With Twitter continuing its rise in popularity and all our long lost friends and ex-boyfriends/girlfriends "friending" us on Facebook, I'd say that social media has finally reached mainstream America. No, it's not widespread in terms of the majority of Americans using it, but it has come a long way in the past few years and is now attracting people who had once refused to join MySpace because they thought it was for teenagers.
Since hanging up my dance shoes well over a decade ago to work in tech, technology and social media have been woven into the fabric of my daily life. Tech gadgets and social media apps are tools that help me in my everyday life to be more efficient in work and play, so I love how the social Web has made technology more mainstream than ever to the point our long lost friends are surfacing and reconnecting with us.
Much of this reconnecting is occurring on Facebook, which not too long ago was a social networking community specifically for college students. Facebook has since evolved into a place for "old fogies" as Lev Grossman recently wrote in his Time magazine article "Why Facebook Is for Old Fogies." I have to admit that there is truth in what Grossman writes, not too mention, it's pretty humorous, too.
But I'd add it's also become a platform to pimp our latest products, events, pics, videos, etc., because self promotion is the name of the game. Whether people are aware of it or not, with every tweet, status update, picture posted, event attended, etc., we are all building, changing, improving, or even eroding, our personal brand (aka reputation). This is something I'm acutely aware of and sometimes struggle with in terms of self-censorship.
There are swarms of other social networking communities beyond MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, but as of last month those three remained in the top spots, with Facebook surpassing MySpace for the first time. I must admit, I have never really liked Facebook and I don't spend too much time on it, which is why I love that FriendFeed aggregates my social Web activity into my newsfeed in Facebook. It keeps my Facebook profile page fresh with current activity without me having to be on Facebook. That's one element that I love about social aggregation apps, such as FriendFeed.
For all of you who are somewhat new to social networking and Facebook, don’t be too gushing over it all because there are drawbacks. Today, I read a post on AdRANTs, which gave me one more reason to hate on Facebook. The post points out that Facebook revised its TOS, which now entitles Facebook to "own all your content forever and ever and they can do anything they want with it forever and ever." For more, read Misguided Intent + Lawyers = Social Media Disaster by Steve Hall.
I do love reconnecting with old friends and that mainstream America is jumping into the social media fray, but what I hope everyone quickly realizes is that there are so many more communities and apps beyond Facebook and that they give them a try.
And on the tech side of things, I hope Facebook continues its effort to be more open. Facebook Connect and the recent release of its Status API are steps in the right direction, but time will tell how these initiatives fare. As for Twitter, its founders (Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams) are quickly losing ground by waiting to find and implement a business model. If they wait too long it will cost them greatly. I'm a huge fan and user of Twitter and do hope that they take action before it’s too late.
For my own amusement let me end this post with these tag lines, which point to how I feel about each: MySpace, "a place for music" (I believe at one point this was a real tagline for MySpace Music). Facebook, "a place for old fogies" (c’mon, admit it, that’s pretty funny and becoming more true with every new FB user). And Twitter, "a place where you can wreck your personal brand in 140 characters" (a friendly reminder to myself to be careful with what I tweet).
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