Just for context, please remember that there is actual precedent for creating value for people with technology. Think of word processors, databases, spreadsheets, web browsers, web publishing, search engines, email, etc. Social media is the first major computing revolution that as far as I can tell, has produced essentially nothing. But the social media craze is perfectly fitting in a society where producing nothing has been in fashion for years. Mortgages without credit. Profit without product. Riches without risk. Oops.
Why Does Everything Suck on Social Media
30 September 2008
28 May 2008
The people who create social media content; the bloggers, the twitterers, the commenters, the youtubers, the flickrers, etc, etc are doing this for a reason. Feedback. And without their content, none of these companies would have a business. So it’s time for aggregation to work two-way. You can suck it out. But you have to pump it back too.
A VC on Social Content
30 April 2008
Scores of bloggers, lots of video blogging and 198 employees on Twitter help keep the company’s profile high and humanize the folks behind the shoe sales. Of all the different types of social media the company uses, none are as interesting as its use of Twitter. Twitter may sound cliche, but it’s not just about Twitter as one single service. Twitter is symbolic of rapid, short, synchronous and public conversations. Zappos has bitten off a big chunk of that paradigm.
ReadWriteWeb on Zappos
30 March 2008
Alas, there are no more boundaries any more between such “species.” On the Internet, a cat is a dog is a Snuffleupagus. It’s all inbred. All media is social and all social is media. End of story. Whether content is created by the Pros or the Joes it all has influence, even if it’s small.
Micro Persuasion on Social Media
26 March 2008
Social media including ustream, Qik, Twitter, Ning, Facebook, and your blog are the MOST important things you can do to grow and market a startup company I’m convinced. Instead of hiring a PR firm I suggest hiring bloggers and social active folks.
Jason Calacanis on Social Media
24 March 2008
We need to seriously knock this off.
I logged into SocialThing and saw that a friend posted a link about a neat architectural concept. I was about to reply, until I saw that I couldn’t. What I would have been replying to, was his Facebook status, which was really, a Twitter post, piped over to Facebook, and slurped into SocialThing.
It has gotten out of control. How do we fix this?
Eric Rice on Social Networks
28 February 2008
Perhaps social media presents a clear and present danger to SEO? I mean, when social news sites can easily outrank original source documents — and you’re the author of that document — what, sit back and suck it up?
Danny Sullivan (Commenter) on SEO
8 February 2008
Our attention is stretched so thin these days that there are times when I have actually tried to register for what I thought was a new service only to realize later that I already had an account — it just got lost in the shuffle. With so many new web sites and services vying for our attention it is easy to feel the effects of social media fatigue.
ReadWriteWeb on Social Media Fatigue