Is Social Media Social? Has it Always Been? Does it Matter?

When you post a status update on twitter or facebook is it the start of a conversation or is it simply a statement of how you feel or where you currently are? When you share a link is that item shared by others or ignored? Long before social media was social media it was given the label web 2.0. And we were told that web 2.0 was all about community and sharing. Before that it was called the internet and before that it was called an idea inside Sir Tim Berners-Lee's head. The whole point of the internet is to share ideas and knowledge, to be social. Social media really boils down to a set of tools that make it easier, easier to both share and ignore. How do we cut through the sheaf and get to the wheat when it comes to gathering an audience or just having our thoughts passed on. Do we need to? I recently saw a curious -and somewhat facetious- tweet from social media guru @AaronStrout that went something like this "I'll tell you what... my lack of followers (I currently have 0) makes tweeting such a freeing experience. NOBODY can see my tweets. #woohoo." To me it is an interesting point because the essence of the social media toolset is to share and to form communities and to have people listen to you even if they ultimately ignore what you are saying. Think about it this way social media is a minivan, you are the driver and strapped in behind you is a two-year old babbling a constant stream of observations and mostly incoherent questions that represents the social media stream from friends and followees. Occasionally when the kid says something brilliant, or at least brilliant to their parent, the thought, observation, question resonants. The parent ends up sharing with friends at the office. The same holds true for social media just on a larger and ultimately faster scale. We notice something either directed to us or within our realm of relevance. We end up re-sharing in the hopes that people care enough to share it themselves and pass on the thought. It doesn't always happen and to borrow a phrase from Dr. Suess, "... bang-ups and hang-ups will happen to you ..." Sometimes things you might think are cool or valid are either missed or disregarded. And that is O.K. It happens. It happens in the physical world and in the one we have made up of electric ones and zeros. One man's relevance is another man's disregard so to speak. I don't have a magic bullet that will hit the target every time, more often than not I think I miss the mark. I think that holds true in life as well, the pile of failures is larger than the pile of successes. We remember the successes and that is what certainly must give us the impetus to move on after a failure. So to is social media social, I have to say yes. Yes, because it follows the pattern established throughout history, some will rise to the top, some will sink but most of us will float in the middle, rising and falling with the world around us, physical or digital.