Social Media is Dead

There, I said it. I don’t (quite) mean it, but it needed saying. I will now tell you why.

This blog has been quiet for several months. Partly, the world just got in the way. Tributary Communications World Headquarters moved, and so forth. When and so forth diminished, I felt that the hiatus here should continue. Something about Social Media bothered me.

Social Media interests me when it provides useful information and fresh opinion. Entertainment works, too. Without those elements, Social Media becomes a shoddy effort to beguile. I have been seeing too many shoddy efforts to beguile. I present here examples of what’s been bugging me:

• Excitement. New products, slightly improved products, same old products, all presented with dynamic dazzle. It wears thin, doesn’t it?
• Opinion. We all have opinions. Sometimes these opinions  elucidate, aid, inspire, or otherwise profit us. Sometimes, however, opinion obscures and congests. Measure the worth of an opinion by its freshness of thought, not the rumble of its thunder.
• Information. Speculation is not information. Opinion is not information either. I would say that information is immediately provable. Guesses do not count as information.
• Prognostication. Projecting what a new release of a product might entail makes a good parlor game. More often, it just muddies the water.

Social Media is so darned rushed that the content suffers. Too many people cranking out too much stuff. Social Media is not dead, but I think I heard it wheezing. Earnest effort, and a breath of fresh air, and this useful (essential) tool will be healthy again. I accept as my duty that I should take my own advice to heart.