Conversations

[caption id=“attachment_2438” align=“aligncenter” width=“554”] As an extrovert of course you’d believe this. As a mid to late adopter you’d also believe this.[/caption] Introverts who are not going to compete with extroverts, through social media, have an opportunity to have friendships and interactions that would otherwise not occur. To say that Social media makes is unsociable is a fallacy. When I was a uni student the second time around I was socialising with fellow students all throughout the day and I was also active in social media. In 2007-2009 facebook was my university friend network. Twitter was strangers. Facebook was an extension of my physical social life. Twitter was an opportunity to meet new people. It helped me meet people from tuttle. It introduced me to Seesmic when it was in Alpha. I conversed with some of the big names of the time and went to podcamps. I was invited to Leweb in Paris in 2009 and we met had seesmic meetups a number of times More recently playing Ingress by Niantic Labs has helped me meet people in Paris, lausanne, Fribourg, Geneva, Nyon and other places. To say that social media makes people less social is to ignore that people use social media for conversations, not for brands. The fallacy of most “social media professionals”, “Social media experts” and other “social media” snake oil practitioners is that they go home to a spouse or better half. They have no need to create a relationship with the people they are interacting with. As they do not create relationships with those who use social media they are kicking dust in the Atacama desert in the hope to raise enough dust to create a nucleus to which water will collect and fall as rain water. There is a shift in social media today. It is a shift away from conversations especially on websites such as twitter and facebook towards brand brainwashing. As a result of this facebook and twitter have lost engagement. That is not to say that other niche social networks are not benefiting from the ground broken by Facebook and twitter. In particular I am thinking of websites for slow ups and other group activities. I’m thinking of OVS (on vas sortir), Glocals (Geneva Locals) and many other social networks. I notice that the expatriated and international community benefit strongly from websites that encourage groups of people to do communal activities. Thanks to Glocals I scuba dived every single weekend for more than a year, I learned about Via Ferrata and loved the sport, I finally got to rock climb, I enjoyed canyoning and more. The idea that luddites can constantly bash social interactions via computers and electronic devices fatigues me. You know what the most amusing thing is about the people who say that social media reduces conversations is? Their one word answer. :-D. Don’t you just love the irony?

From the 1970s to 2007 we had threaded conversations through bulletin boards, forums, groups and other centralising discussion points. For a brief window of about two years conversations became so captivating that people wanted to meet in person as strong friendships were established. By 2009-2010 the threaded and personal conversations between web users was hijacked by “social media” marketers and so the speed of conversation and quality of interactions collapsed. In it’s place hashtags would replace user engagement with quick metrics. The golden age of conversation has been replaced by the dark ages of indifference. Every day that we spend online we see how disengaged people have become. Look at twitter. Do you still see user to user conversations. Look at Facebook. Do you still see engaging content and passionate conversations? I see a waste of time. The conversations which were taking place have been replaced by dumbed down headlines and sensationalist content. For several years we have heard about how corporations should not have access to our data because of what they will do with it. From where I am surfing the web and interacting with the online community I see a more serious problem. I see that as the chance of individual to individual conversations has decreased so the quality of shared articles, videos and other content has been dumbed down. This is evident on Facebook and Twitter. These networks are becoming ghost towns. They have millions of user profiles that are slowly going dormant. That social media networks are going dormant is excellent. Instead of wasting time with Ello, Diaspora and other solutions I believe that going back to the blogging habit will benefit everyone. It is decentralised, it is interest based and it is long form. Through Worpdress.org tools, through Disqus and other solutions so our ability to connect and communicate is improved. It forces us to be positive and to be accountable. Everything that you share can contribute to your reputation and help share your passions. We should not be hidden behind silos and we should not be anonymous. We need to break the twitter and Facebook duopoly.

Filmed in a Cinema Verité style. They mention Geneva. A nice conclusion.