Social Media is a waste of time – Part Deux

Please-Stop-Posting-Articles-About-Social-Media-Being-a-Waste-of-Time/ Part One

As a self-proclaimed Internet Infrastructure geek, I’ve been fascinated with the history and progression of communication tools from Gutenberg’s press, through the introduction of newspapers, the widespread use of telephones, the Internet and finally social media platforms.

Any organization that wants to thrive in the 21st Century must learn the language of the Internet. Even if they don’t want to master the skill -it’s vital for them to understand it, then listen and respond to their customers.

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift like the one following Gutenberg’s invention, only this one’s global, it moves at the speed of light and it’s on steroids. History shows us that chaos and uncertainty ruled the day during these major cultural shifts. One need not look far to find examples of this chaos right now, just look at the newspaper, TV or record industries.

When things are this volatile it feels much safer to stick with business as usual and then justify your actions by reading articles such as: Why Social Media Is a Waste of Time for Most Banks & Credit Unions Sometimes business as usual means you’ll be out of business in less than five years. Telling ANY organization that social media is a waste of time is like telling a blacksmith at the turn of the 20th century to, “Just keep your head down and do what you’re doing. Your skills will always be valued because only a few people have cars.”

According to my rough calculations in the graph above, we are due for yet another communications paradigm shift next Tuesday at 2:45pm EST.  This becomes more apparent when you add the following “social media tools” to the bottom right corner of the graph:

Years to reach 50 million users:
My Space 4 years
Twitter 3 years
Facebook 2 years