Melveny & Myers, fresh off their victorious settlement in AMD vs. Intel.
The panelists: Karla Spormann (president and CEO, Tendo Communications), Martin Eberhard (cofounder and former CEO, Tesla Motors), Patrick Ewers (founder, Mindmavin), and Dr. Marc A. Smith (chief social scientist, Connected Action).
The occasion: An opportunity to get perspective from local executives who are putting social media to work for business.

Below are several video highlights from the social media panel:

Dr. Marc A. Smith:

“The clustering of social connections is fascinating and really revealing.”

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Smith/Martin Eberhard:

“The downside to social media is that you’re going to have a conversation with someone that has a lot of time on their hands. With you. Now. And you may have other things on your agenda and this becomes an issue because then those people feel scorned and they have the same amplifier you have.”

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Karla Spormann:

“Understand where your audience is and what tools and channels they’re using. Listen first, and then determine whether or not you want to engage.”

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Patrick Ewers:

“Common ground is about making people think, ‘I am like you.’ And that’s what you want because ‘I am like you’ means ‘I like you,’ and this is important because…once you get to “I like you,” doors open, things go faster, people start looking for excuses to overlook your mistakes.”

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Eberhard/Spormann/Smith:

“Social media has already overtaken traditional media. General Motors has had more success getting people to understand the Chevy Volt through Bob Lutz’s own blog than through any advertising.”

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Smith:

“The more your message propagates, the more Google focuses on it.”

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Smith:

“Most opportunities flow not through strong ties/connections, but weak ties—the ones you know casually. In addition, humans evolved in tribes of 150 or less, so you can really only have strong ties with 150 or fewer people.”

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Eberhard:

“The social media thing really is about being a human being and this is why the Bob Lutz blog works. He says things in his rough-and-ready way that doesn’t align itself with the marketing speak that’s all over the rest of their website.”

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Spormann/Eberhard:

“So my advice is if you have done a good job of developing a network of people that are following and into what you are doing, you just kind of need to give the right people a hint that there is something bad being said about you on some other site and let them be the bulldogs.”

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