It Is No Longer OK To Proclaim Social Media As New
January 4, 2012 
Author 
In 
Must we go through this every year? Social media is still not new. It wasn’t new last year. Or the year before. In fact, it hasn’t been new for well over a decade. The web was social from day one, even if the term was popularized later on.
Marketers and media: if the notion of a social form of media is “new” to you, you’re asleep at the wheel. It might even be time to seek a new profession.
We’ve gone through these arguments repeatedly since we started this site, but let’s go ahead and dig up some quotes as a friendly reminder:
As technology blogger Steven Hodson notes:
Just because we slap a new term and some soothing pastel web pages together it doesn’t invalidate what came before it. It doesn’t change the fact that we have been socializing on the web long before someone invented the marketing term of social media. It sometimes seems though that the tech world has this inbreed need to proclaim something as new and totally different than what came before when in fact this isn’t the case.
In the same post, also cited is a quote from MIT professor credited with inventing the web Tim Berners-Lee:
The Web is more a social creation than a technical one. I designed it for a social effect – to help people work together – and not as a technical toy. The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our weblike existence in the world. We clump into families, associations, and companies. We develop trust across the miles and distrust around the corner. What we believe, endorse, agree with, and depend on is representable and, increasingly represented on the Web. We all have to ensure that the society we build with the Web is of the sort we intend.
So when I stumble upon posts like this recent one by Alfred Hermida at Nieman Journalism Lab it is frustrating to say the least. The author inaccurately proclaims:
Social media is largely still seen as a new, shiny entrant into the world of media.
But is it? Who actually views social media as new anymore? Are there really so many of these individuals left? The author offers no evidence here or links as context other than his own opinion.
I actually think it is no longer OK to proclaim or position social media as being new, or even seen as new. It’s just not a correct statement and is simply making excuses for those not paying attention to the evolution of the digital landscape over the last decade-plus. Or it’s made by those trying to hawk their snake oil software / services as if it’s some marketing or media panacea. It’s not helpful or accurate.
Further, the author’s post itself is interesting, but it is hardly an original observation. I knew I recognized the perspective from somewhere: it’s from Kevin Kelly’s New Rules for the New Economy.
From Hermida (last week)
Technologies reach their full potential when we forgot about the novelty. Instead they become boring and blend into the background. How often do we think about the technology behind the telephone, or the television set in our living room?
With any luck, this is what will happen with social media. Social media tools and services will be so ingrained within our everyday experiences that we forget that they are such recent developments.
Essentially, the technology will become invisible as we shape it to meet our political, social, and cultural needs.
From Kevin Kelly (originally published in 1998)
As technology becomes ubiquitous it also becomes invisible. The more chips proliferate, the less we will notice them. The more networking succeeds, the less we’ll be aware of it.
…Computer technology is undergoing the same disappearance. If the information revolution succeeds, the standalone desktop computer will eventually vanish. Its chips, its lines of connection, even its visual interfaces will submerge into our environment until we are no longer conscious of their presence (except when they fail). As the network age matures, we’ll know that chips and glass fibers have succeeded only when we forget them. Since the measure of a technology’s success is how invisible it becomes, the best long-term strategy is to develop products and services that can be ignored.
Good observations, not denying that. But unfortunately none of it is original or new. Neither is social media …and if it is for you, I wouldn’t go around shouting that. Instead, I’d get caught up: whether you’re on the marketing or media side of the fence, it’s your job to get this stuff and be the ones pushing things, not lost or scrambling to catch up.
If you still think it’s OK to call social media new, you might also think it’s OK for congress to still not understand the internet. Neither are right, both a bit shameful.
image credit: Shutterstock
Therese Pope replied | Jan 4, 2012 (9 comments)
Adam, fantastic article. No doubt, social media isn’t a new concept. You summed up my thoughts exactly in this statement: “Or it’s made by those trying to hawk their snake oil software / services as if it’s some marketing or media panacea. It’s not helpful or accurate.” There are many companies still scrambling to catch up and that’s why their brand is in jeopardy. They wake up in a blind fog wondering why they don’t have any business. Not good. Great post, Adam. I always enjoy your articles, but this one is perfect to kick off the new year. Kudos! Happy 2012!
