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Is social media important?

Brett Greene over at The Real Blind Influence posted an article recently summarizing a report form Socialnomics. The report was on the rise and importance of social media in today’s society. Brett provide some valuable insight and I so agree with one of his statements that I’ll parrot it here, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you, but it will leave you in the dust as life moves forward with amazing changes.”

You can find the full list of relevant statistics at Brett’s post here but I am going to pull out some of the ones I find to be most interesting.

  • Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web – If you can beat porn, you’re doing something right.
  • 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media – 12%?? That’s a lot higher than I would’ve thought. But I guess it points towards the “everyone does it but no one talks about it” hypothesis.
  • 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction – Not really sure what this actually means without seeing the study, but this could be a selection effect type of deal. If not though, pretty interesting. But honestly, I just don’t buy this one at face value.
  • 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum – This one seems a bit more clear and interesting since when I was in school I don’t think any of my friends were enrolled online. I wonder what the rise of this has looked like over the past few years?
  • The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females – Demographics be damned.
  • Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama – Sad.
  • Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen – The day I got my first college email address was one of the most exciting days in my life (yeah, seriously). I guess they do this because so many incoming freshman already have well-established online identities? Didn’t see this one coming.
  • Wikipedia has over 13 million articles…some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English – A lot of people like to put Wikipedia down but it’s got a lot going for it. But I still wouldn’t let students use it as a reference for science papers.
  • There are over 200,000,000 Blogs & 54% = Number of bloggers who post content or tweet daily – That’s 100,000,000 new blog entries a day, crazy!
  • According to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available – Put me in this category. The book isn’t dead, but it’s not going to be the main thing for long.
  • 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us. – I will be sad when the newspapers go, but I have no desire to try and save them.

The tech world has been changing for a long time and that doesn’t seem to be changing. But what I think is really interesting is the speed in which the adoption of new technologies is occurring. New tech comes and goes before it’s even adopted in some parts of the world. This isn’t causing so much a tech gap (implying there is a difference in time of adoption of new technology) but rather a tech disconnect. Anyways, ideas for a different day I suppose.

Are there any of these things (or any on the original list) that you find particular interesting/scary?

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August 17th, 2009 | Category: Thoughts |
  • Joe, thanks for riffing on my post. I love your comments to the stats.

    One big point I like to always make is that social media will never replace IRL just like the Kindle will never replace books. Social media is revolutionary and is adding to what's great IRL while replacing some aspects of IRL that aren't as helpful as social media. The positioning of social media in our culture tries to pit it against traditional systems because it creates afalse competition that helps get higher ratings for them.

    I disagree with that and see everything that's amazing about social media filling a void of what has been crappy with traditional systems. It's a "both/and" proposition, not an "either/or" propostion. Just like Rodney King wanted, we really can all get along. :)
  • Joe
    Hey Brett,

    I mostly agree with this but I guess I have a little bit of a different opinion. When it comes to real life vs social media, I don't think IRL can be replace since we're stuck here, until the singularity of course ;) But with technology, things can be replaced and not always with everyone's approval. I had a post a while back where I talked about how certain technologies are falling by the wayside even though not every wanted this to happen. There can be a societally forced adoption of new technologies and I see the same thing possible with something like the Kindle vs books. If enough people stop buying paper books, then it will become quite a novelty item. I don't think they'll go away completely, but I think their role will be greatly diminished.

    But this is a little off the topic I guess. To your point, I definitely agree that there is no inherent conflict between social media and our "pre-social media" days. We can take the best pieces from every tech and every platform and fold it into our lives.
  • We're on the same page. I don't think IRL can be replaced either. That's just the argument I hear first from people new to social media who discredit it. They position social media as being thrust upon them and competing with IRL. I don't think it competes at all, it just adds value where value is needed because some IRL systems are inferior or decrepit.
  • Joe
    Good thing we agree... Because it's my website and I'd have to keep getting the last word and then ban you eventually. Phew! ;)
  • Awesome. Then you only need to comment once more on this post. LOL :)
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