December 27, 2009

The Buzzword Social Media Is DOA In 2010

Posted by Adam Singer in Opinions, Randomness, The Social Web

You have to love the wiki definition for buzzword:

A buzzword is a term of art or technical jargon that has begun to see use in the wider society outside of its originally narrow technical context by nonspecialists who use the term vaguely or imprecisely. Labeling a term a “buzzword” often pejoratively implies that it is now used pretentiously and inappropriately by individuals with little understanding of its actual meaning who are most interested in impressing others by making their discourse sound more esoteric, obscure, and technical than it otherwise would be.

This definition perfectly describes the largest buzzword of 2009 and 2010:  social media.

It’s a buzzword not just because it’s overused, but because it has become too generic to describe anything in a meaningful way.  When all websites and all media are social, social media as a term ceases to be relevant.  It’s too bland and undescriptive, and has come to describe the internet as a whole.

Buzzwords have a fatal flaw we’re quick to forget:  they are “throwaway” terms, in that they are doomed to be obsolete.  Not that they can’t be taken advantage of while popular, they certainly can.  But they’re buzzwords for a reason.  Any industry tires of them and with time they become considered a cliché and used mostly by the new or uninformed.  I’ve seen this happen repeatedly and cyclically in all of the industries I’m involved with:  technology, marketing and music.

Social media as a buzzword encourages articles like this one at Forbes.  Read the following graphs from the story, and mentally replace “social media” with “the internet” and it wouldn’t change the meaning.  In fact, it makes it more accurate:

I primarily use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn, in addition to my blogging, but I have become less and less enamored with social media over time. Although I was never a rabid user of Twitter, I did initially use it on a regular basis but now will frequently go days between tweets or without even looking at it…

..The reason for this isn’t just the novelty of it all wearing off. It’s more that it’s become less pleasant due to the amount of spam that is permeating the social media space, coupled with the overbearing commercialization that is taking place. Layer on top of this the erosion of privacy and it doesn’t look good. Even my college-age daughter, a prime demographic for social media, complains about these same issues.

Let me repeat this again:  this is not social media.  This is the internet. And the internet isn’t going away.  Whether the buzzword social media lasts is another story.

A quote from Steven Hodson crystallizes this nicely:

Just because we slap a new term and some soothing pastel web pages together it doesn’t invalidate what came before it. It doesn’t change the fact that we have been socializing on the web long before someone invented the marketing term of social media. It sometimes seems though that the tech world has this inbreed need to proclaim something as new and totally different than what came before when in fact this isn’t the case.

I’ll freely admit I’ve used the term social media in posts and in titles here for the simple reason it attracts traffic, links and attention.  As a marketing blogger, I consciously take advantage of that.  It was an obvious play for bloggers in the technology or marketing niche during the last three years (you should do the same thing for hot topics/terms your niche – taking advantage of trends is huge).  But in 2009 it reached a tipping point and was far too exploited, misused and misunderstood causing it essentially to become meaningless.

Would I name a blog or company with social media in the title?  Not a chance, and my personal opinion is sites like Social Media Explorer, Social Media Examiner, Social Media Rockstar and others (content 100% aside) take a huge risk by building brands on top of a buzzword.  They are tagging themselves to a term which – while popular today – is easily cast aside.  Mashable may be tagged as “the social media guide” right now – but they were previously “social networking news.”  Love him or hate him, Pete Cashmore is smart:  he’s riding the trend for attention.  But he’ll move on to another tagline to keep his site at the bleeding edge.  The strategy is simple and effective.

Unless it’s an actual brand term you are working to grow as an individual or company, if you use buzzwords in your name you’re banking a large part of your strategy on something you do not control.  Buzzwords can and do fall out of favor.

Many blindly share articles from major and obscure publications simply because they mention social media.  I see “thought leaders” do it all the time.  In many cases I know they are sharing the content blindly as I’ll actually read it the story and see it’s either inaccurate or a tired rehash of what’s already been said.  Especially in cases where the story shared is from people who obviously know better, it’s clear they only read the headline.

Businesses and media – including bloggers – will continue hyping the term well into the future.  But I’m noticing more and more it’s used by those who don’t have real social proofing or proven results themselves.  16,000 “social media experts?” Really?

I get the feeling many other seasoned digital marketers are not burned out on the internet, but burned out on the buzzword social media.  I’ve consciously minimized my use of it in on this blog in 2009, however in 2010 I’ll be using it even less.  How many of you feel the same?

