Social media has, and will continue to upset quite a lot of people, there is division in opinions as to how best use social media platforms, there are annoyances from those who do and frustrations from those who don’t even bother to get a profile, and given the power of social media it is easy to see why this has happened.
There are also incredibly grumpy people who have chosen to aim their ire towards those who wish to be part of the future, people like Mark Simon, A VP of industry relations for SEM firm Didit, who wrote a powerful piece about the Ad Age with an article named ‘Beyond the Hype: The 10 Most Asinine Trends Online and Why You Should Ignore Them’.
There is always someone who thinks it’s cool and trendy to dump on new ideas, and here is what Simon had to say about Twitter.
9. TWITTER AND ITS MICROBLOGGING ILK.
What could be more annoying and less useful than a site where thousands of people are given 140 characters to shout out about what they’re doing at every moment of the day? The amazing thing is that enough people out there think this mindless stream of ephemera (”I’m eating a tangerine,” “I’m waiting for a plane,” “I want a Big Mac”) is interesting enough to serve as the basis for a viable advertising platform.
The very interesting aspect of this bizarre and downright grumpy quote is that it was listed under the section for CMO, which is pretty much the opposite of what you would want a CMO to do. This guy is basically telling CMOs around the world to ignore new ideas, ignore experimentation and without question, ignore getting involved in the wider world, sure Mark, that is going to have some wonderful consequences.
I begrudge picking this quote apart but there is just so much wrong with it that I really must try to make a good fist of it, I just can’t leave it as is. Mark believes that we shouldn’t fill Twitter up with the banalities of real life, but real life on social media is exactly what we are looking for, if it descends into something fake then its value greatly diminishes.
Mark misses the point here by so much that I wouldn’t be surprised if people Tweeted about it as it passed them by in slo-mo, this sounds like someone who just doesn’t get it, someone who missed out on it and someone who genuinely has no clue how to get involved with social, or indeed what it means for the future.
As long as people ignore messages like this I am happy, once they start paying attention we are all in trouble. Right, rant over, if you need me Ill be on Twitter telling everyone how amazing my tangerine is.
