In Defence of Social Media

Lets Face(book) it: This social networking site is the fastest-growing medium in human history to cross the 400-million-user mark. User count now hovers around 900 million. Barely a couple of year back, Facebookers numbered less than half of that. And if founder Zuckerberg and his poke-marked gang can reverse some of the embarrassments of the companys recent IPO and get their mobile act together, it can become the largest medium ever. (There are stories on the Web about an analyst predicting the sites demise in five years or so, but well have to wait and see.)

Facebook, of course, is not alone in the current phenomenon of social networking sites vying with each other for an increasingly expressive cyber crowd. Consider all the chirp-chirp going on at Twitter, a micro-blogging website thats more aptly seen as the worlds first giant mirror that instantly reflects what people everywhere do, feel and believeabout things as trivial as their nail paint to as critical as earthquakes.

Then there are many sites with a business or professional approach (LinkedIn comes to mind immediately, though there are other examples as well). They are being used by millions of workers and businesspersons as a newfound way to keep in touch, reach out to prospective buyers/suppliers and, as a Naukri.com ad depicts, just look for ways to make your boss the ex-boss.

Of late, we also have the likes of Pinterest, which is the new kid on the social block with the picture power to sweep people away to its platform in droves.

All hot air! claim some detractors of social networking. Passing fad, pontificate many editorials. Time wasters, moan the office puritans.

Really? With hundreds of millions all across the world posting messages, chatting, viewing videos, looking at online resumes, playing games and doing sundry other things they also do in the physical world, I dont think so.

The main reasons social networking receives much flak include concerns that employees will watch YouTube when they should be doing office work; it will greatly increase bandwidth costs; peoples privacy will be compromised; and social sites will open up a Pandoras box of legal hornets.

These are valid objections. But dont people waste time in the physical world by taking a stroll or a break? Dont they spend money on phone calls? Isnt a lot of our personal information already known through other means as well? And, arent lawsuits the order of the day anyway?

So, why single out social networking sites? They are becoming as much a part of our life as anything we use each day. Besides, just as there are ways to make people more productive and guard our personal information in the offline world, there are mechanisms for gainfully channelling the interactions in the virtual realm. The trick is to use them in a way that doesnt put off users or complicate things for organisations.

If anything, social networking is a wonderful tool in the hands of cyber socialites as well as knowledge workers. And armed with this tool, they are happily tweaking and twirling the nuts and bolts of how people relate with each otherirrespective of where they are located.

What could be fundamentally wrong with that?

ACE 17 Purecontrol TF