Social media can be a pain in the butt from which to get anything worthwhile. Surprised that I, a social media consultant, would say that? Don’t be. I’m a realist.
A super article I read the other day got me thinking more about a subject that’s been bugging me for a while. Time involvement with social media. In Social Media’s Inconvenient Truth, Drama 2.0 (yes, that’s the author’s nom de blog.) riffed off another article by Sarah Perez (wow, an actual real name) wherein she theorized that “real people don’t have time for social media.” I think she may have something there. But apparently Drama 2.0 didn’t quite agree. He went a bit deeper (kudos for that) and reasoned that the average “real” person spends less time in social media per week than the average person spends watching television daily. And why is that?
Drama says social media requires involvement, participation, or what Marshall Mc Luhan described as a “cool” medium. Cool media require work to derive more information or satisfaction from and that describes social media to a “T.” Mc Luhan defined TV as a “cool” medium also, but relative to social media TV is “hot.” Why? Because TV has a lot more upfront information than does social media. Hot media require less participation, or less filling in of the blanks through which to derive some satisfaction.
So, as Drama theorizes, after a long day in the trenches of work, where your mind has been on overdrive since 8AM, where are you going to put your mind at 8PM? In a cool medium like social media, one requiring some extra thought, or in a cool, time-to-veg-out-and-relax medium like TV? I know what my answer is, and it’s probably the same as that of most average people. But to say definitely? More research is needed.
