The first time I heard the notion that there’s nothing new under the sun, it was about 30 years ago on my first communications job. Our design goddess was flipping through an issue of Communication Arts magazine looking for layout ideas. Several of us got into some good-natured banter about whether that was copying or adaptation, and that’s when the “under the sun” concept was uttered.

If you spend much time reading social media—blogs, tweets, whatever—you would think the space was loaded with new concepts. I find many of the more popular memes, though, are just old concepts repackaged and relabeled. Three of my favorites: transparency, tribes, and personal branding.

Transparency

As the co-author of a new book on transparency, you’d think I’d be all over this. But it seems most of the time I read someone talking about transparency in business, what they’re really talking about is disclosure.

Take the @thebklounge discussion about the Twitter account used by Burger King’s icon, The King. Because it wasn’t clear who was authoring the tweets—someone from Burger King or someone from the restaurant’s advertising agency. Whether this is actually important (not, in my opinion), making this information available is not a question of transparency. It’s disclosure.

Transparency is access to information publics need to make informed decisions. I’m not sure which public would be unable to make an informed decision because they don’t know who’s tweeting on behalf of a fictional character. If Burger King decided to make that information available, however, it would disclose it.

“Disclosure,” also the name of a Michael Chrichton thriller featuring lawyers, is a legal-sounding term that lacks the hype factor of “transparency,” which cable news commentators are throwing around as an anticipated characteristic of the Obama administration. Hence, “transparency” has become the Web 2.0 synonym for “disclosure.”

Tribes

I like Seth Godin‘s work. I really do. But through my reading of “Tribes” and listening to him speak (thanks to the “Marketing Over Coffee” guys), I had trouble cramming the concepts presented into the definition of a tribe.

Mainly, tribes are generally not groups anybody opts to join because it synchs up with your interests. Tribes are anthropological constructs, usually made up of bands (smaller subgroups), defined by traditions of common descent. They share language, cuilture, and ideology. Someone from the Cheyenne tribe couldn’t decide that those Cherokee do a rockin’ rain dance and join that tribe. I couldn’t turn my back on the Levites and join the Zebuluns.

So when everybody gloms onto the “tribes” notion, what they’re really talking about are “communities.” But community is a concept that has been discussed to death. Call it “tribe” instead and new life is breathed into the notion and we’re off and running with whole new discussions.

Personal brand

I know I’m going to take some heat for this one, but after long consideration, I’ve concluded that “personal brand” is just another synonym for “reputation,” which can be defined simply as what you are known for. As I review the elements of a personal brand, derived from a variety of sources, they all—every single one of them—come down to what you are known for. Whether you’re genuine or artificial, reliable, responsible, innovative, a good listener, a good communicator, funny, a spiffy dresser—that’s all what you’re known for. It’s your reputation.

But, as with “disclosure,” “reputation” has a distinctly corporate smell to it. So Tom Peters introduced the euphemism of “personal brand,” and everybody gets excited.

Understand, this doesn’t mean I have a problem, per se, with the idea of a personal brand. It’s just that your personal brand existed long before the term did.

But I recently heard somebody (I honestly can’t remember who) suggest that Michael Jordan is a personal brand. Well…he has a reputation as a great athlete, a nice guy, a talented individual. He is also, distinctly, a brand—when you see him in an underwear commercial or see his name on a pair of shoes, you react based on your association with the Michael Jordan images and experiences you have collected.

Would Jordan’s “personal brand” lead you to decide to join a pickup game with him? That would be his reputation (he’s going to kick your ass). Would you buy a pair of Nike Air Jordan’s based on his personal brand? Again, it would be the brand (forget personal) that would drive that decision.

Am I picking nits?

Probably. But it gets tiresome hearing some folks talk about these concepts as though they invented them when, in fact, they’re actually age-old concepts that have just been relabeled.

These three aren’t the only ones, of course. What other Web 2.0 concepts are long-standing notions with shiny new names?