Long before "social media" and "Web 2.0" became common terms, many media professionals were expressing open contempt for the "amateurs" they thought were polluting the Internet with substandard garbage. The "pros" fervently desired to continue the "we publish, you consume" model upon with traditional media had been built. Some cling to that mindset even today.
I had an entirely different reaction -- fear. While generally I agreed with my colleagues that 90% of blogs sucked (of course, you could make that 90% argument about almost anything), I knew the other 10% represented a threat to our livelihoods. If a smart person with blogging software could publish entertaining and/or insightful content for
free, what did that mean to the journalists whose paychecks depended in large part on their status as official members of the cloistered Fourth Estate? We've been finding that out over the past several years.
The impact of social media, of course, extends far beyond its effect on journalists and media companies. It's changing our culture, says Clay Shirky, author of
Here Comes Everyone. Shirky discussed these changes in his keynote speech at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose this week. From
InternetNews:
[I]n the 1990s, the prevailing wisdom was most people spent hours
watching television because they liked it. Shirky doesn't deny that the TV
remains a popular pastime, but said the rise of social media shows
people also want to produce and interact with content.
"Sometimes we like to produce, sometimes we like to share, but
we didn't have media that let us do that" until now.
With the rise of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and other social networks, Shirky said the media landscape is increasing in both size and visibility.
Not to mention complexity. Everything has become interconnected. You no longer have to go to YouTube to watch a video. A blogger or web site can offer any YouTube video -- not a link, but the actual video -- by embedding code (offered by YouTube) on their blog or site. They can offer readers a chance to comment and debate or to click on any number of social networking icons (Digg, StumbleUpon, reddit, etc.) in order to potentially share the content with millions of other people who hadn't visited the site and thus never would have seen the content.
It's scary to some, confusing to many. But to me the rise and proliferation of social media is both fascinating and beneficial (the likes of Perez Hilton aside) to society. The revolution is here, folks, and it's not over yet.
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