Chris Ash

Social Media Wariness

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 14:00:00 -0700

I like social media. I've made good friendships with people I would otherwise never meet. I've strengthened relationships with people I never get to see. (And yes, I've destroyed at least one perfectly beautiful friendship.) Yet with the advent of Google+, I'm feeling like stepping back. I'm not eschewing social connections; I like the connections. I'm bothered by the wholesale commoditization of our lives and interests that takes place behind the scenes.

At some level we're all aware that our online lives are tracked, analyzed, evaluated, pigeon-holed, and above all: marketed-to. In many cases, we give up a lot of the rights to our own moments (think, photographs) simply by clicking I Agree on some byzantine Terms of Service; terms which might be best summarized as "good luck suing us."

Even more than those real concerns—tenuous that they may be at the moment—I'm not really interested in giving Facebook a way to monetize my life simply because I value the social connections it facilitates. We have all seen then the ads. Pick any company's advertising and it's likely to say "LIKE us on Facebook!" I'm sure Facebook loves the free advertising. It strikes me as odd that so many companies are willing to make Facebook the cornerstone of their marketing and customer outreach efforts. It feels like a foolish dilution of a brand to say "Go to facebook.com/companyx" instead of saying "visit us at companyx.com". (.com namespace concerns notwithstanding.)

Google is much the same problem. I've long been creeped-out by the "relevant" advertising in my "free" gmail account. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to abandon gmail. There was a time when we paid for email—I still do, in the form of custom domains—and while we gave up the burden of cost in exchange for our marketing information, I wonder if that wasn't a fool's bargain. Interestingly, twitter feels like the least egregious offender in social media so far. I think that's only because they don't know how to break it in a way that will make revenue without driving off the userbase. My instincts say it might be only a matter of time until that changes.

The bottom line is, I want to disintermediate huge corporations from those relationships that I choose to maintain. Which is to say, I don't want some company to make a buck off me simply because I want to say connected with someone. I realize that it's naive to want something like that. Think about it. The only way I can communicate with you for free is to talk to you in person. Given the relative costs and the might of our technological progress, that's pretty sad. The flipside is that the cost has never been lower to communicate around the world in an instant.

Based on what I've said here, I feel like I'm close to making a decision about how I communicate. If you want to reach me, my preferences are, in order:

In Person
Text/Twitter (608-729-4492 or @chrisash)
Email (@chrisash.com)
Voice (608-729-4492) or HeyTell works great.
Everything else.

Where does Facebook and Google+ fit in there? Frankly, I'm not sure they do.

Chris Ash

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