Vacation (or, what would your mother Twitter?)

By John Whiteside | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Summer is here. Up north in the land of my childhood, that means hot - sometimes really hot - days giving way to cool evening. Here in Houston it means that weather is over and we’re in a state of permanent liquid air. And thoughts turn, of course, to vacation.

I’ve been on vacation lately, but not the “let’s go to the beach!” kind - I’ve been on a social media vacation. It was unplanned; I got busy. I’d forget to run Twhirl in the morning and it would be lunchtime and I’d think, “I haven’t been on Twitter at all today!” Then when I did have a look, Twitter’s ongoing infrastructure issues made it a pain in the neck.

I looked at Google Reader one morning, saw an unpleasantly high number of unread items, and then spent half an hour mercilessly pruning my subscription list.

I was pretty busy, so after a day of work, I found that my interest in reading more blogs or checking in on Twitter was not high. I read a few books: a collection of stories by Margaret Atwood, the new David Sedaris, a fun romp from Christopher Moore.

I turned off IM a lot because it was distracting.

I’m not renouncing any of it; it’s all useful. This did make me think a bit about life with and without social media, particularly the most interruptive types. And I realized that there are some benefits to ignoring it all. Downsides, too.

This led to two thoughts:

  1. Social media can be quite addictive, and it’s worth taking a little time for some conscious reflection on how you want it to fit into your routine. 
  2. What will social media look like across the chasm? 
That gets into something that I’ve talked about in my last few public speaking gigs. The concept of “crossing the chasm” really does apply to social media. As I scan the various marketing and communications blogs I follow, I read a lot about how people use social media and how marketers should use them in a complementary way. I wonder, though, if all of this is going to be outdated very quickly. 
Why? Because social media haven’t crossed the chasm. Much of our understanding of social media comes from watching (and being) early adopters: the people who are on Twitter all day. The people who use Brightkite to let everybody know that they’re at the Starbucks in the Galleria. 
We are not the general public. We are not most people’s moms (or brothers or sisters or kids). And our behavior, preferences, and demands are likely to be quite different from the behavior, preferences, and demands of the next wave of adopters. 
I’ve already heard some complaints about people not using social media correctly. And these are generally thoughtful complaints. However, I think what constitutes “correct” use of social media remains to be seen, because we don’t really know what the norms of users will be. For marketers, this means that there are some clear guidelines for use of social media now… but it would be wise to expect them to change in unexpected ways. 
We know less than we think. How will the average user of social media make them part of her life in 2013? I’m not sure, but I bet it won’t look much like what early adopters are doing in 2008. 

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Topics: social media

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