Last night on Twitter, Greg Verdino left the following twit:
“i was trying to explain stumbleupon to my wife and said, “it’s like digg” – she had no idea what i was talking about. reality check people.”
Yep. A couple of months ago I asked a group of 20 somethings if they had ever heard of Twitter. All I got was blank stares.
I bet if you took a national survey of people, say, under 60, and asked them if they’ve ever heard of Twitter, Digg, Jiaku, Pownce, Mark Zuckerberg, de.licio.us, Hulu, the social graph, Gawker, BoingBoing, Jason Calacanis, technorati, bacn, or Ning, the overwhelming amount would not have heard of most or even any of the above, they would have no idea what you were talking about and you’d be greeted by blank stares.
This led me to wonder if many of us in social media are stuck inside our own walled garden. Our we so caught up in what we do – it being cutting edge and all – that we’re forgetting how most people out there aren’t on a big social media network, don’t have a blog, and are more interested in maintaining there relationships of friends and family while being offline?
I’m thinking that, at times, we all too often get too caught up in reading each other’s blogs, following one another on Twitter, and friending one another on Facebook that we end up overvaluing our experiences by thinking that either everyone else feels the same way – or they will live just like us because we are on the cutting edge.
But is this cutting edge really just that? Are we pioneers? Or well-intentioned semi-fanatics? As we clamor to post the latest Utterz about our drive into work, or twitter that we’re going to eat a bowl of spaghetti, are we forgetting that in the non-social networking world, information like that is completely mundane? Meaning that no one really gives a shit?
It’s not so much that there has to be a happy medium, but we in social media/marketing MUST seek to understand what the general public is doing out there. Because we could easily come off as being closed off from reality. Which we may well be.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }