{"id":1054,"date":"2023-03-07T22:33:40","date_gmt":"2023-03-07T22:33:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2023-03-23T09:57:03","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T09:57:03","slug":"it-is-no-longer-ok-to-proclaim-social-media-as-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/it-is-no-longer-ok-to-proclaim-social-media-as-new\/","title":{"rendered":"It Is No Longer OK To Proclaim Social Media As New"},"content":{"rendered":"

Must we go through this\u00a0every\u00a0<\/em>year? Social media is\u00a0still<\/em>\u00a0not new. It wasn\u2019t new\u00a0last year. Or the\u00a0year before. In fact, it\u00a0hasn\u2019t been new\u00a0for well over a decade. The web was social from day one, even if the term was popularized later on.<\/p>\n

Marketers and media: if the notion of a social form of media is \u201cnew\u201d to you, you\u2019re asleep at the wheel. It might even be time to seek a new profession.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve gone through these arguments repeatedly since we started this site, but let\u2019s go ahead and dig up some quotes as a friendly reminder:<\/p>\n

As technology blogger Steven Hodson\u00a0notes:<\/p>\n

Just because we slap a new term and some soothing pastel web pages together it doesn\u2019t invalidate what came before it. It doesn\u2019t change the fact that we have been socializing on the web long before someone invented the marketing term of social media. It sometimes seems though that the tech world has this inbreed need to proclaim something as new and totally different than what came before when in fact this isn\u2019t the case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the same post, also cited is a quote from MIT professor credited with inventing the web\u00a0Tim Berners-Lee:<\/p>\n

The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect \u2013 to help people work together \u2013 and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner. What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is of the sort we intend.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So when I stumble upon posts like this\u00a0recent one\u00a0by Alfred Hermida\u00a0at Nieman Journalism Lab it is frustrating to say the least. The author inaccurately proclaims:<\/p>\n

Social media is largely still seen as a new, shiny entrant into the world of media.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But is it? Who actually views social media as new anymore? Are there really so many of these individuals left? The author offers no evidence here or links as context other than his own opinion.<\/p>\n

I actually think it is no longer OK to proclaim or position social media as being new, or even seen as new. It\u2019s just not a correct statement and is simply making excuses for those not paying attention to the evolution of the digital landscape over the last decade-plus. Or it\u2019s made by those trying to\u00a0hawk their snake oil software \/ services as if it\u2019s some marketing or media panacea. It\u2019s not helpful or accurate.<\/p>\n

Further, the author\u2019s post itself is interesting, but it is hardly an original observation. I knew I recognized the perspective from somewhere: it\u2019s from Kevin Kelly\u2019s\u00a0New Rules for the New Economy.<\/p>\n

From Hermida\u00a0(last week)<\/p>\n

Technologies reach their full potential when we forgot about the novelty. Instead they become boring and blend into the background. How often do we think about the technology behind the telephone, or the television set in our living room?<\/p>\n

With any luck, this is what will happen with social media. Social media tools and services will be so ingrained within our everyday experiences that we forget that they are such recent developments.<\/p>\n

Essentially, the technology will become invisible as we shape it to meet our political, social, and cultural needs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From Kevin Kelly\u00a0(originally published\u00a0in 1998<\/em>)<\/p>\n

As technology becomes ubiquitous it also becomes invisible. The more chips proliferate, the less we will notice them.\u00a0The more networking succeeds, the less we\u2019ll be aware of it.<\/p>\n

\u2026Computer technology is undergoing the same disappearance. If the information revolution succeeds, the standalone desktop computer will eventually vanish. Its chips, its lines of connection, even its visual interfaces will submerge into our environment until we are no longer conscious of their presence (except when they fail).\u00a0As the network age matures, we\u2019ll know that chips and glass fibers have succeeded only when we forget them.\u00a0Since the measure of a technology\u2019s success is how invisible it becomes, the best long-term strategy is to develop products and services that can be ignored.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good observations, not denying that. But unfortunately none of it is original or new. Neither is social media \u2026and if it is for you, I wouldn\u2019t go around shouting that. Instead, I\u2019d get caught up: whether you\u2019re on the marketing or media side of the fence, it\u2019s\u00a0your job<\/em>\u00a0to get this stuff and be the ones pushing things, not lost or scrambling to catch up.<\/p>\n

If you still think it\u2019s OK to call social media new, you might also think it\u2019s OK for congress to\u00a0still\u00a0not understand the internet. Neither are right, both a bit shameful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Must we go through this\u00a0every\u00a0year? Social media is\u00a0still\u00a0not new. It wasn\u2019t new\u00a0last year. Or the\u00a0year before. In fact, it\u00a0hasn\u2019t been … <\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz","category-digital-marketing-and-pr","resize-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1055,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bursucretleri.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}