Having watched the proliferation of this inaccurate and oft-misunderstood term into our businesses and lives, I’ve come to realize that somebody has got to do it. Why?
Because we are all misusing and abusing the term and most people completely misunderstand what “social media” is supposed to mean and are acting on what they think it means then end up down a rabbit hole of relentless online activity that bears little fruit for the efforts. We are all going crazy doing things we think are “social,” and what we really are doing is alienating others in new, more powerful ways, including our customers and many of the people around us.
I blogged about the problem with the term “social media” back in March 2010 for GigaOm. I was struggling first to find the “right” definition of the term and went to Wikipedia to see what people had posted there. Here’s what it said back then:
Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and information, transforming people from content consumers into content producers.
Here’s what it says today:
Social media includes web-based and mobile technologies used to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”[1] Social media is media for social interaction as a superset beyond social communication. Enabled by ubiquitously accessible and scalable communication techniques, social media has substantially changed the way organizations, communities, and individuals communicate.[2]
Am I the only one who sees the above as a bunch of mumbo jumbo?
The way we are defining “social media” and then acting on “using social media” or “leveraging social media” is creating mumbo jumbo in our lives. It is taking the natural human instinct to communicate and build community and turning it into a circus of untenable communications.
We as publishers cannot keep up. We as consumers cannot keep up.
So what do we do when we can’t keep up?
Right now, we are desperately seeking new tools to try to manage something that shouldn’t have happened in the first place. We should never have defined the various tools on the Web that sprung out of early Web pages and called them “social” and made them into shiny, desirable objects that we all had to have in order to…to what? Be noticed? Be better at something? Be more popular? Be famous? Sell more?
What are really trying to do with “social media” anyway? And why is “social media” becoming the main focus – no, the driving force – of how we communicate with others online? It’s ludicrous.
“Social media” has NOTHING to do with humans communicating with each other. And half the tools we are assigning as being part of “social media” are inherently the antithesis of social, practically ANTI-social.
I’m going to explore this concept over the next few months, and will offer alternative terms and definitions. Good, bad or ugly, the term “social media” is probably here to stay, but I want to offer new language that more accurately describes what we are using and what we are doing – and trying to do – online.
With better language around online tools and activities, I think we can find better ways to leverage – and benefit – from them that are more in tune with our needs and our nature.
What does the term “social media” mean to you?