Friday, February 10, 2012
Guest
You can call Social Media as one of the most powerful innovations, wherein you find countless users connecting and communicating in no time. These places have made people or users social on a number of websites including Facebook, LinkeDin, Twitter, Google+, MySpace, Foursquare and so on. People often are seen hooked to these places via their cellphone devices or via their laptops and PCs and stay tuned with family and friends all across the world. Hence you can see a social media movement all across the world. However, the enthusiasm which was seen earlier is overblown and something is seen missing in this movement.
You can see the thoughtful dialogue turning into some petty conversations revolving around some rules and techniques. The thought leadership is seen diluting these days into some smart personal show off. The following are some of the developments which are seen disrupting the social media movement:
The commercialization of social media: One of the signs of disruptions is the increasing use of social media as a marketing agent of various brands. Nowadays, you will see a growing number of marketing guys using the social media platforms to market their products or service to their desired demography. Hence you can now see Facebook tuning a hub for soccer moms, Twitter a hot place for the novel writers, LinkedIn favorite for HR recruiters and so on. In this way you will find social platforms for any desired flair.
Ironically, the social media is not meant for these things, the element of social is being affected by these developments within them. Now you can see these platforms becoming a substitute to email marketing, PPC and even SEO.
The innovators are nowhere: Today the rule of the game is changed, as you have something called models to follow rather than coming up with innovations. Hence you can see copycats replacing the innovators over the social media. There are many evidences to this fact; you will find every company having a Facebook fan page, copying the Twitter engagement of your rival groups or innovators and so on. No one is bothered in putting social engagement in this space. So what people are doing is simply struggling to become copycats instead of becoming an innovator on this new space.
The rise of professional small talk: Do you want see what is happening at any company’s Facebook fan pages or Twitter accounts? A debased form of conversations or you can simply call it as professional small talk. So instead of carrying out some meaningful dialogue and discussions, you will find meaningless discussions posted over the company’s fan pages.
You can see people discussing about what they are wearing today, or talking about their passion or hobbies and similar small and petty issues. So can you call this as engagement? Certainly not, since with such things happening, you simply pander with small thinking with debasing the social movement process.
These three disruptions have certainly conspired to strip the social movement of its momentum. So instead of getting carried away in the flow of demeaning and debasing storm, it’s time to give a thought about these disruptions corrupting the social media movement and embark with some tangible kind of solutions to maintain the real spice of social media.
About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and autos. Beside this she is fond of cars and fancy dresses. Recently an article on Vintage cars attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on White Skinny Jeans.
