So it's 2010, still. We all know how many things happened and how much boost did social media get this year. I don't want to bore you with it as you probably read dozens of summaries. But there is still something out there that didn't change. People still doubt social media.
Some time ago I posted a small screenshot of my mac desktop, which showed my battery going dead. A little icon of a battery with 00:00 in it (as in „your mac will die in 0 seconds). I've added a caption that said „this is the end". And I actually turned it off and left. After few minutes my phone started to give me notifies that people posted some responses. Most of them were pretty obvious like „RIP", „it was good to know you" „so sad", but some were just funny like „hey guys, I won't let it happen, Arvind stay alive, I'm packing some power into my bag pack, just tell me where you are".
It was a simple, meaningless, screenshot. And yet, it did wake up some emotions in my friends. It made me think.
In Poland, when I start talking to someone who's new to social media one of the most common example of „how stupid social media are" is a screenshot of someone posting his sandwich. Something he just ate. Marketing people ask me „why the hell are they posting pictures like that?". And it's not about posting a picture of a sandwich. It's just posting about anything that's going on RIGHT NOW in your life - watching a movie, looking out of the window, singing in the shower. And those marketing people ask me „how can we treat it seriously when people post something that stupid?".
There is one simple thing people don't see. If something is public - like a microblog, or a unsecured facebook wall - it doesn't mean it's created for us. If I for example post a picture of a sandwich you could say that it's a weird thing for me to do. But my friends wouldn't. They know that I'm on a diet so they would probably ask me „what's in it?" „are you eating in a fastfood again?" etc. Etc.
When you go to the shop it's not like everything that's available for you is made for you. It's not like every movie you can get, is „ok for you" but this doesn't make movie industry any less valuable.
You see. People create content. For other people. People who care, who understand. People, who can see the sense of their action. That's why on facebook you can find „Friend list" not a „random people list". So if you say that my sandwich makes no sense I would say „you're right, it makes no sense to you, but it does, to people I send it to".
I hope that in 2011 a lot of people will see, that if something doesn't make sense to them it just means they should try harder to understand...or just look in other direction. Social media exist because people interact with each other. People find things they can care about, things that can make their feelings grow. That's what Social Media is all about. People for People. There is no stupid content. There is just some content that is wrongly addressed...or wrongly understood.
I wish you all that in 2011 we will spend more time trying to understand, more time thiking about things before we start to state what we think about them. I believe that that's the only way to use Social Media the way it's supposed to be used.