This Thanksgiving I am thankful for Social Media.
Social media is perhaps just a natural evolution of broadband Internet penetration coupled with the fact that people like to talk to each other, but it's enabling an amazing stage of evolution for us culturally.
Here are four of the things that social media does that I am thankful for:
Social media has enabled millions of us (soon billions) to reconnect and be more connected with the people that matter to us. Old friends, colleagues, extended relatives are all within reach with comfortable ambient awareness that helps us be more connected with them.
Social media helps us to connect with new people that are relevant to us. Twitter has lead the way in Open Social Media that helps you see what is happening and what people are thinking about in the world at any given moment. Coupled with location-based tagging, it is helping to connect people and businesses in new relationships that help and enrich them.
Social media is raising the bar for businesses who now must deliver much higher levels of customer service to succeed. Positive and negative customer experiences are shared online and act as a powerful accelerator or decelerator for businesses, turning marketing on its head. Marketing now begins with great customer service.
Social media is putting a fork in traditional advertising. As I've written about extensively, people trust people much more than they trust advertisements. This is putting an end to traditional advertising as we know it and leveling the playing field for products and businesses that are remarkable but lack huge marketing budgets.
I'll stop there and get to work on preparing our family recipe for sweet potatoes. These are amazing times and I'm looking forward to the coming year helping to enable this wave with our platform.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!