Social Strategy & Design by @KarlLong

Dec 28, 2006

Social Media Is Dead - So Says Steve Rubel

In 2006 all media went social. Pretty much every newspaper, TV network and publication has wholeheartedly embraced these technologies. Newspapers have comments, RSS feeds, blogs, wikis and other forms of two-way communications. TV networks have a presence in Second Life and more. The lines have blurred. Even some of the marketers themselves are producing content that could be called “media.”

I think I have to call bullshit on Steve here, just because mainstream media “participated” in social media in 2006 doesn’t change the essence of what social media is. Kind of like me pissing in a lake doesn’t change the what that lake is.

To me the difference between social media and “the media” or “big media” is control and influence. Social media is primarily controlled by the participants, by the viewers, readers, listeners etc. where as traditional media is primarily controlled by an organization with a narrower agenda like a corporation, or a political party.

In the spirit of the recent tagging meme that has been floating around i’m going to tag some folks that i would like to weigh in on this, how about it David from Logic and Emotion, Pete from Mashable, Neville from FIR, and Shel from FIR, and Joseph from Jaffe Juice.

12 Comments, Comment or Ping

David Armano

OK, I just gave my 2 cents for what it’s worth over at L+E.

Dec 28th, 2006
Neville Hobson

Thanks, Karl - you’ve just suggested a great discussion topic for an upcoming FIR. Stay tuned!

FWIW, I agree with Steve that the lines have blurred…

Dec 29th, 2006
david weiner

Thanks for calling him out … it’s not that social media isn’t fading into media media, it’s that the way he chose to write about it was so “Die Social Media Die Die Die.”

Dec 29th, 2006
Anthony Butler

Karl,

You have a link on the Google homepage… NIIIICE!

Back to the question at hand (nice image btw of you whizzing in the lake):
Content is always “sponsored’ to some degree. Even a web forum where the content is produced by the participants has someone looking over that content and tacitly approving it or not. He who admins the site…

Steve Rubel is just trying to get ahead of the curve here… everything stops being hot at some stage if not outright dying. When that happens, he can say he was the first. All the same, some of the lame attempts by Ford, Coke etc… to create social media do seem to be speeding Web 2.0 to the gallows.

arb:

Jan 3rd, 2007
Paul Adams

Karl,

I really like the idea of tagging people to get their opinion. Not sure if you saw this elsewhere or if it’s your own idea but it’s great!

And highly appropriate to the post content.

Paul.

Jan 7th, 2007
karl long

thanks Paul, actually i got the idea from that whole 5 things you don’t know about me” and other similar memes. The 5 things meme relied upon people tagging 5 other people they wanted to answer the question, I just replicated that for the purpose of trying to get some other opinions It actually worked spectacularly well.

Jan 7th, 2007