That’s right. It’s you.
The most unexpected, important and exciting online development of the last few years is how the web has turned our personal communication and life documentation into inexpensive, compelling, and highly consumable media. Is it me, or is there a bit of a correlation between the reality television of the last 8 years and the personal life publishing and consumption driving a lot of today’s online usage? Are we becoming the creators, producers and promoters of online reality programming for which we also narrate, director and star?
As more and more people place themselves under a self made Internet spotlight, more still have emerged to become dedicated readers and viewers, providing a necessary ally for any type of new media… an audience. While 38.7% of active users are writing blogs, a surprising 72.8% are reading them, with a whopping 67.5% reading the personal blogs of friends and family.
How big is this trend? According to Universal McCann's latest Social Media Tracker there are 475 million active Internet Users worldwide between the ages of 16 and 54. Of those 475 million people, 184 million are blogging. 346 million read some form of blog, while 321 million are reading personal blogs. Personal blogs are the most highly consumed form of blog according to this study. This represents 137 million people who are consuming personal blogs who aren’t blogging themselves.
How this trend will affect the business of media won’t be known for years, though it’s likely to democratize the flow of information, trends, ideas and influence in that more and more of us will be writers, photographers, movie makers, reporters, analysts and opinion leaders in one form or another. Society will be listening to a lot more voices, and that can only be a good thing. Advertisers and the corporate media will likely navigate all this change as gracefully as the recording industry is handling the digital download, or as insightfully as the newspaper industry is handling the fact that news and paper appear to be on the outs. These are interesting times.
I think the ratio between blog creators and blog consumers will level off as new technologies emerge and the sector matures. The blogosphere began as a domain of the extrovert. The fact that the word “blog” still serves as a useful catch-all for all types of web logs, be it to promote business, journalistic pursuits, or as a personal diary, is indeed proof that we are still experiencing the tip of something very large. Of the 300 million people living in the
Having a blog will more likely become essential to how we document and share life. Consider this; the activities that constitute “blogging” have been with us for generations. What is a personal blog but a collection of stories, recorded self expression, relationships and events as illustrated by our own personal media? Our grandparent’s old trunks filled with letters, pictures, home movies, report cards and family recipes are yesterday’s family blogs in analog. These silos of the past will get pulled into the digital realm someday. Genealogy has hit the web hard over the last few years. When the blogging format meets a Wiki social graph that maps our shared ancestry we will likely see the past documented as quickly and enthusiastically as the present.
The value of the web for creating and cultivating meaningful personal relationships is just half the story. The ability of the web to help us build and maintain meaningful, searchable and fully connected digital memory banks is the other half. Just as today I walk around with every song I’ve ever owned easily found and played with my iPod, tomorrow my daughter will access every important personal moment she’s ever experienced, along with important moments experienced by her friends, family members and ancestors… all on demand.
So getting back to the connection I mentioned between the exhibition and voyeurism of reality TV, and the slight hint of that milieu in the leading edge of today’s online social movement; I believe this is a phase, and a necessary one. A mistake the industry is likely to make is assuming that the needs, trends and activities of today's users, the early adopters and way-early majority, will help us predict the needs and desires of the yet to be engaged true majority. Today’s online social landscape is not yet a mainstream setting. It’s top heavy on tech and youth culture and a little short on delivering relevance and value to people who consider themselves average, everyday hardworking folk. It’s a space where being a geek is a point of pride, and where being edgy, or at least a dude helps get you around. It’s a room with countless corners, built on enthusiastic subcultures, and filled with the truly dynamic. There are also a good number of screamers, wanabe’s and lurkers to keep the authentic smell of openness in the air. It’s addicting, exciting and fun.
But it can also be a bit of a circus; noisy, endless open doors and diversions, with the occasional unpleasant surprise. I occasionally log-off wondering if I have gum under my shoe, or smell of tobacco, cotton candy and popcorn. It’s a space that I enjoy and understand, even when I'm rolling my eyes. But it’s not a place that understands what many older users, parents or young children need from this world.
