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mallorys_cameraSo Gartner, the technology research firm that was my bestest friend back in my ICM-Brakepoint days, is predicting 50% of current social media users will be giving up social media entirely within the next 2 years.
Gartner has an excellent track record so far as these types of predictions go.
Also, I read somewhere else that even currently, maybe only 25% of the people who use social media actually post to it.
The rest are lurkers.
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In those early days—think late 80s, early 90s—the most exciting thing about the Internet was that it promised to turn the broadcast model of information dissemination upside down.
No longer would the tools of information dissemination be concentrated in the hands of the few!
No, now creative individuals would have parity with the biggest corporations!
The Internet would be a democratizing technology!
It was about this time that the odious term “content creation” became popular.
###
We couldn’t have been wronger about the Internet.
Seems like the majority of individuals prefer to be passive consumers of content, and, of course, big corporations quickly figured out ways to marginalize and bypass tiny individual creators and dominate the global networks.
As a tiny individual creator, you can swear fealty to Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok and showcase your creativity through the noblesse (for which read: terms of service) of a beneficent corporate overlord.
You can still make the Big Buck$: The so-called “creator economy” is a $30 billion-a-year industry.
But you’ll have to build your brand on their terms.
###
I was mulling on these things this morning as a way of procrastinating because I don’t clean—my own house or anyone else’s:
Gartner has an excellent track record so far as these types of predictions go.
Also, I read somewhere else that even currently, maybe only 25% of the people who use social media actually post to it.
The rest are lurkers.
###
In those early days—think late 80s, early 90s—the most exciting thing about the Internet was that it promised to turn the broadcast model of information dissemination upside down.
No longer would the tools of information dissemination be concentrated in the hands of the few!
No, now creative individuals would have parity with the biggest corporations!
The Internet would be a democratizing technology!
It was about this time that the odious term “content creation” became popular.
###
We couldn’t have been wronger about the Internet.
Seems like the majority of individuals prefer to be passive consumers of content, and, of course, big corporations quickly figured out ways to marginalize and bypass tiny individual creators and dominate the global networks.
As a tiny individual creator, you can swear fealty to Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok and showcase your creativity through the noblesse (for which read: terms of service) of a beneficent corporate overlord.
You can still make the Big Buck$: The so-called “creator economy” is a $30 billion-a-year industry.
But you’ll have to build your brand on their terms.
###
I was mulling on these things this morning as a way of procrastinating because I don’t clean—my own house or anyone else’s:
no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 03:48 pm (UTC)But the for-a-while ended. It's like when a mom-and-pop shop offers a great pie, and the whole town and region loves it, and then they start shipping it further and further afield... and then Big Pie realizes and buys them out or undercuts them with a similar pie for cheaper, made with pie slave labor over the big water, etc.
... But while it was good, it was good. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 04:14 pm (UTC)(I suppose had I been born 10 years later, I would have wanted to make movies. 😀)
But I guess not everybody wants to tell their own stories.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-30 06:36 pm (UTC)I think more people want to tell their stories in some form or another than don't (even in simple conversation), but less are motivated to overcome the work of getting them down in pixels, paint, or ink...