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Growing up online: why the days of our digital adolescence are numbered

October 23 | Written by Cathie McGinn | viewed 64 times | Be the first to comment

The internet is still in its infancy, and our use of it is naturally continually developing. It's an exciting time to be alive; I'd argue that no single technological advance since the printing press has transformed our culture, normative behaviours and society as profoundly. New possibilities and new ways of interacting are opening up every day, and users frequently adapt technologies and digital spaces in ways that weren't anticipated by developers or creators. One really has the sense of cyberspace as a Terra Nullius, open to exploration, redefining old models and ways of doing things.

However, this cuts both ways, and it’s depressing to see that one consequence of the new territory is a marked increase in the amount of genuinely awful behaviour performed by otherwise functional adults.

Seeing ill-advised tweets, oversharing via Facebook updates and emotive personal posts, I’m reminded of the giddy immediacy of my teenage years, in which I existed in a state of selfish isolation, immersed in the frenzy of the Now. Nothing was more important than my feelings that very second; I had no sense of, or interest in a broader context or that my actions could have consequences of any significance. And this seems to be the case for many people online; the fact one feels this way at this moment is justification enough for broadcasting that information to the planet.

I feel, therefore I post.

Hal Niedzviecki refers to this phenomenon as “Peep Culture," suggesting that we're witnessing the tabloidization of everyday life. Perhaps the logical progression of our paparazzi-fuelled, celebrity-obsessed culture is to have us believing that revelations of a wincingly personal nature are everyone’s business. There again, we’re not taking out one page ads in the Times or employing a town crier to announce our break-ups or our bad days at work. This behaviour is only occurring online.

I’d argue that it’s due to a combination of factors:

1) the false sense that these online spaces aren’t 'serious' and don’t have real life impact: the value of communication online is somehow seen as less than offline interaction

2) the ease, speed and accessibility with which one can post anything from anywhere. An emotion that probably would have dissipated by the time you’d put pen to paper and started looking for a stamp is shared, out there and un-retractable in three seconds flat.

3) an erroneous belief that these spaces are somehow lawless, frontier territory where all bets are off, crimes go unpunished and an outlaw-esque anonymity can be preserved A post on the Social Media Law Student blog makes the point that

People will express themselves, albeit to their own detriment, through numerous mediums whether by electronic communication, acts of aggression, verbal comments, physical actions, written letters, and more. Social media networks such as Facebook and MySpace are not to blame for sheer stupidity...

...but they do make stupid actions harder to retract and easier to prove. Our actions have implications, consequences; the spaces may be virtual, but this is very real. Thirty-five percent of employers reported finding content on social networking sites that caused them not to hire the candidate; Facebook evidence was used to convict gang members in Britain who posted photos of themselves posing with guns; Australian courts allow legal documents to be served via Facebook; lawyers have begun to use social profiles in divorce cases. Four Awkward Moments on Facebook is hilarious, unless you're one of the people involved: I can only imagine the lacerating sense of shame and hurt they must have experienced.

Imagining the future

I’m confident that the next generation will view our bumbling online interactions with humour and, I hope, some pity, much in the way that I view photographs of my parents in their heyday; fondly and with affectionate mockery. I can’t predict what these new models of behaviour will look like but I wonder whether our notions of public and private space will be fundamentally redefined; will a new set of boundaries be created or will these constructs simply have drifted into irrelevance?

Will the citizens of the future live in digital glass houses?

When everything is on display and there’s no separation between your inside voice and outside voice, will people’s personal (increasingly public lives) cease to have any interest or relevance - is the sense of intimacy we use to build social cohesion in part derived from the sense one is holding privileged information?

In this landscape, our perceptions of each other would be based on new criteria and new values not related to how much we earn or who we're screwing. Although I find this a faintly terrifying prospect, I can’t help but feel this re-imagining of our future is the most exciting, the most radical (and the least likely to occur). Alternatively, will this new generation, kids who’ll take in the digital space with their mother’s milk become the New New Puritans? There is surely a possibility they will enact a backlash against the over-availability and over-sharing of information, images and personal data.

With public figures as influential as Obama warning schoolkids to think about the long term consequences of the stuff they share on Facebook, will we see a generation of locked down profiles, gated social spaces and private Twitter streams. Will we become paranoiac data-hoarders, carefully considering every piece of information dispersed through the web? Or - returning to Planet Reality - will we just have to grow up, embrace the new and reign in some of the worst excesses of overly disclosive behaviour in favour of a more reasoned approach?

Being a teenager is fun, but we can't remain in a virtual NeverNeverland forever.

It may be more staid and a little less compelling than the ambulance-chasing, Schadenfreudian thrill of watching someone crash and burn online, but perhaps fewer hearts and reputations damaged beyond repair is worth losing out on a little second-hand salaciousness for....

CHAMPION IN FOCUS

Cathie McGinn
Company: Geekdom
Position: Search and Social Media Manager
Digital strategist, filmmaker and cyber-utopian.

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