In my early 20’s I hid from the world long enough to earn a Master’s Degree in Marketing because I thought it was interesting and a great bargain at only $13,000 (especially in today’s market). While I was learning clever new ways to trick the world into believing that things you had for sale added value to your life, I was introduced to the Internet, or at least to Prodigy. This happened one night during my Marketing Strategy class. Prodigy at the time was awesome!! You could download a static weather map IN COLOR in less than 10 minutes!! News articles took slightly less time so that was even more convenient. I was hooked on the idea and my diabolical mind began to consider other unimaginable uses like library catalog card searches, encyclopedia searches and YouTube. The last item was obviously a stupid idea so I focused my imagination on things like on-line phone listings. Some day you could look up a phone book on-line – that would be useful.
As I pondered the possibilities of Prodigy, I was a little overwhelmed by the whole idea of broad based information available on demand. What if this technology fell into the wrong hands, like Disney? The potential for exploitation and career abuse of our “tweenagers” would seem to be a likely evolution. While this exploitation might help fuel our economy in the healthcare segment through an increase in referrals for in-patient, juvenile drug dependency, it seemed to me that the boundaries of such power might get ahead of our ability to control it.
At some point in my graduate education, I was introduced to the lifecycle for technology adoption. Lifecycles exist for almost every product or service. Restaurants (another area in my professional background) are as notorious as fashion movements for having steep curves and violent retreats in their adoption by prospective users/customers. At the time of my post-graduate studies, the lifecycle for technology was rather new but was believed to contain the same basic categories as other lifecycle models. The categories are:
· Innovators – 2.5% of potential market
· Early adopters – 13.5%
· Early majority – 34%
· Late majority – 34%
· Laggards – 16%
The Innovators are basically the ones who get hosed repeatedly. They usually have a ton of money though and are historically addicted to risk. They accept technology before it had been ironed out. These are the Betamax video crowd who actually understood why it was a better video format than VHS but couldn’t wait long enough for the market to determine if the technology was going to be around. You may have a video disk player in your attic and all the shame that goes with it, but you were probably right to embrace it, technologically speaking.
The next level of risk takers are the Early Adopters. These folks are typically the ones who did some level of research and may actually be in the business or have careers that lend themselves to having more information on the technology itself. These are probably the folks who jump on-board after the second release of some type of technology, which often includes the inclusion of patches and debugging that fixes the initial complaints by the Innovators.
I won’t beat you down with descriptions for the remaining categories because you are all wise people whom I hope to marry someday and don’t want to run you off.
Now that we’ve established some structure for the ways in which technology is embraced, which category do you find yourself falling into with respect to our topic, social media? I’m pretty sure that I am a Laggard, primarily because I have not established a profile on Facebook yet and it has been around since around 2002. To be honest, I think MySpace will rebound with a vengeance much the same way Betamax did. Maybe that’s why I am refraining from getting into the game. Currently, Facebook only has approximately 500 million users, hardly a number large enough to declare it a technological success.
The social media movement has established itself in the mainstream pop culture to the extent that movies about the creator of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, are being made and nominated for Oscars. The movie, which I have not yet seen, depicts Zuckerberg, a Harvard drop out, in a less than glorifying light. I’ll probably see the movie when it cycles through the $1 theatre circuit, just in case it’s not any good. Zuckerberg’s meteoric rise to financial success is quite frightening. His net worth is estimated to be somewhere around $6.9 billion and allegedly greater than that of Apple Founder, Steve Jobs.
My wife is a Facebooker and probably logs in several times a week. I have pretended to work on projects in her vicinity as she’s Facebooking so I can stalk her moves and track her interests. She rarely notices me doing this since she seems enthralled with what she’s reading. I occasionally ask her what she’s reading and she typically remarks “oh this guy I used to go to school with is commenting about this one thing.” My interest couldn’t be higher.
Just between you and me – I have actually stepped inside the octagon known as Social Media. I have secretly pretended to be my wife. You may have noticed this when reading some of her comments which seemed to contain violent twists of sarcasm. What have I found? Basically, I wasn’t very impressed. I say this with a certain level of reluctance as I know several friends who are heavy users and whom I hope will leave kind comments on this blog. The comments in Facebook are often innocuous but may lack a level of relevance. I think where my difficulty in adopting the Facebook hobby is with the resulting confluence from lumping every single personal contact into the same dialogue. Add to this potential awkwardness the fact that all your friends are doing the same thing and you have second and third level semi-acquaintances commenting on each other’s comments. Here’s a real world analogy – the Christmas party you host at your home every year. Let’s say that this year instead of strategically selecting and inviting your guests, you had unlimited resources and space. You would be able to invite every single friend from around the globe and from every corner of your life. The uncomfortable silence from those invitees who weren’t privy to the inside jokes and stories being told by other folks I share my life with would make me want to run out of the house and into the cover of darkness.
At the risk of sounding like I’m living a life of multiple personalities, I live a life of multiple personalities. By my very nature, I am a private person, with the exception of my newly found hobby of blogging. Blogging violates my preference for a private life but has also opened a door for my writing. I initially sent my Blog link to certain friends and family who might “get” the style of the way I write. The forwarding of my Blog link beyond this group might cause a Facebook type amalgamation of readers. This is where I begin to feel like a hypocrite. Essentially, my blogging is a form of sharing. Facebook is also a form of sharing. In some cases, Facebook sharing can be rather insignificant such as “Hey Everyone!!! I just breathed!!! Ooo!! There, I just did it again!! This is sooooooo cool!!” These comments should automatically be deleted from walls and the writer banished to Eek, Alaska. In other cases, I have seen where individuals request prayers for life situations and health issues. Who in their right mind doesn’t stop and pray for someone who reveals that they have been battling cancer for the past several months and have barely been able to eat let alone perform the most minor life skills? This type of sharing seems to be one of the most remarkable elements of Facebook.
The combination of every soul in our lives sharing our secrets and joys is how I imagine eternity will look. This eternal Christmas party will have unlimited resources, space and time to share laugh and commune. Many of us affix and maintain boundaries to keep the sharing of secrets to a minimum. Secrets oftentimes have scars associated with them. Many of us choose to hide our scars so the potential of having to share the story behind them is limited. After some considerable thought, I may be a “Laggard” because I have scars that I choose to cover up. Perhaps some of the folks that reveal trivial things about their lives on Facebook do so to feel connected, as opposed to feeling disconnected. For many, I think that the allure of Facebook is the ability to reconnect with others from the past. I must confess I find this element attractive. For those of you who are aware of my ability to retain stupid details from my childhood that all others had long since forgotten, you understand my point. In a nutshell, I appreciate a “community” and Facebook resembles that concept in many ways, albeit in a very mosaic format. The retreat from community is something our modern culture has mastered to perfection. The re-creation of community is something that Facebook seems to do rather well and in an amazingly short period of time.
While I am reluctant to plunge into the Facebook frenzy, I do appreciate the upside and the potential for souls to be touched and for lives to be reached. As irrelevant as some of the content may be, I guess I am an optimist in the power of others to reach out, support and nourish those who may find themselves in a dark place. Maybe people someday will earn “Facebook Bucks” for every positive comment they post to lift up the lives of others or encourage friends to follow their dreams or to serve those who need assistance. In the meantime, maybe we should all pretend that this “Facebook Bucks” form of reward already exists and we can begin immediately to lift up those who need lifting and affirming those who need affirming. After all, aren’t we already supposed to be doing that to earn jewels for our crowns?
-- The Guy with the Distracted Mind
Like God, I also like this story. Unlike the blogger, I have been to Eek, AK!
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