I read yesterday about how GroundFloor Media Inc., a PR firm, is launching a social media program aimed at helping its clients go viral in social networks, blogs, and podcasts. The article says, “Social media has transformed consumers from content readers to content publishers.” And this is good how? Who’s going to read all this stuff?
There are only X number of content readers out there. And now they’re spending some of their time not reading, but creating. That creative time consumes time that those same people could spend, well, consuming content. And that creative time cuts down on the total potential audience for what content is already out there. Think about it in terms of numbers. Technorati is tracking about 113 million blogs as of the date of this post. And last I’m aware of there are about 250 million blog readers. So, on average, there are 2.2 readers for each blog? Yeah, that’s what the numbers say.
Of course, the top 1% of blogs pull most of the readership, but that’s not the point. The point is if there are people out there creating the other 99% of blogs and other social media content, they’re not spending time consuming. And we wind up with a society that is more obsessed with talking than with listening. Are we becoming a society of narcissists? More interested in hearing ourselves speak than in listening?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must stop writing and go off and read some of those other blogs. They need the consumption. 
