“Social media has become a tiresome hobby” complained a social media expert over coffee, “my heart is no longer in it.”
There’s been much hype about social media, if you listen to some people services like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest were going to revolutionise marketing and fundamentally change business.
Now the hype seems to be escaping from the social media industry as its practitioners, and the businesses who’ve embraced it, become exhausted with the long, hard grind of fighting a revolution.
This exuberance followed by exhaustion is fairly typical in the technology industry, consulting company Gartner describes it in their Hype Cycle, which shows how a new product goes a period of excitement, peaks and then tumbles into a trough of disillusionment.
It could be that social media is approaching that peak.
That’s not all bad news for social media, after a product falls into the trough of disillusionment, the technology matures and industry figures out how to best use the product.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates put it well when he said “in the short run we over-estimate the effects of technology, and in the long term we under-estimate the effects.”
Probably the best example of this process is the World Wide Web itself, the irrational exuberance drove the dot com boom which peaked at the turn of the century and then plummeted into the trough of disillusionment.
Companies like Amazon and Google who stayed the course through the dark days of 2002 and 2003 were richly rewarded when the market came good.
For the social media people who can stay the course through that dismal period they may not become as successful as Amazon and Google, but there’s good opportunities for those who survive.
In some ways, passing the peak of inflated expectations is good news. It means the hard work and adding value is just beginning.
Image from Gastonmag via sxc.hu
There’s a personal aspect to this too. Speaking as an early adopter of LinkedIn and Facebook, I’ve “committed suicide” on the latter after realising that social connections are much more than “liking” multimedia on a USA-hosted server.
LinkedIn still has value; their demographic advertising is powerful but I can see the product being diluted by Facebookisation of their service.
By the way, New Australian drinks evening at Four Pines is being arranged for March, see you there?
Yeah, LinkedIn’s an interesting beast for professional validation but you’re right in that they risk jumping the shark by becoming like Facebook.
I’ll be in for an evening of good beer and conversation at the Four Pines in March.
Social media still will be there in the long term. Technologies have already integrated. Search, social, apps, cloud computing, gestural tech, 3D printing, etc. For example, there are real-time integrated search apps that searches on content-posts, messages,etc from GMail, Salesforce, FB, Twitter, LinkedIN, etc. They are neither from the popular search or social networks. Kurrently is the top public one while Cue/Greplin and Kitedesk are the private ones. Kitedesk is even a document management app where files etc can be shared. Also, there are vertical and horizontal search engines like WINK which combine 40+ people search as well as social networks. Social media will still be there along with search, apps, etc but they would be integrating and already have for big data (IBM video shows that under Youtube) and also for content marketing.
Google Hangout which is part of Google+ does more than what Skype currently provides. With Google Hangout, can not only communicate face-to-face from any location including different countries, but can watch videos on any platform whether it be Youtube or any other video from any site, share documents and so on including having fun with friends and others with the animations. Skype is developing further due to Google Hangout and Skype is under Facebook. But, Facebook still leads as a conversational network. Why? Facebook has other apps like Soundcloud, Spotify as well as Docs app of MS which includes PDF as well-Microsoft’s cloud computing reply to Google Docs. Facebook also has a blogging area FB Notes though not as good as WordPress. FB also has different pages. FB would/could be the central platform for knowledge/library/entertainment/communication. Google+ I think has pages too but has to develop it like Twitter. Twitter is a real-time news platform though it doesn’t have its own blogging area and uses 3rd party blogging platforms like WordPress for its articles that are put as links. So, currently FB is the leading conversational platform which is also developing its search side. Then, LinkedIN – it’s the leading professional platform that’s focussing more on that area. So, social media would still exist but as a combination with search, apps & others for big data, content marketing & more.
Hi Paul, as a publisher of an IT trade mag I’m noticing more and more traffic coming from LinkedIn, with twitter going backwards.
The fact that LinkedIn is coming on so strongly could probably be graphed as a nice ‘inverse proportional’ to Australia’s productivity…other than public servants and recruiters, who seriously thinks it’s a good use of their time or their employer’s wages?
Social media contributes <4% of my site traffic, with our twice weekly eNewsletters contributing over 50% and this will rise dramatically as we transition to daily eNews…so yeah, for me at least, social media has proven to be a bit of a red herring, but fortunately having worked in the "dot com" industry 15-12 years ago, have always been dubious about the ROI and it's not something I've ever invested much time or money in. Sure, if I and invest a lot of time in it like many other journos do quite well, I'm sure I could improve my impact through the various social media platforms, but at what cost and what benefit? Chance of a tweet getting seen let alone clicked on is shrinking by the day, yet I read this article because of an email that I'll physically have to file or delete at some point – says it all really!
Hi Simon, it’s interesting how Twitter and Facebook are changing on this. I find LinkedIn’s suggested stories are quite relevant so their algorithm works, their problem is I’ve read most of the stories before they appear on LinkedIn.
Again, this is a function of the relative immaturity of social media, it’s early days yet and everyone is trying to figure out how it works properly.
In addition to above, here is the content marketing institute site (industry leader) – http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/ and the top 100 content marketing examples – http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/education/ultimate-ebook-100-content-marketing-examples/
they include search, social, etc