Contrasting two recent posts here at the Happy Accident – Reading Blogs (and Still Having Time to Work) and photos of To-Be-Read Piles – sure illustrates that at least some of the issues we confront with social media really aren’t new to us, even if the technology is.
Sometimes What’s New is Old (and Vice Versa)
The availability of content on the web, plus social media’s ability to highlight and create more daily, magnifies the issue of having too much to read, to be sure, but the challenges and solutions aren’t new: we have to make choices in blog reading just like we’ve always done in book and magazine and newspaper reading.
Similarly, dealing with email, Twitter, and Facebook is not that dissimilar from dealing with phone calls and letters and other offline communication – it’s all about figuring out how to manage your time and coming up with priorities that work for you.
We get a lot of handy tools online to help with these tasks – blog readers, Facebook’s ability to create separate lists of friends, and ways to create detailed searches for information so we can eliminate noise as just three examples.
Still, at the end of the day, the issues themselves aren’t new nor is what we’re hoping to accomplish by dealing with the issues. So, it stands to reason that if this true for the challenges, it is also true for the positives.
A Positive is a Positive
In terms of promotion, for example, if you get your name, business, book title or whatever in front of hundreds of thousands of eyeballs offline (and not for doing something horrible, of course), that’s always been considered a positive… even if you can’t track specifically how it’s helped you that very moment.
So, getting in front of people online should also be viewed as a positive, even if you can’t measure the immediate impact and even if that impact is not exactly the same from place to place.
Yes, there are many differences in the two worlds, but the consistent factor from one realm to the other is that we’re all humans, dealing with many of the same issues, actions, and reactions we’ve always dealt with before.
For me, at least, approaching the online world from that vantage point makes it familiar and gives me a framework for approaching what goals I set and how I hope to reach them.
A New Way to Roll
Of course, folks who know me won’t be surprised to hear that I view the social web as a place where so much is possible for everyone, with much of it more possible… and easier… than offline.
Yet if you go out there without understanding that it’s not a world based on technology but rather on people, relationships, and the choices we all make, then it probably won’t seem very friendly to you nor, I suspect, will it be helpful to reaching whatever your goals are. And that, I’d suggest, is true offline, too.
In other words, the social web isn’t re-inventing the wheel: it’s just giving us a new way to roll.
The photo at the top of the post is of Josef Cadek’s Locust concept bike (in the process of folding up to a size not much bigger than one wheel).
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for an insightful post! I have to admit, your take on it does make me feel warmer towards the online social media. As part of the generation which did not “grow up with” the Internet until the teen years, the online world can still seem foreign to me–even though I know how to navigate it and use it all the time! But your article has helped me to think of it as just another form of communication, like the telephone and letter, which were so much a part of my childhood interactions.
The only thing I find “unfriendly” about it, to use your terms, is the ease with which online conversations can turn nasty. People engaged in online disagreements or misunderstandings often become verbally vicious more quickly than they would in real life, because they feel “protected” by that buffer of the computer screen–even if they’re posting comments in an environment where everyone knows who they are. Also, misunderstandings are easier online, where everything is limited to the written word and the reader’s interpretation of those words.
But I suppose every form of communication has its drawbacks. (The letter and the postage stamp, for instance, were not near as fast as Facebook messages!) The Internet brings us many good opportunities!
Rachel Heston Davis
Up and Writing
http://www.rachelhestondavis.wordpress.com
That is a great analogy, Greg. Until Hal takes over the world (and I guess even if he does) it still starts and ends with people and relationships. Did I mention I love your analogy? (just coming full circle – It’s late, I’m tired, the defenses are weakening).
Thanks, Terry. I’ve been thinking about all this area a lot lately and was also happy with the analogy. I do think a lot of people have unnecessary fear of social media because of mis-understanding, not because of what it really is. Mind you, I understand technology as a barrier… but more often than not, I’m finding, it’s not the real issue.
Rachel – there are definitely some who are emboldened by the once-removed aspect of the online world. Also, anonymity is so much easier online as well. And yes, to some extent miscommunication is easier… though the ability to quickly correct miscommunication is also easier!
In a community online, reputation and community action can help with a lot of the above situations, as well, though it takes time to build a strong, connected community (just like offline!). For that matter, it takes time to build up a reputation. But once you do, well, like on Ebay it takes more than one or two people saying you done something bad to change the overall view. Doesn’t mean that we individuals don’t have to deal with the upsetting/annoying actions, of course, but in many cases there’s surprising support.
There are definitely tradeoffs, though….