Adam Singer replied | Jan 4, 2012 (597 comments)
Thanks Therese, happy 2012 to you too :)
Mark Baker replied | Jan 4, 2012 (1 comment)
I agree absolutely that social media are not new. But it did not begin with the Web either. As I argued in my blog (http://everypageispageone.com/2011/08/03/is-help-2-0-any-different-from-usenet-1-0/) it goes back at least as far as Usenet.
What is new is how ubiquitous social media have become, which includes both how many people use social media, and what they use them for. The growth of numbers means that social media are a new blip on a lot of people’s radar, even if the phenomena itself is at least 30 years old.
The problem with the belief that social media are new, however, is that it blinds people to the lessons about how it works that could be learned from studying the 30 years of social media use that we already have to draw on.
Francesco replied | Jan 5, 2012 (1 comment)
Hi Adam,
Lovely article. I do agree with your point of view.
I guess that the problem lies with the term, social media. Of course it’s not new but we probably could infer that it is – at least – a good distinction to separate the new forms of marketing through the web from the traditional ways of pushing the message out via traditional/unilateral channels. But, again, that’s no news.
It is funny that where I live, in Southern Switzerland, some marketing “experts” never even heard about social media marketing until the beginning of 2011. For them, it was news, for instance. As you pointed out, the semantics of this should not be related to “news” but to “blindness”.
All the best,
Ciao
Francesco
Samantha replied | Jan 6, 2012 (15 comments)
Well, as marketers, it is no surprise that we will snap a fresh and different term onto a traditional idea. While ‘new’ is not the correct term, it amazes me how many marketers, bloggers, journalists, etc still fumble with facebook, fail to update twitter, and seem ‘new’ to social media themselves-these are the people that still consider it a new venture. Not necessarily because it is as a whole, but because unfortunately it still is to them.
George F. Snell III replied | Jan 6, 2012 (1 comment)
But social media is new, Adam. Especially when it is compared to other marketing channels: newspapers and magazines, TV, radio and direct mail. While the internet has been around for decades the average person didn’t have access or use it as part of their personal and professional lives until the mid-1990s at the earliest.
And the idea of marketing on platforms like Facebook and Twitter are less than 5 years old – and the possibilities and potential are still evolving. Social media marketing is still in its nascent stages – so of course it is new.
Besides that fact, adoption rates are always staggered. You may be an early adopter, but most people are not. So social media is very new to a lot of people, including marketers. Many brands are still jumping over internal hurtles erected by legal and regulatory departments to even launch a YouTube channel or create an interactive app.
There are also entire countries that haven’t been able to experience the possibilities of the internet and social media because of government restrictions or a lack of technology. So to those populations, social media is even newer.
So categorize me as shameful because I believe that social media is new to many people and brands.
Catherine Lockey replied | Jan 7, 2012 (63 comments)
Well, you know late adopters are still out there Adam and THEY think it’s new. (I’m surrounded by them here – it’s so distressing!) I see late adopters doing limited research while looking for a quick fix. Of course snake oil sales scum just love it ’round these parts! The quote you chose from New Rules for the New Economy gives me hope – thanks.
The DragonSearch Online Marketing Manual replied | Jan 10, 2012 (3 comments)
Hello Adam,
You are correct here. Social Media is not new. We feel the issue, as Catherine Lockey points out, is that there are late adopters and this makes it new to them. What is in some ways new, is an age where almost every person has a computer or technological device linking to the web in their homes. Technology has changed so rapidly within the last decade that some people just do not know how to keep up. We can only hope, people will realize the advantages of social media, especially in relation to businesses, and learn the usefulness of the different platforms. You really make some excellent points here. Thank you for posting this!
More Web Site Traffic Guide replied | Jan 11, 2012 (6 comments)
I agree with you, social media is not new. But to some marketers using social media in marketing their products and services is still anew concept to them. They found the trend of social media full of nonsense talks and never even grasp the business advantages it offers. It is no secret that a lot of marketers still fail to update their posts and tweets and if they ever did no interaction between followers is implemented. Thanks for the post!