Thursday, December 11, 2008

Through the Swamp

I've been commenting a bit on Steven Hodson's recent post Is Social Media Becoming A Social Mess? over at Inquisitr. It's been a really lively discussion, and even though the conversation is a few days old, it is still pretty interesting reading.

Hodson is right - social media, and the interactive web in general, is a great mess. Early adopters and the like have to act as the pathfinders/explorers to figure out what works in the new digital world. Some things will fail, but other tools will become as ubiquitous as email. I've addressed the unknown future of social media in terms of governance before, and the discussion developing over at Inquisitr is keenly complementary.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So social media seems to be a bit of a morass at times, this is true. I think with all of the web 2.0 apps and the web 2.5 evolution ( see http://news.cnet.com/8301-13953_3-9913809-80.html and http://news.cnet.com/8301-10787_3-9929415-60.html), there is a glut of new tools out there. I agree with your conclusion that these new tools have to be developed through trial -and-error. Unfortunately, it's not always the strongest that survive; it's often those online platforms which become ubiquitous (google) and cheap (Amazon S3) that end up being the kingmakers.

Tim Brauhn said...

Abbas, you are truly an erudite dawg, dawg.