Social Media is such a beat up term these days. It’s tired. Weak. In fact, I’m done with it.
I’m going antisocial!
Seriously though, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately. Making some changes in the way I interact online. Creating some controversy around the “proper” way to follow and unfollow people, if there is such a thing. I was told I was being antisocial, an elitist, acting like a 9 year old and that my life was in ruin because I had done a mass-unfollow to clean up my Twitter account. Whatever…
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn… All these social media (yuck, there’s that term again) platforms are based around one thing. Community. A community that I build. One that I have control over. If I want to unfollow people, I can. There’s no rule saying if you follow me, I have to follow you back. But, if you engage me, chances are really good that I will bring you into my community. Call that line of thinking whatever you want, it is what it is.
So, what IS it?
To me, these platforms (mostly Twitter and Facebook), have become more collaboration tools than anything. Community based collaboration tools where I can reach out to my friends and followers to get questions answered, find new things to do, cool people to do them with, etc. Google used to be my answer for pretty much any question or problem I was having. Now, I turn to those I know and trust for opinions, answers and input. THAT is worth it’s weight in gold to me, whether I’m antisocial or not.
So, there it is… Community Based Collaboration Tools. The end of social media (for me at least).
Well I recognize the ‘elitist’ comment as coming from me…and the referring to you as a 9 year old, although I feel fairly strongly that remark was taken out of a fairly rich context. But no matter.
The irony is that I’m actually feeling you here. The method of resolution may be dissimilar but I think the SM jargon have been flung far and wide and lost much of the real meaning. The personal interactions that made this rich, have turned into a conversation about subtle spam, follower count, and ambiguous ‘influence’, not to mention ‘noise’ you are clearly done with.
I’m tired of so much of the discussion. It’s kinda crazy how this simple interpersonal interaction has now required so many SM consultants that it boggles the mind. Jim Marks tweeted today, “Its official, there are now more Social Media consultants than people…” which I was happy to retweet.
Hey, my 9 year old is a stinker but he’s a smart little guy too!