syndication (signal to noise)
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
This little journal of mine is now in syndication. After having built an RSS feed for updates to this site, I've been linking those updates to various channels such as a tumblr "blog", twitter and a new facebook account.
I did this because I'm using this old journal of mine as a testing ground for things we want to do for our business. There really isn't a lot to it (the only interesting technical bit was making it possible for Japanese-language entries to function) but it's taught me a lot about what people are doing with these so-called social media.
And that is, essentially: nothing. For the most part people are keeping in touch by posting immediate moment-by-moment insights into what they're doing. I approve, because I believe we should pay attention to these trivial matters. These are the stuff of life, after all, not the supposedly big strokes such as what we're doing with ourselves. Telling someone about what you do for a living, for instance, can only take you so far. Telling them how you're spending your free time says a lot more if you manage to connect this with the lives of the people you're communicating with.
As long as I feel moved to respond (or that I could respond) then I think such posts are of some value. This is what it means to stay in touch. But for the most part, I see a lot of content that doesn't move me to respond. I also see a lot of people using these things in a commercial sense that doesn't engage the recipient at all.
I find these insights very useful for what we'll be doing with our business, and will be incorporating all of this into our marketing plan.
But I suspect that socially-speaking this thing is pretty much a dead end. I believe we'll look back on things like twitter and facebook and roll our eyes. "What were we thinking," like it's the pet rocks of this era. And that's because it's difficult to sustain an output that's engaging. As people see more and more posts with little value to them, I believe they'll drop those channels from their lives. Simply too much noise-to-signal.