Dear people, aren't you fed up with it? The articles about 'the 10 best ways to use social media for brand recognition' or 'the Return on Investment of social media'? I am. And I wrote them myself.
Social media does not exist.
Yes, you heard me. Social media does not exist. I would like to explain this statement, but you will have to travel with me to the 1950s of the previous century. That was when the phenomenon of 'television' was introduced in the Netherlands. Your (grand)parents, together with all the children from the street, sat snugly huddled in front of a small, round screen that beamed the world into the living room in shades of gray. Well, "the world"? The first television broadcasts ( De Bonte Dinsdagavondtrein , Negen Heit de Klok ) were nothing more than the images from a camera, which were placed in a radio studio or theater. We did not yet really understand what television could really do, so we copied the media that we did understand.
The Varied Tuesday Evening Train
The Varied Tuesday Evening Train
And our media have been displaying this copycat behavior for as long as we have existed: the book was intended to make spoken texts easier to remember, the first cars were sold as “ horseless carriages ” and in its early years the Internet was also seen as, among other things, a digital city, a digital highway, a digital classroom.
There is nothing wrong with copycat behavior, but eventually a medium will have to develop its own authentic form. It does this under pressure from super-enthusiasts on the one hand, and critics on the other. At the end of this process, there are only two possible outcomes for a medium: a successful, authentic form, or a sad, inglorious death. Just ask Philips for “Video 2000”.
Many media did end well: the book eventually became a medium that did much more than just 'remember' spoken texts. Novels, poetry collections and biographies emerged. Radio developed radio plays and interaction with its listeners in the form of requesting records, television developed soaps and reality TV. These new developments ensured that the medium became authentic: it did things differently, better, faster than its predecessor. And although every generation thinks it is living in the golden age, I dare say it: we are currently in a truly unique era, because exactly the same thing is happening with the internet medium!
The internet not
We clearly recognize the two groups that have been at each other's throats since time immemorial: the super-enthusiasts and the critics. The first group sees every new site, app or tool as a phenomenon with the potential to change the world. The other group finds the medium extremely dangerous and/or pointless. Sound familiar? The Internet has been under fire in recent years, while at the same time it is being praised. It is said to be a safe haven for child molesters and receivers, but also to have unleashed the Arab revolution. The fact that we are currently seeing massive protests against legislative proposals that want to restrict the medium (SOPA, PIPA, ACTA) also says enough about the tension that currently exists between the two groups.
Protest against PIPA
Protest against PIPA
As we have seen, a medium develops authentic characteristics under pressure from these parties. And here we come to the heart of this story: what novels were to books, what soap operas were to television and what radio plays were to radio, social media are to the Internet.
The Internet has never been a pure broadcasting medium like TV and radio. It has also never been just a one-to-one communication tool, like the telephone. Yet we have used it that way for a long time. We sent (and send) ourselves silly! What is unique about the Internet, as we now know, is that it also produces many-to-many communication: a lot of people talk to a lot of people about a huge number of subjects. That is also how people want to use the Internet. And if the users want it, the medium will respond to that. Social media are simply an expression of the users' desire to use the Internet in its authentic form: they are the authenticity features of the medium. After all, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are not social, they simply facilitate the behavior that we all ask for. They give us the opportunity to express a cultural need.
Okay, take a breath. We’ve flown from the 1950s to the present, but let’s also take a look brother cell phone list at the future. If social media is the authenticity marker of the internet, where is it headed? The downside of predicting the future is that it almost never comes true. But I’m going to give it a try. Three times, actually!
1. Online pillarization
We see that various parties such as Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, understand that whoever controls the authentic medium will win the battle for dominance on the internet. After all: their current online revenue models (showing advertisements and praying on your bare knees that someone clicks on them, selling music to a generation that does not care about ownership, but about access, etc.) are going to collapse completely within a few years. They want your friends, your ideas, your media consumption and business documents on their servers, their devices, and in their stores. And in this they try to exclude each other. After all: if you use iCloud from Apple, you are less likely to buy a tablet from Microsoft. An iPad is a much more logical choice. Then you can easily synchronize your content, apps that you have purchased work on all your devices, and even your Apple headphones work better on Apple products. If you are a fan of Facebook, you are more likely to use the integrated Spotify for listening to and sharing music than Apple's variant: iTunes.
And so it goes on. One party is more aggressive in binding its users than the other, but the process is clear: we are at the beginning of an era of 'online pillarization': people will profile themselves based on the party that manages their online social life. " I am a Facebook boy " and " I am a Google girl ".
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