24.7.365 - The End of Availability
Joe Aimonetti is our lead designer and runs 503Creative here in Portland Oregon. Here are his thoughts on the current state of Social Media. Very interesting.
2 years agoSeems contradicting, right?
With the proliferation of personal availability tools (read: Twitter, Facebook, iChat, Texting, Mobile Internet, etc.) I wonder if availability will soon collapse on itself. I believe there is some adage that implies something to the affect of: “Items of convenience lead to more busyness.” In other words, the more time-saving tools we have, the more we fill our saved time with more things, which in turn require advanced time-saving tools. And the vicious cycle continues.
Communication has become so convoluted with options that I’ve found myself resorting to “none of the above”. Are you on Twitter? No? Oh, I’m on Twitter now, not Facebook. You’re still on MySpace? I only use email. Just text me. Read my blog and you can keep up with me. Follow my status updates. What’s your screen name?
It’s endless. Not too long ago you had Instant Messenger, Email, and Phones. That’s about it. And not that long before then, it was pretty much just phones. But who needs a phone call when you can exchange several text messages without having to figure out how to say goodbye.
Later man. Later. Bye. Bye. Okay, see ya. Peace. Later. Bye.
It’s endless. And awkward. Not that texting, Twitter, and Facebook are much better. Didn’t you get my Facebook message? I posted it on Twitter. Pretty soon there will be so many platforms for communication that apathy may have the greatest opportunity to win the social networking game. No one will ever have to communicate directly ever again. If you want to know what someone is up to, check their Facebook status, which automatically posts to their Twitter feed, their LinkedIn page, their Delicious bookmarks, their FriendFeed profile, and their blog. And if you’re too lazy to check yourself, just sign up to get a text message or email every time someone updates what they are doing.
A fast approaching job market in the upper class sector will most certainly be “Social Networking / Communications Assistant”. The only real qualification will be “understanding all this crap” and most of these jobs will be taken by 15 year-old high school students with an iPhone, a Blackberry, a netbook, and a dictionary full of shortened words to ensure the 140-character limit is maintained. Your job will be to keep the updates rolling in, befriend as many people you don’t actually know as possible, and endlessly comment on the trendiest topics, hoping to get your head just slightly enough out of the static to perhaps be noticed.
This all sounds somewhat cynical about social networking. To be clear, I think social media is the way of the future and understanding it will make your brand better. I also think it is important to find which platform works best for your brand and direct all your traffic to it. For example, if Twitter is your best fit, set up all your other profiles to link to Twitter. Then exploit Twitter’s unique power for your benefit. The same goes for blogging. Have all your social media accounts link back to your blog, but make sure your blog is the best blog out there.
In the end, it is my hope that only a couple platforms “win” the social media experiment and communication is once again simplified. Of course, this is not likely to happen, but hey, I can hope. For now, if you’re on any of the same social media sites I am and we’re not yet friends, drop me a request and I’ll be sure to get back with you. We’ll be virtual friend entities in no time!
+Joe+
What’s your favorite social media platform?
