Social media is about to collapse
Or perhaps "implode" is the better term. It is going to fall apart as surely as the Internet 1.0 "dot bomb" era. I had it visually represented to me today while reading an online article. At the end was a "Share this" link. Usually you click on such links and you get four or five options - Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Reddit - the usual suspects. But this link has 333 (I counted) favicons you can click on to share the article. While not all of them are strictly "social media" (for ex., the Gmail link), most of them are in some form or another. And there is no way the majority of those are going to survive. There's no way even 10% of them are still going to be around to talk about in five years.
For your viewing pleasure, here are the four screen shots I had to take to capture them all:
Social media is dead. You heard it here first.
10 comments:
I don't think by any means social media is dead or likely to die anytime soon, but there will be an ELE just as you predict. The DotCom bust didn't end the internet or internet businesses, it just ended SOME of the mindless formation of short-lived internet businesses while ushering in the age of the online megabusinesses like Google that at there core can run their entire business without providing anything physical for their customer.
What we'll see are consolidations. Instead of Twit being 30 different social media entries, and things nobody has ever heard of showing up in these lists, we will see a simple "share" link that will be handled by browser preferences or plugins. A fresh browser will take you to a config screen with extreme deference toward the browser's parent company - Chrome, for example, will suggest Gmail, Buzz and their future acquisition Twitter, with a large "the rest" section that looks suspiciously like the Android market page for social media apps.
Social media isn't dead, but diversity doesn't live long in a system without dividers.
My first thought was this had to be a joke. But I know it's not.
I was talking to my kids the other day about the Egyptian couple who just named their daughter "Facebook". While I understand the relevance for the recent revolution, I told my kids that this girl will be spending most of her life explaining her name to people...because one day Facebook will go the way of Myspace. Probably before she is even old enough to understand the meaning of her name herself.
@Merennulli,
And that's partially what I meant, but was being provocative as usual to stir conversation (and it worked! :). However, I also starting to notice a backlash against social media, mostly along the lines of "I can't spend all my time on this $#!+." Which will also be part of the implosion - as people whittle it down to the one or two networks that mean the most to them (my votes - FB and Twitter, with LinkedIn a distant third).
The other analogy I thought of is "gold rush."
@Erin,
I concur in general, although right now it is hard to see FB not being one of the long-term players. Then again, as you point out, five years ago everyone woulda thought that was going to be MySpace.
This prediction coming from a guy who is still writing a "blog". You're so last year. ;-)
CH,
Ha! But then, I started blogging late, too. I don't blog to be cool. I blog as a writing exercise (that's longer than 140 characters).
Yeah, I still dig blogs (reading, not writing -- for now anyway). I think all the other stuff like Twitter (which I still do not and will not do) thinned out the blogging herd and left behind a pretty decent group of very thoughtful writers, present company included.
My reader is filled up daily with a wide variety of subjects, interests, and information. Many of them remind me of the daily columnists that were once the bread-and-butter of newspapers. (Talk about a dying medium, there's one for you. Throwing a dead tree stump stained with finger-blackening ink onto my driveway with stale information that's already in the archive pages on any website in the universe -- that's so last millenium.)
Magpie,
Thanks for stopping by and commenting! And yeah, social media does work - many of my "online friends" I met via blogging.
Grrr...I published Magpie's comment, commented on it, then went back to Gmail and clicked on the wrong link and DELETED her comment, and now I can't get it back! I wish Blogger had a trash can/recycle bin for this kind of stuff.
Amazing, what a whacky world cyberspace has become - a global village indeed, with everyone living next door at the end of a fibre -optics cable!
Dylan,
Indeed. I have friends from all over the world, many of whom I only know through "cyberspace." And I don't think that's so much a rarity any more.
Post a Comment