My parents are convinced that they can successfully ignore the existence of the Internet. Like his grandfather who never learned to read or write, my father is intent on leaving this world never having typed-in a password or read an email. My daughter, on the other hand, has already designed the logo for her future website, savetheworld.org (I don’t have the heart to tell her the domain isn’t available). I’m convinced that the web will play a huge role in both my daughter’s and parent’s futures… even if they resist it. Yet even I broach the subject with hesitation. Where can I bring my parents online where they can enjoy a meaningful social experience? How old will my daughter be before I’m comfortable giving her the keys to the open web? What needs to happen that hasn’t happened for this medium to really reach, touch and serve everybody?
We all have family members and friends who live outside our beloved digital world. What makes the social web so valuable for some and so irrelevant or inappropriate for others? I go back to realty TV. The Internet, as it’s being develop for early adopters and youth, promotes a vibe of open broadcast over closed networks of personal relevance. Web 2.0 is about being open, being found, and being heard. These are not the attributes of intimate personal networking.
We call it social media for a reason. We want our elbows out, and we want them rubbed… especially by people we know, or we have admired, or have little opportunity to connect with offline.
Among the hot apps du jour is Twitter. What is Twitter? Why, it’s your own personal broadcast buddy and handy little lifestream of people you know, or want to know, informing you what they are all doing right now. It’s tres cool. Of course, these are the people who you know that actually use Twitter. That’s about 2 million people worldwide as of last month. What this means is your chances of building a following that is anywhere near reflective of your real life is, well… “hard”. But we face this problem with other apps, and we don’t let it get us down. Twitter, again, is a land where being a geek has great rewards… voila- all my friends!
The unique adoption problem for Twitter is that in order to expand a personal network beyond a list of appealing elbows and fellow geeks you’ll have to somehow convince friends and family members that it’s critical that they start broadcasting when they're hungry, lost their pen, fed the cat, did laundry, or had a bad oyster. What I love about Twitter is it’s ability to document life in a way that is both immediate and far reaching. What I don’t like is Twitter provides little context for all these unique moments flying past. Visiting a friend’s Twitter home is much more rewarding- seeing what they like to tweet about and where they go. Twitter is an important step in helping us realize the value of a documented life.
But part of me wonders if Twitter is more of a social experiment in being hyper-connected than an essential communication tool. What to do with all this new connection and immediacy is really being explored by the people who use Twitter. It’s fascinating. Sleep and food seem to be the top tweet topics, followed by location and work/play reports. It’s 140 characters… so it becomes an art form based in brevity. If you’re a geek you will likely continue to love reporting the play-by-play of personal life, while non-techies will find their small moments too small and their big moments too frenetic… and tweeting will likely pass them by.
Again, Twitter seems like a natural for promoting ourselves so that we can get higher in the reality game-- become known, become more connected, achieve success. I engage in this game myself, and I’m not knocking it. I’m simply stating that these needs are much more narrow than the needs of a Mom who has 3 kids and a full-time career, and would love to network with friends and family, and set up pages for the kids, and plan birthday parties, and manage the family calendar, and publish scrapbooks that are connected to grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends… and do it all online without opening a can of spam. But all that inevitable potential is not quite there yet. It’s there… but you have to really want it. The documented life isn’t an easy feat for someone with little time, especially if that someone isn’t a self proclaimed geek like the rest of us.
My point is this; I think the broadcast element is what separates today’s users from tomorrow’s more mainstream Internet. Perhaps we need a new category called “Personal Networking”. Social Networking is about broadcast, it’s about being found and being heard. Personal Networking is different. It’s about being connected. It’s about having a network that reflects the life you really lead. For many, the documented life will wait until a relevant personal network arrives… because at the end of the day it’s the network that will give online life value. Personal media without the right audience has no value. The numbers prove that people already have an enormous appetite for personal media produced by people they know. And today's technologies help consumers capture life quicker, easier and less costly than ever. We await technologies that provide a simpler means of plugging in and managing our relationships and personal moments so that we can all begin to live a more meaningful, connected and documented life.
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