WOOHOO! Someone finally gets it

I have always maintained that social media as we currently use it is nothing more than a bullshit marketing term used to promote multi-million dollar VC backed software experiments. The idea that any one part of the web is more social than another is ridiculous. The very fabric and roots of the Internet have been built on the premise that it is s social meeting ground. This is why things like IRC, newsgroups or any number of interactive services came into being in the first place.

Just because we slap a new term and some soothing pastel web pages together it doesn’t invalidate what came before it. It doesn’t change the fact that we have been socializing on the web long before someone invented the marketing term of social media. It sometimes seems though that the tech world has this inbreed need to proclaim something as new and totally different than what came before when in fact this isn’t the case.

So when I read a post by SuzeMuze today titled Social Media is NOT an Innovation I almost jumped for joy. Here was another blogger who I respect who saw it the same way. It may have taken her reading a book by the real father of the web; Tim Berners-Lee, to realize this but hey I’ll take the gains where I can get them. In her post she even uses Bernes-Lee’s own words to show  that the web was intended to be social from day one

The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect - to help people work together - and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner. What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is of the sort we intend.

– Tim Berners-Lee, Weaving the Web

I haven’t read his book and I’m most definitely going to have to find some way to get a copy; but it is really refreshing to have one’s thoughts validated to a certain extent by the very person responsible for our electronic world.

Granted it is probably easier to sell the idea to big companies when using some new buzzword but when push comes to shove nothing has really changed. There has been no innovation in the truest sense of the word

innovation (plural innovations)

1. The act of innovating; the introduction of something new, in customs, rites, etc.
2. A change effected by innovating; a change in customs; something new, and contrary to established customs, manners, or rites.

- Wiktionary

Even using the simplest example of the word I don’t see how anything being done with what we call social media can be considered new. The web has always been about being social. It never mattered how we were being social or what tools we created to make being social more accessible.

Of course none of this will change the fact that we use terms like social media as a way to sell the way we behave on the web. Just don’t think that we are doing anything new and wonderful.

Thanks SuzeMuze - you made my day.

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Tagged as: social media, Tim Berners-Lee, World Wide Web