This is a guest post by Jason Mollica, who is president of JRM Comm. He frequently speaks to PRSSA chapters, school and Fortune 500 companies around the country. Jason blogs at OneGuysJourney.WordPress.com, and can be found on Twitter, @JasMollica
Social media has been on a meteoric rise since Facebook was created in 2005 and Twitter took off in 2006. These networks haven’t even been around for ten years, but both have completely changed how we interact online and in person.
Think about it: We’ve Instagramed photos (and now video), checked in on Foursquare, posted to Path, uploaded videos to Vine, got hooked on GetGlue, and loved that outfit on Pinterest. Oh, and let’s not forget that you’ve asked your colleagues to connect on LinkedIn and watched their videos on YouTube.
But, just because all of these networks are out there and thriving, does this mean social media is evolving?
I used this analogy on a blog post recently. Remember the days of AOL and Prodigy? They were two of the biggies back in the day to get online. However, in today’s terms, AOL and Prodigy went by the wayside pretty quickly; it sort of evolved, but then ended up dying. Prodigy is a footnote in online history. AOL, as it was then, isn’t the same. Are we in for the same sort of slow shuttering of social media platforms?
Take for instance the 2000 dot com crash. While it had basically nothing to do with the actual domain names, it had more to do with online companies that had been founded and invested in. Many of these firms were unprofitable and had completely unrealistic earning expectations. However, caught up in the internet excitement, investors pumped more and more money into them, which inflated shares and company values.
The business models of many of the various dot coms proved to be totally unsustainable (they spent all their capital and were operating at a loss).
Is that happening with social media? No, but I use the above example because it shows that these investors didn’t understand the landscape and didn’t evolve along the way.
Before you think this is a glass half-empty approach, humor me. I’m not saying Facebook will die by 2015 or that Twitter will start charging. As a matter of fact, I’m trying to go in the opposite direction and start a frank conversation about social media and whether it’s evolving or it is stuck. Whether you are a seasoned pro and or a student, your opinions matter. You are all part of the Social Media Revolution. You should also be part of the Evolution.
Leave your comments here on prTini or reach out to me at Jason [at] JRMComms [dot] com. Let’s get the conversation started.