Why Phisheads are Social Media Experts

Graham and I are big Phish fans. I go to see Phish for a lot of reasons, but one main reason is the Phish community. Regardless if you like or despise their music, Phish built their own social network long before social networking sites existed and it happened organically. When Phish returned this year after a 4+ year breakup, it was no surprise that their fans flocked to Twitter and easily made #phish a trending topic during the band’s first weekend of shows in early March. Phisheads didn’t use Twitter to report on what they were doing, but rather what was happening at each and every Phish show. Funny that Twitter changed it’s call to action from “What are you doing?” to “What’s Happening?” a couple weeks ago. To me, that’s a lot more powerful and interesting.

In the mid-90s as most of us discovered the internet, followers of the Grateful Dead and Phish used newsgroups, AOL chat rooms, static websites, and message boards to connect with each other. It wasn’t real time by any means, but connections were being made. These connections were made because fans were sharing content with one another for free. Long reviews of shows were written before blogs existed. Photos were posted and shared before Flickr and Picasa were ever dreamed of, and even more amazing was the tape/cd trading community.

I started trading tapes of Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, The Allman Brothers Band, and Phish concerts (or shows) in the early 1990s. I would pick up a few tapes from friends at college, but I also started trading with complete strangers via the good ole U.S. mail. And I wasn’t alone. Thousands of other Deadheads would do the same. Magazines like Dupree’s Diamond News and Richmond-based Unbroken Chain would have a classified section full of tape traders looking for new shows. I would then respond to traders by sending them a letter and my list of tapes. I would wait for a response. Sometimes I wouldn’t get one. However, often times I would. A trade would eventually be set up - sometimes multiple shows for multiple shows. It would take weeks to set up a trade, but once you made that connection, you would have a new “friend” to trade with.



In addition to trading, many people in the community would make tapes for “blanks and postage”. Those without tapes to trade would send blank tapes and a self addressed stamped mailer to those who did and copies would be made and sent back to help “newbies” start their collections. None of these acts were done for profit or personal gain. It was all about sharing and spreading the music throughout the community.

Does this concept of sharing information and content with complete strangers for the greater good sound familiar? It’s what Twitter and most other social networks are all about. Many people don’t get Twitter because they think it’s about sharing what you are doing every hour of the day with total strangers. Sure, you can use it for that. There is nothing wrong with doing so, but the power of Twitter comes from sharing information that others can appreciate and also spread throughout the community. Whether someone is tweeting about the amazing “Seven Below > Ghost” that was played at Albany last weekend or the @DailyProgress tweeting about avoiding a certain intersection because of a car accident, this information is valuable to a specific community.

I follow people on Twitter because they are part of a certain community that I enjoy. One community is the actual physical community I live in. Other communities are more aligned with my work, interests, causes, and family such as WordPress, entrepreneurship, social media, congenital heart defects, peanut allergies, my favorite band, my alma mater, and my favorite baseball team. As you can see, my followers are all over the board, but they are all part of a community that I belong to. If you like to follow a topic online via email newsletters or RSS feeds, but are not using Twitter, I encourage you to check it out and give it a try. Go to search.twitter.com and do a search for that topic and start following the search term and/or those people who tweet about that topic on a regular basis. But then give back. Share the information and content you find compelling. Contribute to the communities you love.

Us phisheads have been building communities by sharing content with “friends” for years, long before Mark Zuckerberg could even spell Facebook.