Looking back over a very long period of my time spent on the internet and all of the social networks, blog sites, gadgets I thought were Cool or Fun, I now find they were all a waste of time.
Turn Time Around
Today we have literally thousands of gadgets, social networks and new techie products that have become center pieces of our current social culture. Fifty years ago, the same thing took place, but of course a whole lot less techie. Fifty years ago, having an electric typewriter indicated you worked for a COOL company and whining about the $.95 per gallon of gas seemed worth while. Now, today, how do people think about typewriters and gas being lower than $1. Looking back, it was a waste of time thinking that these items are the ultimate.
I’m sure fifty years from now some bright dude, or dudette, will be looking into an historical archive of content produced during the early 2000’s and quickly realize the same thing is happening in their current culture. Hopefully, they will whip out their Samsung Z252 Telepathic Broadcaster to post a review of their past fifty years to the more dominate Google+. One can hope, can’t they.
Only Believe What You Can Touch
Anyway, there were moments where what I was doing became more of a learning experience than a complete waste of time. Like in 1999 when I got to see behind the scenes of the development of the more popular social networking sites and how the development of BOT and sweatshops were making things appear popular.
Like in 2005 when a (official name withheld for obvious reasons) mainstream social network launched at SXSW had to hire 500 people to attend the event and stand around clicking on the face of their smartphones to make it appear a lot of people were using their app. This type of coerce method of event marketing insured generating excitement towards the app and became the stand procedure for other launches from then on up to today. This method of fake marketing quickly moved to creating computer BOTs that would appear to be a Real Person now interacting with the Hired Hands on the street. All of this in an effort to produce Hype towards getting the general public to use the product.
All these pass experiences comes in play today when I consult businesses on their digital marketing strategies and advice them to not believe everything they see reported on the internet. Only believe in what can be validated by a 3rd party source.
Do things thinking about how it will appear Fifty Years from now and not do things because it was what some dude on Facebook told you need to do to be COOL.
Get real with your digital marketing strategy. Stop by and…. Let me know how I help.
