Social Media: An invitation to banality
Web 2.0 is hailed as the democratization of communication. The sheer mass of user generated content and the proliferation of tools and applications facilitating the creation and posting of this material in the virtual world has handed control of message dissemination to the masses (read “consumer.”) This has sent a spasm of strategic renovation down the spine of corporate marketers everywhere, as well it should. Brands and their meanings have always been a two way conversation; it was just that brand managers are like your ex: they don’t listen and just kept talking over you.
I don’t mind the democratization of brand evolution. What I am looking forward to is the evolution of Web 2.0 to Web 2.1 or probably Web 2.5. While Voltaire’s beliefs regarding freedom of expression may be summarized as, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” I can assure you I am not prepared to suffer even a scratch for most of the execrable content generated by internet users. The success of Web 2.0 is that it has freed information and empowered online users. The failure is that much of the content of blogs, MySpace rooms, Facebook pages, Linked In profiles, You Tube videos, photostream albums and the like is rubbish.
What this has done for the world of discourse is to ensure that mediocrity, triviality, superficiality and banality are the measures of quality.
And ironically I find myself blogging about it …
There is a golden opportunity for the virtual equivalent of an exponentially rapid illustration of Darwin’s principles of survival of the fittest or, rather, survival of the most precise, meaningful, rewarding, intelligent and articulate. Roll on Web 2.5.
Written by Stuart
David Day | Associates
About the Author: Stuart is constantly curious and believes conversation matters, for business, people and community. Feel free to join in...
March 23rd, 2009 at 9:41 pm
[...] made in this Twouble with Twitters video. We, too, made the point in this BrandFlakes blog entry, Social Media: An Invitation to Banality, that a large amount of social media content is quotidian and mundane. Undeniably, however, there [...]