Friday, October 2, 2009

Social Media: What's the big deal?





So Lil Ninja, why blog about social media? What's so special about it, and more importantly, why should I care?

Well, it's not that you should care, you might not and be happy to live your life immersed in the technology without ever really understanding the impact it's had or the implications it’s created. But, on the other hand, your wisdom might tell you that everyone cares about things in which they are directly involved - and like or not, social media is absolutely and positively relevant to you. 

The reason that social media is such a big deal is because it brings people together. And when people are together, they talk - they share their experiences, ideas, interests, opinions, and lives with one another. Platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube all facilitate conversations that build a sense of friendship, community, belonging and shared meaning. 

When it comes right down to it, social media simply perpetuates the human need for social interaction - and it does this easily, conveniently and in an online environment. 

But there's more to social media than just connecting with people. Before social technology, TV networks and newspapers spent millions of dollars each year on the production of news and entertainment - while we spent thousands of hours cooperatively consuming it. Unlike Facebook and Twitter that demand participation and engagement from its users, traditional media merely required us be present in order to receive the information and messages directed our way. We were being talked at, but not spoken to. 

Now, however, the conversation is less monologue and more dialogue. With today's digital technology and the internet, anyone can make, publish and share content - words, video, audio, and images - easily and for the most part, affordably. 

The best part about all of this user-generated content is that it gives us a much wider selection of sources to turn to. Consider this:  
  • There are over 200 million blogs online 
  • Approximately 13 million articles are available on Wikipedia
  • On average, Twitter boasts 3 million Tweets per day 
  • Facebook users spend about 5 billion minutes daily on the social networking site 
And while Facebook, Twitter and blogs may not seem like obvious pools of information, each platform is a means for us to build on the comments and perspective of others. The flip side of this, however, is that the distinction between audience and producer, writer and reporter, media and public is no longer crystal clear.

And this is just the beginning. As social media continues to give people like you and me the ability to create and broadcast messages on a global scale, and as our combined voices and efforts are made stronger and more powerful by social technology, then the real question is not should you care, but can you afford not to?



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Need a few more reasons to care about social media? Check out these awesome presentations for some astounding facts and stats about this growing phenomenon. Trust me, all three are worth your time.








References:
1. What the F**K is Social Media: http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-social-media
2. What the F**K is Social Media (one year later): http://www.slideshare.net/mzkagan/what-the-fk-is-social-media-one-year-later
3. Social Media Revolution: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
4. Mayfield, Antony. What is Social Media? iCrossing. http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/What_is_Social_Media_iCrossing_ebook.pdf

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5 comments:

poison oak said...

you should read "grown up digital" I think you might enjoy it, if you haven't already read it.

arv said...

Heya! Somehow ended up on this blog after surfing through friends of friends notes on Facebook.

After reading your post, a few thoughts came to mind. I bet the question 'why should i care?' was brought up when the printing press was invented. It was just a new way of passing on information. While it was new, you could live your life without really knowing how to read. Fast forward into a future where print has become the widely used method of passing any kind of info from gossip, to business, to academics, etc. Being able to read correlated greatly with success. All of a sudden, reading becomes a required skill.

It's possible that the same situation is occurring with social media. What's the big deal? Its just another way of networking and sharing information. The amount of people receiving higher education is growing, thus increasing the number of experts in any given field. People have more choice on where to seek professional services, and the experts who are social-media savvy will benefit from having larger networks. With the growing usage of social media, as you call it, networking is becoming an essential skill.

You can no longer afford to be that expert who is hard to reach and have people waiting for you.

I'll stop here since I've lost my flow of thought.

Lil Ninja said...

Poison oak - You know, I've heard many good things about "Grown up Digital" - I definitely need to pick it up. Was there anything in particular that stuck with you?

Arvin - hi! You raise such an interesting point! I've never thought about the printing press from the perspective of the average person. And I think you're right about the social media comparison. Yes, the average person can ignore social media right now because he/she can function and live just fine without participating, but for how long?? The ability to create and distribute information on a mass scale is pretty much on par with the printing press except the average person can do it from anywhere - that's big. So is networking.

Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to more thoughts!!

arv said...

Haha, I'm glad I was able to contribute something. I might have something to add.

I've made a comparison between social media and the printing press to come up with an opinion on 'what's the big deal?' On further thought, I feel that they are still two really different things.

For some reason, most of published print must be of a certain standard, as in it must be useful, informative, entertaining, persuasive, descriptive, etc. This probably has to do with the fact that publishing is a business, you can't afford to publish crap that people won't read or care about. These standards may be what kept print as an important and viable way of communicating.

Social media, for the most part, lacks these standards. Anyone can publish anything onto the internet. When searching for something actually meaningful, one has to wade through a ton of useless crap. On a personal level blogs, tweets, and such things have their importance. On a global scale though, who really cares about a stranger tweeting about daily life?

So, when it comes to "what's a big deal?" The fact that a lot of what is found through social media can be considered 'useless', it really takes away from the importance of social media.

Did that make sense?

Lil Ninja said...

Hi Arvin,

I'm sooo sorry it's taken me so long to reply! Let me just say that I really do appreciate your time and insight :) And debating has always been something near and dear to my heart so thanks very much for contributing to the conversation.

When you drew the comparison between the printing press and social media, I looked at it from the perspective that both were/are new mediums of communication and the "revolutionary" impact this had on the average person. Although it wasn't necessary at first to be literate, it quickly became a required skill. I think social media is similar in that everyone will be expected to have some working knowledge of the main platforms (i.e. Linkedin, newsreaders etc.) in the near future. I don't think everyone will be blogging or tweeting, but I the basics will have to be there. The way I see it, it's kind of like when the internet first came into being - the companies who realized the significance of having an online presence prospered tremendously. Now, we take websites for granted. If I can't browse a store's merchandise online, or see a map of a restaurant's location without map questing it in a seperate browser, I get annoyed and frustrated at the lack of "functionality" because these are "basic" things that I expect.

There is also a train of thought that believes blogging should be held to a standard, as in what you can and can't do via blogs, which would make it more credible and accountable. I haven't formed an opinion on this yet, but I'm hoping to discuss it in a blog post once I have more info.

And yes, of course, on some level blogging, tweeting, fb, and even youtube are irrelevant to the world. But I think it's important that we have these tools at our disposal so that we can be heard if we really want to. Take a frivolous example like Perez Hilton who made himself into one of the most well-known was celebrity bloggers. Not that we should aspire to be like him, but he used social media to make himself relevant.

Parting thought. There's a quote from a book I'm reading that I really like and has just come to me in light of the Perez's Hilton's "self-made" topic: Focus + daily improvement + time = genius.

Lol, sorry, my comment was kind of a random collection of thoughts - hope it wasn't too hard to follow =)