Theres a particular conversation I have every week. I had yet another conversation over the weekend. It is always some variation of
“Its a matter of time , Social media will become just another kinda media, and something else will take its place”
or, “Its a fad.”
I can of course understand why people would ask because, like “Linsanity”, it just seems to be the latest buzzword.
However, it also represents a lack of understanding of what essentially social media is. Social media isnt the latest new method of marketing and promotions.
In fact, the basic driving force behind Social media is as old as humanity. As human beings, we all have a need to connect, collaborate and communicate. We are all searching for significance, identity and a sense of belonging. The barriers to increased connection and collaboration were geographical, cultural, linguistic, technological and physical.
What has happened is that technological advances have supercharged the human to human engagement and enabled connections across all these barriers. We are no longer constrained by distance or language. We can instantly connect with people anywhere in the world by pressing a few buttons.
Our audience, especially the digital natives who are just entering the workforce will only expect this engagement to become faster, smoother and less complicated. The desire is for even faster engagement, with more customization options, more bandwidth, more options, more security, more human, and better interfaces.
The SOCIAL of social media, refers to the humanization of technology. People are increasingly less accepting of having to pander to the requirements of technology, instead expecting technology to get out of the way of the engagement and connection.
The message therefore, has changed as well. Information scarcity used to be the mainstay of any industry, now, we have information overload in almost every industry.The audience is no longer tolerant of being Lorded over by large corporations.We are in an age of openness, honesty, customer service and authetentic engagement.
Social Media is just a reflection of what the market wants.
We are in transition but soon, ALL media will be Social by Design.
A Brave New world Indeed.
