Don't answer that, it was a rhetorical question. I could just as easily have titled this is spam killing some of the big social media sites. If you use LinkedIn and participate in any of the groups on the site, you have to have noticed that the discussion section in many groups has been overtaken with self promotion. I believe that the founding fathers of LinkedIn intended the discussions to be legitimate questions that folks were looking to have answered or at least relevant topics that would seek input from the group. By definition a rhetorical question is not really seeking input. Not to single out LinkedIn either, Facebook is just as bogged down with posts that add no real value.
Social media works much like society. Social networking sites start up with a general concept and purpose and there are usually initial societal "rules" sometimes written and many times un-written that govern behavior of the members. The original founders of a social media site get to play god, king and president to a certain degree. They can allow a narrow range of freedom for the users resulting in a dictatorial society or they can be much more loose about enforcement of rules, if they even have rules at all. Those of us who live in the US tend to think of dictatorships as bad, but in the cyber world, neither approach is inherently bad. A dictatorial site where the founders/owners/management exert tight control actually tend to stay more true to their original purpose and function. The downside being this approach limits the growth and appeal of a particular site which many folks see as bad because everyone wants to create the next Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn internet success story, which is really a numbers game of having the most people signed up and theoretically visiting your site on a regular basis.
In the real world, dictatorships tend to be frowned on because of the high cost, and in some cases complete inability, to relocate. In the cyber world relocation is a "mouse click" away. If you don't like a particular "society" in social media, then you just leave and never return. You have the freedom to maintain your "citizenship" wherever you please.
If a particular social site does not have a dictatorial management, then it will often fall to the members to self police themselves and others. The self policing or lack there of, can in fact determine the relative success of any site. The basic question is are you getting value from a site. Value may be monetary in that you find new customers, clients or products. Value may be emotional that you enjoy the social interaction. You may simply find entertainment or informational value from a particular site.
There is always a cost, even if it is just your time, to using a social media site, so the proposition is that the value (benefit) you receive needs to out weigh the cost. One of the costs of social media today is enduring a certain amount of spam. I never knew there was such a need for search engine optimization and that there were so many experts in the field, until I started spending some serious time with LinkedInand Twitter. Despite what many will say I often find the value proposition to Twitter is easier to justify than LinkedIn and Facebook, because the spam is so much easier to ignore on Twitter.
Obviously the three big have a lot of traffic and really don't do much to police the amount of self promotion that goes on at their sites. I find it interesting that social media sites that appeal to a younger demographic tend to be better at "self-policing". BrazenCareerist and Under30CEO definitely trend toward a younger crowd and the expectation there is that you are adding value to the discussion. I actually got called-out for a post on one of those sites as being too spammy. In my defense, I was answering the question "what do you do", but when I re-read my response, my accuser was right. I had just regurgitated my 15 second elevator speech and totally missed an opportunity to add some value to the discussion. A mistake I quickly corrected.
Social media is constantly evolving, but I can say that just looking back at 2009 in review I believe the "cost" of using LinkedIn and Facebook has gone up for me in just 12 months. As a result I find that I spend less time with each of those sites. Where I used to read every email digest from LinkedIn groups, I now find myself sometimes just deleting the email because I am too busy to bother. With Facebook, I would immediately respond to every message back in January, now I screen those messages and find that I delete more than I actually respond to.
I can't say if I will ever abandon those sites, but it seems my usage of them has evolved rather quickly and I am spending less time living in their society than I did a year ago. If I am an average social media user, someday LinkedIn really may choke on those rhetorical questions.
Social media works much like society. Social networking sites start up with a general concept and purpose and there are usually initial societal "rules" sometimes written and many times un-written that govern behavior of the members. The original founders of a social media site get to play god, king and president to a certain degree. They can allow a narrow range of freedom for the users resulting in a dictatorial society or they can be much more loose about enforcement of rules, if they even have rules at all. Those of us who live in the US tend to think of dictatorships as bad, but in the cyber world, neither approach is inherently bad. A dictatorial site where the founders/owners/management exert tight control actually tend to stay more true to their original purpose and function. The downside being this approach limits the growth and appeal of a particular site which many folks see as bad because everyone wants to create the next Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn internet success story, which is really a numbers game of having the most people signed up and theoretically visiting your site on a regular basis.
In the real world, dictatorships tend to be frowned on because of the high cost, and in some cases complete inability, to relocate. In the cyber world relocation is a "mouse click" away. If you don't like a particular "society" in social media, then you just leave and never return. You have the freedom to maintain your "citizenship" wherever you please.
If a particular social site does not have a dictatorial management, then it will often fall to the members to self police themselves and others. The self policing or lack there of, can in fact determine the relative success of any site. The basic question is are you getting value from a site. Value may be monetary in that you find new customers, clients or products. Value may be emotional that you enjoy the social interaction. You may simply find entertainment or informational value from a particular site.
There is always a cost, even if it is just your time, to using a social media site, so the proposition is that the value (benefit) you receive needs to out weigh the cost. One of the costs of social media today is enduring a certain amount of spam. I never knew there was such a need for search engine optimization and that there were so many experts in the field, until I started spending some serious time with LinkedInand Twitter. Despite what many will say I often find the value proposition to Twitter is easier to justify than LinkedIn and Facebook, because the spam is so much easier to ignore on Twitter.
Obviously the three big have a lot of traffic and really don't do much to police the amount of self promotion that goes on at their sites. I find it interesting that social media sites that appeal to a younger demographic tend to be better at "self-policing". BrazenCareerist and Under30CEO definitely trend toward a younger crowd and the expectation there is that you are adding value to the discussion. I actually got called-out for a post on one of those sites as being too spammy. In my defense, I was answering the question "what do you do", but when I re-read my response, my accuser was right. I had just regurgitated my 15 second elevator speech and totally missed an opportunity to add some value to the discussion. A mistake I quickly corrected.
Social media is constantly evolving, but I can say that just looking back at 2009 in review I believe the "cost" of using LinkedIn and Facebook has gone up for me in just 12 months. As a result I find that I spend less time with each of those sites. Where I used to read every email digest from LinkedIn groups, I now find myself sometimes just deleting the email because I am too busy to bother. With Facebook, I would immediately respond to every message back in January, now I screen those messages and find that I delete more than I actually respond to.
I can't say if I will ever abandon those sites, but it seems my usage of them has evolved rather quickly and I am spending less time living in their society than I did a year ago. If I am an average social media user, someday LinkedIn really may choke on those rhetorical questions.
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I found this an interesting read from the perspective that if there is a growing belief that social media is becoming more and more a platform for self-promotion, then isn't it doing exactly what it is designed to do?
ReplyDeleteAs a "40" something year old who runs a small business in Australia (and yes, I am aware that I am starting to self promote right now!!!) the last reason I engage in social media discussions is to just "chat about nothing" - I closely monitor discussions with like minded people and comment on discussions close to my heart, particularly from a business perspective, with a view to promoting my business when the opportunity presents itself.
This is no different to any other social interaction I participate in - I enjoy and look forward to the banter of personal interaction, but if the opportunity presents itself to promote my services I will go straight into "work" mode and do so with passion!!!
To be truthful I hope the "marketing" aspect of the social media world gets more defined - if the day ever comes when I am following a social media discussion on "finance" or "bookkeeping", or "accounting" and only read posts on these subjects and not some other "post" by someone trying to raise a totally irrelevent topic, then the social media platform will be as "perfect" as it can be from my perspective.
I hope my comments contribute to this discussion.
Kind regards
Dean Allan
MYbookkeeping Services
www.mybookkeepingservices.com.au
(who is proud to promote his website at the end of this post!!! LOL)