>>
[introductory music]
>>
[pause]
Garth Saloner: Well, thank you Tina and Jennifer for having
me here today.
Welcome, everybody, to this incredible session on social
media.
I love to see this crowd here at Stanford in the heart of
the Valley.
So, it does seem to me that, when it comes to social media,
we are still kind of in the infancy.
And I want to tell you a little story -- which I'm one of
the few people -- maybe some of the panelists are old enough
to remember this -- but, if you're as old as I am, you
remember the early computer games.
I want to tell you a little bit about this.
So, in the early days of the PC, before we had Windows,
okay?
So there was a time before Windows. There was DOS.
And, in the era of DOS, we would sit at our screens and
there was a blinking cursor, and there was a game called the
'Colossal Cave'.
And here's how you played the Colossal Cave.
So you typed in something like this.
It said, "Walk forward."
And then, the computer typed back, "You are in a big cave."
[laughter]
"There is a small dwarf, a diamond, and an ax."
And then, you typed -- the first time you played the game --
because you were a guy and you knew the game had been
written by guys -- you typed in, "Kill the dwarf."
[laughter]
And then, the computer typed back "You cannot kill the dwarf
with your bare hands.
You are dead.
The game is over."
[laughter]
Now, you may think that was pretty boring, but actually, we
were so jazzed, because the computer knew that we were
trying to kill the dwarf with our bare hands.
I mean, how did it know that?
That was just so incredibly exciting.
And so, then,
[laughter] You remember this?
So then, you waited the five minutes.
>>
Garth Saloner: You had tried. Well.
So then, you waited the five minutes for the game to kind of
reinitialize so you could play it again.
And then, because you were smart, this time you typed, "Walk
straight."
And it said, "You're in a cave.
There is a dwarf, a diamond, and an ax."
And you typed what? "Pick up the ax. Throw it at the dwarf."
And then, the computer said, "The dwarf is dead.
He has eviscerated in some greasy smoke."
And at that point, I yell to my wife, "Honey, honey, I
killed the dwarf!"
And then, she came running and looked at the screen with
Amber on her hip -- Amber was about this big -- and said, "
Pick up the diamond. Pick up the diamond."
[laughter and clapping] Right?
And that's how it went. It was really exciting.
And so, my view is this.
It is the following, which is -- the future of social
technology is to Twitter and Facebook and etcetera what
Guitar Hero was to the Colossal Cave, right?
It's impossible, as we sit here, to imagine how the
technology is going to evolve, but I'm pretty sure, as I
stand here, that it is going to bear the same kind of
resemblance.
So I want to -- with that as kind of the future -- I want to
say just a couple of things about my own personal, limited
experience with Twitter.
So, when I became dean last summer, I decided I needed to
learn about this medium.
So I did the obvious thing, which was what?
I sat down with Jennifer Aaker.
So, who I now think of, by the way, as @Aaker, or sometimes
hashtag Stanford Post, but not as Jennifer Aaker anymore.
And I asked her about it, and she got me going.
And here's what I think I've learned in my limited
experience with the medium.
The first is this: for a certain population, this is just an
incredibly powerful medium and far more powerful than
anything else we have at our disposal.
And for me mostly, you know, it's a little bit students, but
actually, it's mostly alumni.
So I can keep alumni in touch with what's going on and the
feel of the place and what we're doing, because they're
opting in -- because it's frequent, because it's highly
targeted -- in a way that you just cannot do with e-mail or
print media.
I mean, can you imagine sending an e-mail once a day to your
alumni telling them how exciting this place is?
You know, that would last about a week.
So, it's incredibly powerful for that set.
The second thing I've learned is that using this kind of
technology actually increases the need for traditional
content.
It doesn't decrease the need for traditional content,
because you have nothing to tweet about if you don't have
the content, right?
So these are actually complementary, and so, we're going to
spend more resources on traditional content than we did in
the past, not fewer resources on traditional content.
And the third is this that this medium -- at least for the
next decade or so -- is a complement to other traditional
media; it is not a substitute for it.
We have alumni who don't know what Twitter is, who are not
on Facebook, and are not going to get on any day soon.
So yeah, this is exciting and it's interesting, but it
cannot be everything and it is not everything.
It is part of a set of tools.
Fourth thing I will say is that finding a voice on Twitter
is harder than it looks.
You know, for someone in my position as the dean of the GSB,
I mean, the voice has to primarily be the voice of the dean
of the GSB, whether that's me or somebody else, right?
Because this is the voice of the GSB, not just me.
But if you don't put some of your own voice in there, it's
uninteresting.
So finding that balance between your own personal voice, and
then kind of 'institutional voice', I think is a bit of a
challenge and something that I personally am still working
on.
The last thing that I've learned -- and then, I'm going to
get off the podium and hand it over to this incredible panel
-- thank you so much for being here today -- is that I will
never, ever catch Jennifer in terms of followership.
So, she was at about 700 when I got started.
>>
Garth Saloner: Well, so here's the tweet.
You want to get me going?
Here's the tweet, right? You know, @Saloner.
The future of social technology is to Twitter etcetera what
Guitar Hero is to Pong.
Use Pong.
So all of you, that's your homework for today.
Tweet that out,
[laughter] and maybe I'll make some progress.
Audience member: Maybe you'll have some real power.
Garth Saloner: Exactly.
That's the power of in-person technology.
And so, with that, thank you all for being here.
This is very exciting, and I'm looking forward to a great
panel.
Thank you.
[Applause]