I recently read a very thought provoking article by Julien Smith. I absolutely agree with his thoughts, especially where he points out, that the only people that will be affected are the people that have a vested interest in Social Media.
For a quick experiment, I started writing names of anyone I’ve known offline for over five years. I chose 5 years real time as a base because these are people I’ve known long before the advent of twitter. I’d like to be clear that I mean, really know these people, on a personal level. I suspect the numbers would be different if say I used names of people I met elsewhere online over the last two years, but I have a suspicion the numbers would scale accordingly. I gave myself a time limit of three minutes. I came up with 36 individual names. I then went through and tallied the services these 36 use. The numbers came out like this:
Facebook: 27 (75%)
Twitter: 7 (19.4%)
FourSquare: 5 (13.8%)
Gowalla: 0 (0%)
A Blog (any platform other than FB or Myspace): 5 (13.8%)
I should also note here. That two of the FB accounts have no posts, they were created for the sole purpose of listening. No contribution is ever made. One of the twitter accounts exist, but has never made a single tweet and has no followers.
My point is, there are tons of people out there who are not into social media. They do not know what social media is or can care less about it. They still use the internet the “old” way. E.G: banking, research, anonymous browsing, shopping, forum lurking. The social media bubble will only affect people who have a vested interest in it. My group of people would probably be upset if Facebook bombed and shut off, but then would just go back to email, or phone calls, to keep in touch. The other services would go unnoticed, except by the people that use them.
Right on. And, I'm going to try your test with who of my friends are using social media etc. That's great idea.
We tend to think that because we use the tools, everyone does, but it just ain't true. It's like people of a certain closed religion will automatically think everyone must think like they do too.
@John I would be interested to see how your results compare.
To add an historical perspective, there are examples of businesses who fell from prominence because they were wed to a particular technology. IBM committed itself to mainframe computers, and Wang Laboratories committed to minicomputers. Both suffered by refusing to shift to newer technology, even when the newer technology was better suited to their clients needs.
By contrast, an aspect of Cisco's success is that its CEO, John Chambers, refuses to define Cisco's business strategy in terms of a single technology. Rather, Cisco defines a business strategy in terms of clients' needs, and then seeks the best technology to serve those needs.
So too, relationships, whether social or business, should not be defined by the technology that facilitates interaction. A friend of mine who worked for a large Silicon Valley company once mentioned that his teenage sons had "internet friends." A sad comment, I thought. If I have "Myspace friends," I will have fewer friends — or no friends — as people migrate to Facebook, Twitter, or even back to email and the telephone.
Social and business relationships should be defined by the content of those relationships. New technology may enable us to interact more efficiently, but new technology cannot define the content of a relationship. And, it is the content of the relationship that we need to nurture, especially the relationship with the one to whom you are wed.
Agreed. I see it all the time in the technology industry. In fact I had a MySpace account back in it's heyday. I personally was not that attached to it but knew a lot of people who were. When Facebook came out people started leaving. Slowly at first, but then in droves. I kept my account online for a full two years, checking it only once a month. I eventually deleted it completely. Weak ties to the platform and most of the people for sure, but I still kept in touch with my core people offline.
Google+ is very interesting especially in the privacy and context realms. Facebook will have to continue to be innovative to compete or may suffer the same fate as MySpace.