This Is An Insight: Social Media Week and Quiet Success

Social Media Week 2013 has kicked off in London this week. The team at Chinwag have put together a fantastic schedule of events for Social Media Week. The companies and attendees they’ve attracted are world class. They’ve done a brilliant job once again.

But already there’s been a Tumblr set up calling people out on their mundane, obvious or uninteresting tweets from Social Media Week events.

Here’s a few choice cuts from the This Is Not An insight Tumblr:

Maybe a bit harsh taking out of context, but compare the noise, social posturing and buzzword bingo (nice one, Wadds) of Social Media Week  to this article that appeared on Forbes recently, on the quiet successes of Silicon Valley.

The article describes how Salesforce.com recently announced the acquisition of EdgeSpring, a startup in the business intelligence/analytics market. It was a big deal for the company’s two founders, employees and investors. So why didn’t you hear about it?

Because the founders want it that way. EdgeSpring’s cofounders Vijay Chakravarthy and Ryan Lange both have had repeat entrepreneurial success, yet they have a combined amount of just 27 followers on Twitter.

They never held a launch party. They didn’t raise money from a hedge fund, a kickstarter campaign or a round of notable angel investors and celebrities. They announced the acquisition with a simple change to their web site:

Edgespring took the same approach when announcing their Series A funding and debuting their product just a few months before their Salesforce acquisition.

Reflecting on this Quiet Success of Edgespring, my feeling is that the people who are "leading" at social are the ones doing it day in, day out (so are too busy to attend Social Media Week events – I’m looking at James Whatley here) or are the ones who are running their own Social Media Week events (I’m looking at Battenhall and Ketchum here, from today’s events alone).

When you see one agency tweet about how they’re attending a different agency’s event on social, I know which agency I’m going to think is better at social:

So if you’re attending Social Media Week events, I’m sure you’ll get some good insight, some new infographics to put in your own presentations, and meet some nice people.

Though I would think that if you want to get ahead in social and you’re not one of the companies or individuals running an event, then your time might be better spent quietly working until you find your own success.