You will be assimilated
Social Media has unlocked something speculated about in numerous Science Fiction novels throughout the twentieth century. It is the closest we have approached to the moment of everyone having telepathy. Could you imagine what will occur when we progress that far in our development? Perhaps in lieu of carrying cel phones we’ll have that proverbial chip installed shortly after birth so that we can communicate together via thoughts. Not only would I be able to share that this coffee I am drinking is awful but you’d even be able to taste it, and share that feeling with everyone you know. Soon everyone one would know that the establishment where I got the coffee was not offering a quality product and they would be forced to either adapt or fail.
If you are curious what sort of pandemonium will ensue then sign on to Twitter and add about 2000 of your more active online friends. Select only to follow people who tweet more than 50 times per day, and then sit back and watch the tweet stream for a few days. After a short period you will observe something interesting happening that everyone no matter where they are geographically are basically tweeting the same thing. Many refer to this as crowd sourcing however I prefer to call it the ‘Hive Mind.’
The question is who is the queen? It is my understanding that almost all hives have one and she is the one that directs the efforts of the hive’s inhabitants. On Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the other social media sights this individual varies from site to site and circle to circle. Fortunately I don’t think we have had one person emerge as the de facto überQueen of the hive. Unfortunately even with the people who are seemingly in the driver’s seat on this social media train are not beyond manipulation. We are as much influenced by the old style media as we are by the members of our ever growing social circle.
Certainly the old media understood the power of the ‘Hive Mind’ and used every insidious method possible to shape our understanding of the world around us. Why the old media attempted to tell us what products we like, the women that we were attracted to and the candidate elect. Both Facebook and Twitter understand this why else would they be spending so much of their resources on developing their advertising models?
The ‘Hive Mind’ persists and grows with each new account added to the various social media outlets. Last week I read countless posts about how Facebook has finally crossed the line in regards to personal privacy. The number of ‘How to actually delete your Facebook account’ was astounding. While I am not a huge fan of Facebook especially their methods of openly publishing your private data I can not hold them completely at fault. Honestly if you want something to be private then don’t publish it online in the first place. Seriously if it is private then it has absolutely no business being anywhere on the internet.
While I honestly feel that it is well passed the time when we should have a more ‘Open’ social network, nothing has as of yet emerged to displace Facebook. For now they will continue to maintain their strangle hold on the social media profiling sector. I know I certainly have my ideas about how to build a truly open social network, but that is a discussion for another time, probably requiring some NDAs and a hell of a lot of bar napkins.
Ultimately we humans are too easily swept up in the excitement surrounding the positive experience. So easily swayed into jumping on board with the next seemingly great idea that we are swept away turning the stream into a flood. Easily shifting from simple crowd sourcing to digital mob in a matter of clicks becoming a juggernaut of retweeting, mini-blog posting, and status updating Borg. We have all become part of the collective, because we all have the same need to be socially acceptable. Consider this a grand case of keeping up with the Jones via the digital horizon. Yes we are BORG in the social media realm.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mikel King (http://twitter.com/mikelking) has been a leader in the Information Technology Services field for over 20 years. He is currently the CEO of Olivent Technologies, a professional creative services partnership in NY. Additionally he is currently serving as the Secretary of the BSD Certification group as well as a Senior Editor for BSD News.
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