Social media makes distance irrelevant
social media June 11th. 2008, 10:04pmLots of conversation going on this week about social media channels and purposes and what’s next.
Julian Baldwin has a great post summarizing and linking to the various conversation threads about the forms and future of social media.
For my part, the greatest value of social media, and its potential for the future, is how it makes distance and physical barriers irrelevant.
Social media is as close to telepathy as you can get without having an actual telepath. Social media allows a direct mind-to-mind (or minds) transfer of information while removing the obvious barrier of distance. It can also strip away class, politics, religion, and upbringing as potential stumbling blocks. Language is still tricky, but there are ways to compensate for that.
Distance, however, is the greatest hurdle that social media can jump. It’s practically free when compared to travel and telecommunications costs (although both have become less expensive over time) and it allows many possible means to communicate.
Alexander van Elsas described television as possibly the greatest social media channel due to the interaction it can stimulate, primarily through large events like sporting events, but also through other special event coverage. Although he’s quite right about the impact of television and it’s ability to generate common experiences that stimulate social interaction, the fact is that today television is a one-way medium. To my way of thinking, this separates it from the media that we currently consider to be social media, although TV broadcasts certainly do stimulate emotions and socialization.
Note: a number of people have suggested that social media is a misnomer because it doesn’t exclusively lead to socialization between parties. Maybe it’s better to call them interaction media, although I doubt anyone will wish to change at this point.
Still, television broadcasts do achieve something that social media also do: communication of ideas and emotions across long distances.
You just can’t interact with the creator while the television performance is happening.
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June 12th, 2008 at 4:51 am
Well, I think we’ve seen television’s attempts to make it a more interactive experience. Led to the joys of reality television. The fact that such tripe as Big Brother is consistently successful suggests that there is a genuine demand for interaction with the medium…even if such interaction is in the most shallow way and based on such poor television output.
But then I don’t think television is in any way suited to interactivity in the same way (my personal pet hate is the “text us your inane thoughts on this news story” that extends even to the BBC). It’s still a far more effective medium for widely disseminating information, entertainment and real-time coverage of events than the internet.
I think the clear benefit of social media is that it allows widescale discussion and interaction beyond boundaries. Sure, other aspects of the internet such as email and IM have removed distance boundaries in the past, but generally on a more individual to individual level. We’re moving now towards a much more community based aspect. In fact I’d argue that the internet itself is *the* social network, and that everything else is just a niche within the whole.
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June 12th, 2008 at 7:24 am
@Robin - “the internet itself is *the* social network” - wow, that’s a good observation, hadn’t thought about it in those terms.
You also bring up a couple of good examples of how the appearance of interactivity is being built into television, but it requires a separate medium (telephone calls, text messages, or E-Mails) plus a “live” broadcast in order to work in this fashion. If you look at the American Idol example, yes, you can vote, but you can’t see the results during the same show. At the same time, I think I’ve seen examples where votes were tabulated during a show.
More thinking required!
June 12th, 2008 at 7:36 am
Mark, I sort of abused the term social media on purpose when I called the TV the best social media channel. I explained in my post that I wasn’t tlaking about the interaction capabilities of the TV, there aren’t any. It’s a broadcasting thing only. But the way TV works right now brings us unmatched social interaction. Not on the TV, but because of its abililty to broadcast to millions of people. There isn’t a social media service thinkable that can have such an impact on human interaction. Massive on-line gaming gets that way, but on a very small scale compared to TV. And current computer devices are aimed at single users, lone rangers, that might connect digitally but can’t have the same rich social interaction as 100 people watching a soccer match in a pub together.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:15 am
@Alexander - you bring up a good point about the quality of social interactions (or the authenticity of social interactions) that a broadcast can provide. It’s the next best thing to actually experience an event in person. It’s hard to mimic the reaction of a 1000 person crowd when the 1000 people are in separate rooms staring at computer screens. Even on-line gaming won’t do the same thing because of the absence of physical closeness or contact.
Maybe we need to graduate to holograms or true virtual reality.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I am sorry I haven’t commented much. I find that the world becomes a little to large when you include the web world, I don’t know how some people can spend so much of their lives online keeping in contact with everyone. I work full time, in fact I am sneaking a bit of time while at work to type this.
I wrote about the disconnect that internet interaction creates on a recent post of mine. So much can be lost without the in person touch and feel.
Interesting topic.
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June 12th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
@Barbara - no worries. It can be pretty time consuming to maintain an active on-line life, just like an off-line life.
I’ll check out the “disconnect” post!
June 12th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
While I do agree that distance has been irrelevant, to some extent, for a long time because of the Internet, I think that these SNS make people who are thousands of miles away from us that much more present. (S’cuse my run on sentence!) I have had friends who have been teaching in Korea for ages. We’ve sent email and that was all well and good but, you didn’t get that present moment kind of feel that SNS gives. Since we’ve had Twitter and Plurk, they become real (in a way) to us again. We share virtual coffee and music together. It adds another more personal dimension to the way we communicate. If it is more personal, it seems more relevant.
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June 12th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
@Sammysunshine - great anecdote!