If you’ve been in the Web marketing and communications business for more than a few years it’s hard not to roll your eyes in meetings when the same questions surface now that many of us have answered time and again about what many people perceive to be the next so-called passing trend - social media. We’ve all been there.
Here’s a few other previous “Web trends” a great deal of people thought would not be sustainable over time, all of which I vividly recall having to defend as not a passing fad. This is similar to what’s going on today with social media.
1) The WWW. Yeah, crazy I know, but between 1994 and early 1996, there were many doubters that this “Web thing” was all that big a deal. How many of us spend time trying to convince friends, colleagues and clients that those three letters would change everything? I wish I had kept all the voice mails from people who called to ask if having a Web site was really necessary.
2) E-commerce. Raise your hand if you knew people who said they would never, ever buy anything online for any reason under the sun? It would be hard to find some of them admitting they said that now.
3) Blogging. I know people and companies still in denial on this one. The first time they ever heard names like Boing Boing, Engadget and Scobleizer they broke out in laugher. I haven’t heard much laughing about blogs in the last few years.
So social media is the new second class citizen to join the list. Get used to it. People don’t often embrace change. And while I agree with many out here that the term social media will fad away over time, the underlying ideas, concepts and technologies that drive what social media is all about are here to stay.
2 comments ↓
And it only gets waaaaaayyyyy more interesting as the mobile Web takes off.
Great post, Mike. I’d go so far as to argue that as recently as 18-24 months ago, there were people still in denial about “WWW”… they’re called daily newspapers in America.
I just saw a billboard ad for Yellow Pages from, um, the “new” AT&T. If Brian thinks newspapers are in denial about the ‘www’ then what does that say about the world’s largest operator of telecom networks pushing paper? Or is there something I don’t understand about the digital divide?
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