Social Media Work in Progress

I’ve been a little quiet here on my own blog as the month of June was an amazingly busy one for us at Sony Online Entertainment. I survived my first E3 and a ton of travel for various business reasons. We’re making great headway with our two killer games that are releasing in the Fall: DC Universe Online and Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures. It’s been a whirlwind but I am lucky to be surrounded by great folks who are simply putting points on the board.

I’ve also now been at SOE for just over four months. It seems a lot longer as we have so much going on, sometimes I forget what day it is.

When I left Intuit, I left a company well down the road in its social media journey. The great work we had started three years ago at TurboTax, coupled with our partners in Intuits’ Small Business division, had well established the company as a leader in the social media space. I left an established leader for a new opportunity with a gaming company who has bright days ahead. It was a huge risk for me professionally but I am never one to turn down a great challenge.

One of the reasons I chose the SOE position was because they were at a much different place with social media. They’d gotten the plane off the ground but weren’t exactly flying solo around the world yet. They “get it” and know the importance of interacting with customers and gamers in a real and meaningful way. It’s something I insisted on or I wouldn’t have even taken the job.

So where are we four months in?

SOE is in a good place. While that hasn’t been apparent overtly to the public yet, we’ve established a great foundation internally so we can go out and interact and converse with our customers and gamers. We’re doing what we need to amongst ourselves to drive toward more transparency and availability from all of our teams. It’s an exciting time and I can’t wait until we start rolling out more of what we have planned. I think we’re going to start turning gaming and social media on its ear.

Working closely with our agencies SHIFT Communications and Elasticity, great things are on the horizon.

For this social media junkie, it’s been hard being a little “dark” the past few months. After being out and speaking at conferences and to media about social media during my time at TurboTax, I haven’t been doing that much lately. That’s OK, because I’ll have lots to talk about soon.

It seems the social media landscape has been a big echo chamber as of late. I hear some good things but lots of talking to ourselves. I hope what we’re doing at SOE will change some of that and I look forward to sharing with you some new thoughts, experiences and successes.