motorcycling

As someone who combines an obsession with motorcycling with a love of social media marketing and tech, I picked up on a post back in July when Dave Winer met multiple world champion and motorcycling legend Valentino Rossi. One pioneered blogs, RSS, podcasting, and more, and the other has won eight motorcycling world championships, including claiming the last title of the 500cc two-stroke era, the firs of the 990cc MotoGP era, and claiming a title in the year he switched from the all-dominant Honda factory team to the underperforming Yamaha team.

And then during the Indianapolis MotoGP round I spotted a message by Robert Scoble: ‘Just had lunch with the #2 motorcycle rider in the world (Gorge Lorenzo) So young and good looking and popular. Nice to all the fans too.’

Seems like Fiat in the U.S is inviting a few prominent tech people to discover the excitement of motorcycling. But motorcycling should also appeal because it shares a lot of elements with social media marketing and other interests that inspire passion and devotion:

Community: If you park by the side of the road in your car, it’s pretty rare anyone stops to help (unless you’re an attractive lady or own a rare car). The unwritten rule of motorcycling is that you stop for another biker in trouble – and surprisingly this actually happens quite a bit.

Passion: Motorcycling isn’t a cheap or practical method of transport in most of the Western world – it’s for people who want to feel freedom and excitement, and want to be absorbed into that world by reading and watching everything, buying upgrades for their bike, the latest helmets and leathers, matching t-shirts, mugs and anything else they can find. The biggest selling items of memorabilia for Austrain manufacturer KTM? Bright orange, KTM baby dummies (pacifiers).

Tribal: There are countless tribes within motorcycling – by manufacturer (e.g. Harley-Davidson) , by individual model (e.g. GSX-R owners), by location, by sport (MotoGP, World Superbikes, road racing, off-road etc), by budget (e.g extremely low cost ‘rat bikes’), by age (classic collectors). And each has stronger or looser ties with others – and individuals belong to one, or many in self-forming networks of niche interest – just as we see played out on Twitter or Facebook.

It’s extreme: Granted, as an overall group, it’s pretty huge niche. But it still requires road riders to accept that they’re more likely to be injured by a myopic car driver, that spare parts, maintenance and insurance cost far more than cars, and that some people will instantly assume that they’re antisocial and only out to race around at high speed. And that any accident is always the fault of the motorcyclist.

And in a non-Bluetooth enabled crash helmet it’s one of the few times a chronic multi-tasker is totally and utterly focused on one thing – which is why so many world champions admit that they feel ‘flow‘ when it all goes well.

As someone who worked for one of the largest publications in motorcycling, Motorcycle News, for seven years, I spent a lot of time learning about (and working with) online and offline communities on two wheels, and it’s definitely shaped the way I approach all the other communities I’ve worked with since then.

Anyway, if you want to see for yourself, the final laps of the 2009 Catalunya GP are worth watching (Sadly MotoGP have disabled embedding).

Incidentally, I’ll keep my diary open for the British MotoGP round just in case, and especially the Isle of Man TT (one of the few events I didn’t get to visit for work…)