by I have never been a fan of Twitter or Facebook or the other social nooses that now pass for content creation, and I’m glad when I read — every so often — that I am not alone in my disdain for the lonesomeness of a hooligan world gone viral:
It’s toast. Over. Done. History. Soon to be as behind the curve as Facebook, someday completely forgotten like Friendster.
Huh?
It’s the cacophony.
You see there are too many people on the service. As a result, very few are heard. It’s happened over the past six months, tweeting is like a stone in a waterfall, or more accurately, pissing in the wind. In other words, if you tweet and nobody reads it have you wasted your time?
Today Rick Warren tweeted something I wrote. He’s got in excess of a million followers. The fact that I can reach him stuns me. But despite his only tweeting twice since then, the retweets have not gone nuclear. Oh, there are plenty, a double digit number, nineteen to be exact, but if it had been six months ago, I’d be a hero at the Saddleback Church.
That author goes on to rightly argue that it isn’t the platform that matters, but rather the thinker who is creating the content that may be followed, but unread — and that’s the big problem with this modern social networking world. We’re a universe of content creators and few of us care enough to listen or respond to the sputum.
How does one have a conversation with a firehose that is always on, always Tweeting or maliciously updating Facebook pages, with little to no time to stop and ponder not just what has been spat, but what has been responded to in situ?
There has always been a problem with a Following/Follower meme because nobody can read 1,000 other people every single day — let alone a million! — and stay engaged, so it’s all a false precipice from the first footfall. The King still has no clothes — but he’s covered in a Twitter stream.
What’s the point of following someone if you don’t plan to engage with their thoughts and demand their attention? Where is the necessary reciprocity of mindful thinking?
Following is a false filter and a passive argument that you actually matter when you always do not.
Following someone has never been an act of faith or a totem of friendship — it has forever been a meaningless ego massage that makes you look good and feel better and it only costs you a single mouse click for the unfathomable fallowness.
I think it’s all about little moments that matter. This morning, a twitter friend of mine lamented that he couldn’t learn Dutch using Duolingo, a great and free site and app. I responded with an app that did have Dutch, and he asked if there was an Android version — and I helped him find one.
Will I have the same level of interaction with everyone? Naturally not. But little moments matter. Elizabeth found out about actor Corey Monteith passing away from where? Twitter. There is a lot of noise, but plenty of content gets heard through it if you choose to listen. 🙂
Yes, if you keep the follow circle small, and limit it to people you know, it will work better than anonymously following popular people and expecting an interactive exchange.