Today, at a time when Facebook announced passing 200 million members, there are still people who think that social networking sites and tools are a fad, an irritation, a waste of time. It doesn’t matter what you tell them: you can mention the role of such sites and tools in the Obama campaign, in the Mumbai terrorist attack, in challenging repressive regimes, in humdrum daily work. They don’t care, all this is just a waste of time. Just like e-mail was, and mobile phones, and BlackBerries. Just like computers were before that. Or for that matter the telephone.
None of them will read this. So I’m not writing it for them.
I’m writing this for you. Because we can show them that there is undeniable value in social networking sites. By using them to raise money for good causes.
Like this one: Gimme Shelter. Let’s show them.
At some point I think people switch from a consumption mindset and instead desire to create things.
What consumption-focused people see is inane blabber,. the never ending clanging of a million status updates.
What many of us see however is a place and a community in which we can create. Sometimes we create small things, like a status update, but other times we create bigger and more significant thing.
There will always be those who prefer to consume however, and perhaps one thing that will happen is that we might find a way for them to consume what is produced by the larger group, but in some sort of curated, less noisy, manner.
I think we were born to create, not consume passively. And somehow we’ve lost that during the last three social revolutions, agrarian, industrial and service-related. So maybe we’re slowly getting back to the way we used to be, but with better tools.
I have nominated you for the Lemonade Award! Please see:
http://cuckooscall.blogspot.com/2009/04/sweet-lemonade.html
chutki
Obama could not have won without Facebook, or rather its stripped down version BarackObama.com in whose creation one of the Facebook founders played a role.
And the guy is now the most powerful person on earth. So tell me, where do I press the button!
P.S. Where do I vote for your Lemonade Award, whatever that is, I hope it is on a positive note.
I can see where these people are coming from with relation to facebook and social networks being fads, but I think they missing the point.
I think the extras and the frilly bits of social networking like blot on applications for example, grow your own garden, poke, super poke, mega poke, giga poke and all the other poking you can think of is a fad and in my option, clouds the true essence of what these tools are about. The core of social networking is the communication, the connections the way that everyone is so accessible with everyone else, that is not a fad and utilised in the right way is a really powerful tool. I mean they’ve even developed a new type of science on networking.
I truly believe these people are not looking at the core of what social networking is, or they are just trying to be controversial and get a bit of attention.