A Conversation With Bill Streeter

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This is the first in a semi-regular series of conversations with local social media types.

I started this site here because I could not find another site devoted to giving an overview of the all the people and events that comprise the “St. Louis social media scene”. The closest thing that exists to that is Bill Streeter, who blogs about technology and social media in St. Louis at the Riverfront Times website. He has used that space often to promote and review local technology events and the people behind them.

I thought it would be fun to ask him a few questions to get to know him a little and get his opinion on a few things.

Here is my conversation with Bill:

How long have you been a blogger/social media enthusiast?

I guess I got my start with online communities in the early 1990′s on AOL. But I really didn’t start blogging on a regular basis until 2005 when I launched my video blog Lo-Fi Saint Louis. I had a lot of other experiments over the years, trying to figure out where the future of media was heading. Lo-Fi started out as an experiment, it still is. I never really stop looking at how to change things and tweak them. I also had a hand in getting the Garagepunk.com message boards launched and later the podcast and the Ning community. So I guess I’ve had a long interest in using the internet for communicating and building communities for a long time.

Tell us a little about your background?

Like I said I got my start on the Internet in the early 1990′s when I got my first taste of online communities and their power. My formal education is in film and video, but I’ve worked in advertising and marketing in creative positions either as a graphic artist or art director and in web design for the last 15 years. My initial firsthand exposure to blogging and the power of blogs was in 2003 or so when I became involved with the Howard Dean campaign. I was aware of blogs prior to this, but didn’t fully appreciate how they worked to build communities until I saw all the things the campaign was doing with them. This experience informed my ideas for starting Lo-Fi Saint Louis later.

What was your motivation to start covering social media in St. Louis at the RFT?

Well the RFT asked me if I was interested in doing it. It wasn’t something I sought out, but, honestly it wasn’t a hard decision to make. I basically accepted with out a lot of thought. I see it as an opportunity to establish myself as something other than just a music or a video guy. I think that’s the way a lot of people think of me. But my interests are actually much broader than that. It’s funny because I know a lot of tech journalists feel a little trapped in the tech beat and want to branch out, but I started out covering music and cultural stuff and have now moved over to covering social media and tech. Thats not to say that I actually think of myself as a journalist in the strictest sense.

How has the response been from your readers?

It’s been great. I had a lot of people who have followed me before that have told me that it seemed like a natural progression for me to start blogging about tech and social media stuff. Which was good, because it’s nice to know I’m not stuck in a particular niche.

You cover how other people are using Social media around town, but do you ever use it yourself to promote your own projects?

Of course. I (or my other projects) are represented on almost all the big social media sites. I take kind of a ubiquitous approach to promotion, I try to be everywhere because content is more important than destinations. I mean I have my own site, but if you spend most of your time on Facebook, for instance, my stuff is there too. I’m not gonna make it hard to find me or make you start jumping though hoops to get whatever content I’m creating. Also all my content is licensed under a Creative Commons license so people can share stuff easily without having to ask my permission.

If so, what projects, and has social media helped your efforts?

Everything I do is published or linked on all the social networking sites. All of the sites have been more effective for different things in different ways. MySpace was effective in the past for promoting events, but now it’s not as effective as Facebook. Twitter and Friend Feed have been great for sharing links. But I never try to be too crass or too spammy when promoting stuff. I honestly don’t want to connect with just anyone and everyone. I only want to connect to people who are actually interested in what I’m covering. For instance if you have no interest in what’s happening in the music or art scene in St. Louis I don’t want to bother you with stuff from Lo-Fi Saint Louis. If social media isn’t your thing? You probably won’t want to read what I have to say about it. My feelings aren’t hurt if you aren’t into what I’m into.

Do you sense that using social media to bring people together in STL is a growing trend, with widespread appeal, or is it destined to be the domain of tech geeks forever?

It’s definitely mainstream now. But I don’t think that the term “Social Media” is ever gonna be mainstream. That’s sort of an inside baseball term that belongs to the marketing trade–thats not even really a tech thing. Regular people will just think of it as talking to their friends and they’re not really interested in having meta conversations about it. But I think it’s the future of media, I think the days of command and control media are over. We’ll always think of media as a conversation now. So it’s not only gonna bring people together, it’ll also push people apart. We’re already seeing that happen, when people find little niche interests based on their opinions and mutual associations.

Any trends in social media that excite you?

I guess the most exciting thing is how mainstream it’s all becoming. I swear that everyone I’ve ever known is on Facebook now. Thats weird, interesting and exciting and even a little scary. I also love the fact that everything is mobile now. Being able to create media on the fly and share it from a device thats always connected and in your pocket is huge, and it’s only getting better.

Any that concern you?

Spam. It’s always gonna be a problem I guess. I’m not talking about transparent advertising or people promoting their own stuff within the context of an actual relationship. I’m talking about things like the proliferation of spam bots on Twitter and people who look at twitter as just another tool to rope people into MLM schemes or other nonsense. I honestly don’t have any patience for that stuff. I’m also allergic to hype, and people giving off the heavy sales pitch vibe. Thats very old media. That stuff kinda works on TV and in mass marketing settings. In the social media world it just turns people off.

Anything else you would like to add?

Just that thing thing we call social media is just making human connections with people and communication. And like any good conversation it’s a two way street, it’s just as important to listen as much as it is to speak.
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Thanks Bill.