In the tech economy, in the last five years we have produced very little that actually makes any of our lives better. Twitter is cute, but economically unproductive. Ditto Friendfeed. Ditto (fill in the blank with your favorite social media platform). These products are economically neutral. And that is not a good thing. To those of you that would argue with me on this point, I defy you to explain the real world economic value/impact of the social media revolution. How does it help increase the real world GDP even one little tiny bit. I dare you. I double dare you. You can’t do it. Because if all of it went away, the world would be the same the next day. And I don’t want to hear any crap about how we are going to “figure it out”. The time for figuring out how to create value out of economically unproductive concepts has passed.
Hank Williams on his blog “Why does everything suck?”
Anyway; the metaphysical otherness of web 2.o; it truly is bound up in ethereal non-specificity!
Okay most social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace are economically neutral, but that`s perhaps because they are closed social habitats; contained, linear and dependent upon a traditional & therefore traffic fed advertising model. This is obviously a catch 22 for them and hard to resolve both technically and economically – membership dependent and selling poor quality, non personalised interference and static – these sites feel hideously outmoded already but, no-one knows quite how to step up to the next rung.
If only they could all talk to each other simultaneously…
Nevertheless as Hank implies social media isn`t a failure if used properly to create real world changes. Perhaps the value, though not fiscal, lies in the creation of networks that champion the voice of the customer and in doing so place them over and above that of the sponsor? In this sense advertising will surely become controlled by choice, as networks will eventually become open and controlled my their consituents rather than a company.
