Is it all smoke and mirrors or is there any substance to it after all? Or are there just a bunch of hucksters out there trying to make a few bucks off naive people who want to get ahead in life? Is social media just next iteration in hucksterism and pyramid style marketing scams? Or is it something more?
Greg Davies, aka CGT2099 of social news fame, wrote a heated, yet insightful post critiquing the use of the phrase “social media”. As you may recall in last week’s Q&A post, Greg basically said that it’s just the Internet; social media is just a buzzword.
Greg aims pretty clearly at a key constituency who he blames for the hype behind social media:
The individuals I am talking about are those who claim they are knowledgeable about Social Media. It is the biggest con of the 21st century, folks: they create a buzz word, convince you that it exists, persuade you that you and/or your business needs it, and then convinces every person that they are so competent in the area that you can afford to pay them lots of cash to be your “Social Media Consultant”.
You know, he’s got a good point, although I do think he’s generalizing a bit. Greg’s not bashing the medium as a whole, though. He acknowledges that there are some people using the new tools smartly and effectively. However, he does spew a fair amount of bile towards people in the “make money online” and blog monetization segments of the world.
Whether or not you agree with his article, I think Greg brings up some excellent points and serves to put a bit of a reality check in place. If you’re new to social media and you have dreams of becoming rich and famous, or you know someone who is, I’d recommend that they read Greg’s article just to get some perspective. You don’t have to agree with him, but you should at least consider what he’s saying.
He has a lot of valid points. And yes, these “you must do it” and “your blog's goal is” posts are driving me up the wall.
At the same time there are positives to this whole movement and he did acknowledge a few people who are doing good work, so he didn't trash the whole thing.
Yes, people who don't get enamored with only one aspect of the whole thing do great things.
It's just too many people concentrate on the “we gonna make money easily” part.
The tools have improved a lot, but basically it's still the same thing: people talking with each other, using BBS, e-mail, IRC, IM, Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, whatever.
The basic goal remained the same as did the participants (i.e. human beings), the only thing changed are the tools. But he is right, social media appeared when two animals started to work together, and not when someone invented Twitter.
Amen