Last week Google launched their business Pages function for Google+, which required a business owner to type in almost identical information to the parallel Google Places service.
In the same week Facebook turned off RSS feeds into their status updates, meaning that new pages added to a website now have to be manually entered into Facebook. Tumblr did the same some time ago.
Across the social media industry, the various services are asking users to manually enter updates and details into each platform under the belief that unique user generated content will increase the value of their sites.
That’s all very good for the sites but for those using several services it’s becoming a tiresome chore.
One of the biggest barriers to social media adoption – particularly among time pressed small business owners – is the time involved in maintaining these different services. With the exception of Twitter, most of the services are trying to increase people’s time on their platforms.
For social media services the key measures of how much time users spend on the site is becoming a game of diminishing returns, people have only so much time in the day or so much inclination to spend a large chunk of their free time online.
As the burden of maintaining a digital footprint increases and the value proposition becomes less compelling, particularly as the privacy costs becomes more apparent, more people are finding it all too hard.
Social media services are going to have to show some value for the investment in time and the privacy costs incurred by users, it may well be that many just don’t offer a good enough deal.
Leave a Reply