Sharing

Well, everything is shared now. 

It seems it’s not appropriate for you to listen to music online, check the news, watch a video or enjoy/consume/comment on anything via the internet without sharing that you have done so.  I have never before seen more companies wanting my Facebook login details so that as I do things with their services, they can post to my Facebook/twitter/pinterest/etc accounts that I have used them (and therefore gain free marketing in the process).  I can only guess this will increase in frequency as time rolls on.

A good example - I read some reviews of the new Australian TomTom navigation app for iPhone yesterday, and users were complaining about the requirements for linking your GPS travels to facebook and twitter – citing this as a “bolted on, not thought out feature that is useless and cumbersome”.

“David has filled up his car with ‘insert brand of premium unleaded’ petrol at ‘insert service station location’” status updates are not far away methinks.

To be honest, I am struggling a little with this hyper-sharing situation that I find myself in.  More than ever we know what others are up to, but somehow personally I seem less connected to a lot of these people.  Maybe I am personally reaching a saturation point with sharing services gagging to get my ‘business/personal information/contacts email addresses’.

I have found a number of times recently when catching up with good friends of mine, as they start telling me a story about their lives and I think ‘yep, I saw when you posted that on Facebook’. I also find myself talking about ‘things on the internet’ with people a lot – ‘have you seen that video/ad/viral campaign’?

I certainly see the benefits of having an all-encompassing platform for sharing – and it seems that Facebook is the king, never to be dethroned.  Everyone is on there, including myself, and everyone is posting via multiple platforms across multiple platforms.  I have friends who link their work twitter accounts to post on facebook, their instagram pictures are shared though facebook, their spotify music is shared on Facebook, and blogs (like this one!) too – it is getting a bit hectic.

I very good friend of mine is doing her PHD on digital/virtual communications (her blog is here http://virtualmusing.wordpress.com/), and asking some thought-provoking questions about how to manage/value/control our online interactions and persona's.

Perhaps I am finding the short term, big dollar, transient nature of some of these services/businesses challenging.  Does anyone actually use Foursquare?  Are people actually bothered with Groupon and really saving money?  Does anyone look at Pinterest sites and really get anything out of them that they can’t find on the numerous other similar services?

Is it possible that the internet is just a “massive distraction device” (trademark pending) that keeps us ‘busy’ doing not a lot, and keeps us more connected to marketing and consumption than is first apparent? I hope not - I still love it, but I think I need to go and sit out in the bush for a week and unplug….   :)

 

The Social Media Generation Gap

I had a chat with my Mum the other day about Facebook, and she mentioned a few times that she ‘just doesn’t get it’.

I made a few vague attempts to explain how I use it and how it benefits my life, but I stopped short of a full dissection of the ‘purpose’ of social media in today’s society because I realised that she probably still wouldn’t see the practical application of this as it relates to her life.

The reality is that the generational differences between my parents (group 1) and my collection of friends/colleagues/entrepreneurial workmates (group 2), and the way each group consumes information on a day-to-day basis could not be further apart.  For example, I spend the majority of my business day ‘on’ my laptop (when not fixing other peoples!), but when I finish work I am just as likely to keep using my computer for entertainment too – stream a movie, listen to music, communicate with friends online or some other personal project that requires the internet or a computer.  Even if I use my TV or Xbox, they are connected to the internet and can access YouTube, Facebook and other online services.

My parents would likely check their email, and use websites for their original purpose as a reference tool (say to check movie times), and that would probably be the extent of it.  Very little interaction, sharing or consumption.

She then asked about Twitter:

“What’s Twitter for?”

“It’s a micro blogging website.”

“What’s micro blogging?”

“It’s blogging (as in, a web log of some information), but you only have a small amount of characters for each post.”

“Why would you use it?”

“It is a compact way of sharing information, or keeping in touch with a large group of people who are interested in what you have to say or share. You can also follow people’s feeds - say there is someone you are interested in, like a radio announcer or whomever - you can follow them and see what they are blogging about.  Think of it a little bit like sending a text message, only that message is networked and will be received by a lot of people rather than just one.”

“What would they have to say with only a few words?”

“Well, generally they link to other things on the internet – such as a photo, or a blog of their writing, or a video or a news article, etc.”

It was at this point that I realised that if you never had any inclination or intention of ever being interested in the “photo, or blog of their writing, or video or news article” (or any of the millions of other pieces of content that are created and shared each day), then twitter would remain foreign to you (as it no doubt will to my Mum).

And that to me highlighted the vast differences in the way that I communicate and work, to the way my folks do.  Even if my Mum fully understood the workings of Facebook – ie, HOW it works and what people do on there, she would still not be able to grasp WHY people would do that and why they would bother.   She is not wrong by not getting on board, it’s just a rapid up-spring of revolutionary services and communication platforms that she wont ever use because she doesn’t access information, entertainment or communication in the same way as me.

I find this transformation of communication mediums fascinating – the internet and its evolution from ‘reference tool’ to ‘life sharing platform*’ (*patent pending) is an alien world to many people who look at it and think “What’s the point?”  

We all consume information and entertainment in different ways I suppose, and I concede it is very healthy to be asking "What's the point?" as new technologies and services emerge, as not all of them will have one (aside from making money for their owners....).

 
As a side point unrelated to social media – I received a delivery of a Yellow pages phone book to my house the other month.  I looked down at it and was amazed that we still print out the contents of an entire database into a book and deliver it to every home.  The energy wasted in executing such a task blows my mind when the digital equivalent is more up to date, more accessible, easier to search etc etc.  But of course, like my parents, there are still a lot of people who would use this mammoth book to find a phone number rather than googling it.

I haven’t used one in many years…