So, a couple of weeks go by without a blog post, and there's this nagging thing in the back of your mind that, geez, you really need to put something up. Thing is, the stuff you want to write about you've already written about for the three other blogs you write for, and if you haven't done that, you Tweeted your thoughts when the subject was fresh, and someone Tweeted back, and the discussion was had, and now it just seems silly to explore it even further.
There was a session at this year's SXSW entitled, "Your Personal Blog is Dead." I didn't go to the session, believing that mine is not, in fact, dead -- and also believing that my personal blog isn't really a personal blog, after all. I don't write about my cat, possibly because I don't have a cat, but mainly because I've tried to stick, mostly, to advertising with a digital slant here on this, my, er...personal/not personal blog.
Time moves fast now. That's what I say a lot in a lot of the talks I give about social media. Social media has done that -- the web has done that -- and short snippets of information, available on any subject from just about everyone, via Twitter, have done that to the point that time isn't just short anymore, time is instant. If your reaction to a subject isn't in the realm of minutes, your opportunity to present a relevant opinion is altered, and for the moment, diminished. It's not eliminated altogether, though, but your entry into the discussion now becomes harder. Follow me here:
Something happens, and people Tweet. You know a lot about the subject, but you fail to Tweet, because you're in, say, an all-day meeting. The Twittersphere bursts with opinions in all directions for a couple of hours (or a couple of minutes, which might as well be hours), and by the time TweetDeck shows you what you've missed you realize that the subject has changed. While that's usually perfectly fine, there are times when a perspective from someone who truly knows a lot about the subject (remember, that was one of the givens at the beginning of this scenario) would be really, really valuable. Except now, nobody wants to talk about the subject anymore, because it's been Tweeted to death already, just now, just in the last few minutes. The bar has been raised, if your goal is to insert your (educated) opinion into the discussion at all. It's like having Wikipedia get the story completely wrong -- and you know exactly why it's wrong. Except the case has been closed in an instant, and you weren't there.
This, I think is the thing that scares people to death about social media.
Until you realize that the speed at which discussions can go in one direction is also the speed at which they can change course. And you do have an opportunity to influence discussion, even if you come to it late -- provided what you have to say is relevant, and persuasive. Yes, it takes a good bit more effort to insert your opinion into a discussion that's deemed "old," but if the discussion is that important to you, then the extra effort will be worth it.
Keeping up is hard, and getting harder all the time. Actually, it's beyond hard. It's literally impossible now. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to keep up. And it certainly doesn't mean you should cede every argument to the first responders. It does mean, however, that if you're not willing to move quickly, your effort to move at all -- on any given subject -- will have to be greater, if you want it to have impact.
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I appropriately seem to stumble onto this blog entry ... what 2 months since it was posted, so you are in deed right, it hard to keep up with what is going on -- literally.
Anyway, I enjoyed you ramblings about not being able to stay current on things because things move to darn fast. It was entertaining and I feel your frustration.
Posted by: Simple Simon | June 04, 2009 at 11:17 PM