Please excuse the lack of posting here lately. As my friend Amy Mengel recently wrote, blogging isn’t high priority for me. I could give a list of reasons why, but it simply isn’t something I find as enjoyable as it once was. I work all day, so coming home and blogging is the last thing I want to do. That being said, I do spend a lot of time reading other blogs and a few things have been on my mind lately.
First, I’m tired of the talk around measurement. Chuck Hemann said it best, with a comment that “everyone seems to be a measurement expert now.” He’s spot on. Measurement is the all the rage (and it should be), which means everyone is suddenly an expert on the subject. I’m a numbers geek, so the gathering and analysis of data completely fascinates me. But I’m by no means an expert in measurement. Neither are you, so stop trying.
Fellow Minnesotan, Kary Delaria wrote an article on how, for her, Twitter is becoming less useful. I agree with her broad, overall statement, as Twitter is becoming less useful for me as well. What was once my favorite platform, Twitter is slowly becoming less valuable for me. I’m simply seeing a lot of repeat content and complaining. It’s sort of like dating and waking up one day and realizing the honeymoon phase is over, and that you’re now bored to death. That’s how I am feeling lately about Twitter. I made a comment on Kary’s post that I believe Twitter is dying. And I stand by the comment. In five years, Twitter will be dead. Yes, I realize that Twitter is evolving and you can make the argument that “Twitter as we know it today will be vastly different in five years.” But honestly, it goes beyond that. Having spent the majority of my career in the financial space, I got to witness the housing crisis first-hand. We (myself and the company I was working for) saw it coming — not nearly to the extent that we’re in now (otherwise I’d be on a private beach drinking vodka right now), but we saw it coming. I see a number of similarities with Twitter…not social media, just Twitter. I honestly think Twitter is about to burst. In the end, a new tool — completely separate from Twitter — will come along and achieve what Twitter is attempting to. The end result will be much more tolerable and profitable for consumers and brands. Twitter is a sinking ship.
This past weekend I had the chance to attend Unsummit for a few hours. Overall, I think last year’s content was a bit better, but there was some decent stuff this year. One of the sessions I attended was around the term social media “expert,” however, it quickly turned into a conversation about social media as a whole. I left extremely frustrated, as the group tried to define what social media is, should it even be called social media, and lastly what companies should be doing with social. The last topic was the most irritating. People, why are we trying to broadly define social? What works for one company may not work for another. That doesn’t mean one is doing it wrong. Social is unique to every business and every consumer. Please, stop trying to silo it into a broad, often incorrect, bucket. And to the person who said Facebook is useless for brands and will likely be gone in a few years…you’re an idiot. Also, only I can make statements about social platforms dying.
I wrote a while back about my fascination with augmented reality. I was a little bullish on AR at the time, but I still think augmented reality is the most powerful and potentially the biggest game changer that we will see…once it hits mainstream. And mainstream is still the problem. While there are a few folks out there doing some amazing things with AR, I think I was probably 12-18 months ahead of where I should have been with my assumptions. Hey, even I make mistakes. Nonetheless, I still remain highly optimistic about the impact AR will have in the near future.
So there you have it. My ramblings and thoughts. I’d ask you to stay tuned for more brilliant insight, but it’ll likely be another month before I post again.
