Jon Litwack

To all y’all who don’t “get it”

// March 25th, 2008 // Stuff

As of late, my UX practice has been focused more on social strategy, and as a result I get the occasional odd glance from my colleagues. For the past while my strategy has been primarily build focused, and rest assured (though I doubt any of you are losing sleep over my career decisions) I will continue to focus on build; however, I think that social engagement is quickly becoming a part of agency mindset surrounding the holistic framework of an interactive strategy. So with that said, yes, I am a pusher of social engagement as a practice. It’s not a buzz word. Web “2.0″ IS A BUZZ WORD, the idea that EVERYONE should build a social network is RIDICULOUS, and if I hear the word AJAX used one more time in reference to a front-end language I’m going to scream.
The point I’m getting at today is that in the wake of new media absorbing the social culture wave (Way too many surfing references there), everyone is trying to find business value in every network out there, and I’m sorry, but chances are , most of the time, you’re not going to.
A lot of people question the value of Twitter, and it’s a reasonable issue to question; however, perhaps… just maybe… Twitter serves a very unique purpose, has no real business agenda to speak of, and merely exists for those who DO find it useful.
I personally don’t use Twitter, but only because I have a hard enough time forcing myself to update a blog once a day, let alone a microblog ten times a day. There’s nothing to get. If you don’t use it, then just don’t. At the end of the day you can only strategize around platforms that you understand, and those that don’t will never truly be able to effectively leverage the medium. That’s really all there is to it.

If you don’t want to use LinkedIn… Don’t. But don’t come crying to me about how you’re ten years behind the times simply because you failed to grasp the concept of social networking beyond the ability to connect with people you already know. That was NEVER really the point of social networks.
If it was, they wouldn’t be networks, they would simply be static connections, and somewhat reminiscent of ICQ, ie. just another way of connecting to a friend. But that’s not what social networking is about. Social networking is about the ability to connect to nodes of networks that you may not have had access to before. That’s why police are using it to investigate murders, HR reps are using it to find new talent, and… well… there are obvious darker implications that I won’t get into today.

Before I go off on too much of a tangent, all of this supposed “2.0″ wave crap all boils down to this. There’s nothing new about what’s available to us. What is new is the way in which we are willing to use web. It’s not the technology, it’s us.
We can now create, aggregate, tag, rate, share and filter en masse.
The best part about all of it is that you don’t have to take part. Don’t join a social network, don’t register for any sites. Most of the content will show up somewhere open and free if its’ interesting enough anyway.

I’m done ranting, have a good night,
Jon