Things, as the truism goes, happen in threes. And there have been three major things in the past three months that prompt me to reassess my presence in social media. In fact, I’m wondering whether they are harbingers of a social media backlash.
- #1: My time with and energy for social media venues like this blog, Twitter, other peoples’ blogs and LinkedIn among others has been on a downswing. The big demotivator has been an increase in the demands of my “day job,” which does not require much social media integration. (Hmmm.) Another reason, one I’ve resisted accepting, is that I might not have enough new thinking to share at the rate at which I have been contributing. Hard to swallow, but possibly true. At least I’m unconvinced that I’m offering many new insights or ideas that are fully original – beyond what I’ve shared and pondered publicly in the past year or so. If the conversation out there is getting stale, as I keep hearing and reading, I’m loathe to be part of the problem.
- #2: Next was the conversation I had with the head of a very forward-looking, innovative and deeply engaged company in the interactive and social media space. Ironically, we met through a mutual Twitter friend, and here’s where the dialogue went: concern that the social media conversation has gotten stuck – too many retweets of others’ thoughts or comments about them; a perceived lack of innovative and original thinking reflected in social media venues; and less excitement about discovering the social media phenomenon now that we’ve all been so immersed in it. That is not to say that there isn’t original thinking happening or that everything that social media platforms can do has been fully exploited. It’s just the feeling that the interchange has become somewhat circular.
- #3: In his Advertising Age Gen Next piece “In Defense of a Limited Online Presence: Why I Stopped Tweeting” Alex Kniess writes, “It seems like the majority of the content I subscribe to is repurposed and watered down. There is so much noise out there that it’s hard for me to find the source. Where are the original ideas coming from?” So, now it’s official because it appeared in Advertising Age, doncha know, and the writer comes from the very generation thought to be the linchpin of social media activity.
I don’t presume to have an answer here, and this is not an indictment of social media or the people and content on it. Yet this convergence of like-minded observations has me assessing where to be in this space. For now, need to be here is trumping want to be here just because I can.
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November 7, 2011 at 9:40 PM
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March 17, 2010 at 12:57 PM
jware09
Great points made by all. Once again Neal, you’ve got yourself a thoughtful post here.
My take is this …people were eventually going to get tired of talking about social media on social media. Now that the love fest is over, the true communication pros are taking a hard look at how social media works to get their and their clients’ messages out. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs …they’re all useful vehicles to facilitate interactive communication. And interactive communication is only getting started! We have ourselves a complete shift in communication ideology taking place. The tools (Twitter, for example) might receive some backlash, change or completely fall out of favor. But the ideology …the way the world communicates …is here to stay.
March 17, 2010 at 7:35 AM
kayroseland
Alas…..just as I fall more and more in love with social media, some of the minds I most respect are taking a step back. Granted I (and Shareology) have decided to mostly ignore some sites (Facebook, are you lonely?) and focus on others (LinkedIn, Twitter, Shareology).
For me the access to minds and thoughts I would never have had a link to is too invaluable to pull back. I grant that there is a lot of fluff out there that I had to find a way past in the beginning, and yes, find my way past now. The List feature on Twitter has helped me concentrate on those I really want to hear when I’m in a time crunch.
Perhaps, as Faris Yakob said rercently at MIMA, foursquare is the next Twitter as social media evolves. I believe you can stop or step back from social media about as easily as you could stop the spread of the internet ten years ago.
That said, if @Footenotes and @AgencyBabylon step back from social media, Shareology and @KayLoire will miss their voices, and will await the time when their originality steps back in.
March 17, 2010 at 2:55 PM
Neal Kielar
The rumors of my – and probably Lisa Foote’s – social media demise are greatly exaggerated.
I don’t think either are indicating that we’re going on hiatus, tuning out or joining a backlash. Justin (jware09) makes the point well. All the talking about social media, which has dominated my self-constructed social media experience, has to come into balance. It has been exciting and interesting and a worthy learning experience. Now I want to reconstruct my social media use to match my daily work and personal life needs.
The old thrill is gone. Long live the new thrill. And the ones after that.
March 12, 2010 at 1:38 PM
Anne Kleinman
I think the backlash is going to happen, because as you mentioned, at the end of the day when productivity and learning start to suffer, people are going to cut back on their SM activities, and go back to their core functions from 9 to 5 and beyond.
SM can, however, be a platform for keeping in touch with clients, customers, and friends. When done properly, that contact and interaction can then become thoughtful gestures instead of mindless drivel. If one uses the SM platforms to track what is important to their contacts and then uses that information to share and maintain a human contact, SM will survive, albeit with a new set of rules.
March 12, 2010 at 11:20 AM
Lisa Foote
I agree that social media participation and content has taken a turn lately. I find myself seeking out and paying more attention to people who have fresh insights, and less and less to those recycling “Social Media Guru” bromides from one, two and even three years ago. (Yeah. People run around in Tribes. I get it.)
Your post resonated for me even more so because I’m experiencing Blogging Dysfunction Syndrome. It seems as though I’ve contributed lots of ideas and points of view; whenever I try to force myself to blog, it just feels recycled. So I’m trying to take a deep breath and think about how to re-engage – but only if I can do so meaningfully.