I was considering what the writing options were for this first real blog post, and I decided I wanted to discuss what is the root motivation behind all of these social media mediums such as: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. And since I am a fan of each of these services I believe I am well suited to self analyze why these companies are capturing our minds and dominating our daily lives.
How Much Do You Love Your Online Voice?
This post is not going to discuss the technical specifications of any of these ‘Web 2.0′ services, there are literally thousands of blogs that have daily dialogue in regard to the social media world. However I have found very little discussion about ‘Why’ these online applications have captivated our collective psyches.
As our culture has become more and more introspective, simply put, I believe we have fallen in love with ourselves. I think that if we could run on a beach into our own arms we would do it! And with this new found love of self we have come to the, probably mistaken, notion that we are all geniuses. And we all feel that our ‘deep thoughts’ need to be shared with the world. It’s interesting to have observed the evolution of social media, see below for the time line:
1. Dating sites
We first began with ‘looking’ for other people to spend real world time with, these individuals should have common interests with us and the end goal was: physical, emotional, etc.
2. Myspace
We then moved to online social networking with Myspace (a former dating site). Myspace made it easy to make ‘online’ friends, 99.9% of whom you will never meet (hopefully).
3. Facebook
For as innovative as Mysapce was, it was mainly a static site that profiled the interests you typed into it on the day you signed up. Facebook introduced an entirely new world of connectivity when they launched the ‘News Feed’ service. The News Feed service allowed for people to track when you upload new photos, shared a link or video, and changed your ’status’.
4. Twitter/Friendfeed
Taking Facebook’s News Feed process, services like Twitter made it quick and easy to share literally every part of your online self. They allow for you to share links, blog posts, videos, bookmarks, and status updates – many times on a dynamic basis. The majority of users on these services don’t even pay attention to the other members of the community, each of these social media mechanisms are completely ’self-centric’.
So do you see the evolution? Starting with individuals searching for others online, we have migrated all the way to users being satisfied with being the talker in one sided conversations. Our inherent selfishness and narcissism, combined with technological advances, have led us down this path of egocentricity. So where are we going next? I don’t know, but I can promise you that there will be millions of opinions crossing the web, and all of them will be right (at least in one person’s mind).
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