Something has been bothering me for the last little while but I could never really put my finger on what it is and even though I’m trying to verbalize it with this post I’m not sure I’ll do a good job. That said I’ve been doing a lot of watching of things like FriendFeed and to a much lesser degree Twitter as well – even though I’ve only just turned on my Twitter client yesterday after a week’s absence. I’ve been doing this while watching the blogs I normally read and those coming across my FriendFeed newswire and I’ve noticed that among the people I follow there seems to be this narrowing of focus.
My thoughts about this kind of crystallized today with a post by Svetlana Gladkova over at Profy.com where she was taking about balanced news for tech bloggers on things like Twitter and FriendFeed. In the post she says:
And again I was reminded that if an earthquake happens, say, in the Altay Mountains that are mere 500 kilometers away from here, I will probably not notice it at all since I have no friends from that region on Twitter or on FriendFeed (this is not exactly the most connected place on Earth). So my professional interests and the people I communicate with because of them interfere with anything that could be important to me personally as a citizen of another country across the ocean.
This seems to be a sad imbalance and this is not what it is supposed to be - after all, there are many things that matter to people on Earth and they are not necessary related to technology and web 2.0.
One of the most oft used phrases used in the tech blogosphere – I can’t talk to the other types of blogging – is that of it being an echo chamber were we are continually echoing things other people have written. In many ways this is a very valid claim but I am wondering if rather than helping to fight against this things like Twitter and FriendFeed aren’t possibly exasperating the problem.
Rather than writing about the wider issues of what is affecting technology and how it is affecting us we seem to be forever narrowing the boundaries to that of one around the tools that we are using. This isn’t all encompassing but I am seeing more and more time being spent writing about social media tools rather than social media. This could also be because of who I follow on these services but I have always tried to make that a very wide base of people from all areas of the blogging world. As it is I read everything from security blogs to a broad range of everyday type of blogs and right through to blogs about the blogging industry itself. So I am not sure if that point would hold up in this case.
I’ve even noticed that with my own writing I seem to be being drawn further into talking about the tools rather than the repercussions and this is not where I want to be going. Sure the tools and the use of them is important but they are only tools. I don’t need to know what kind of poster I am because that doesn’t answer any questions or really spark serious conversations.
It’s a well accepted sociological fact that human beings have an innate fascination with their tools regardless of profession. It appears that this hasn’t changed in the least when it comes to the web but I worry that with the ease of being able to publish our thoughts that we are becoming to obsessed with the how’s rather than the why’s and who’s of our technological world.
What do you think – are we painting ourselves into a corner?
Conversation Tags: Twitter, FriendFeed, tools, blogging, social media
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Sadly, there does tend to be a lot of the former and few of the latter.
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Not sure why, but that statement has me thinking about a group of monkeys in a circle, some of which are smashing their fingers on a laptop keyboard trying to update their social media status.
Steven, you should do an experiment where you don;t visit FriendFeed, Twitter or any other social media site or use a social service. Go on a brainstorming session on the who's and the why's and then come back and tell us what you came up with. Get out of the social storm and into individuality.
This is one reason why I loved the Business 2.0 magazine which is now out of print. They focused on ideas, the who's and the why's instead of the tools.
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http://broadcasting-brain.com/2008/07/28/reduci...
about "six degrees of separation" and the impact of social media tools is to try to steer clear of a business-centric or tool-centric focus and look into a "who" and "why" topic, like you've discussed above.
Robert Scoble's post today on PR and tech bloggers once again brought up the whole echo thing where one piece of news is echoed across the blogosphere as a part of the never-ending quest for links, page views, and authority. Everyone (well, OK, some people) wants to be in the vanguard of breaking news.
But that's not going to work for yours truly because:
a) I have a full-time job
b) I don't work in the tech industry
c) I'm not in a good location or time zone and
d) that's not what I really care about
So I'm cool with being an editor and pundit as Phil of Scribkin described today. I'd also like to find more ways to spread social media usage amongst people who don't use it today and maybe, just maybe, help them find practical uses for the stuff.
To conclude, I think a number of people are in danger of painting themselves into a corner. I'm trying to avoid it, even if it means that I step on wet paint on occasion.
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I think it is awful tempting to get sucked in to a community that, like an ouija board, subtly influences the actions of its individual members. But as long as we know this is happening, it can be accounted for.
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