Interesting post critiquing social media jargon and hype from Scott Berkun:
While I like and use Facebook and Twitter, there’s enough hype and abuse of words like innovation, transformation and revolution around all things social media that a critique is warranted – if only to take a shot at calibrating how people talk about this stuff. I hope this post is used whenever someone feels they’re being sold something phony or that makes little sense and wants a skeptical opinion to help calibrate where the truth is.
For starters: social media is a stupid term. Is there any anti-social media out there? Of course not. All media, by definition, is social in some way. The term interactive media, a more accurate term for what’s going on, lived out its own rise / hype / boom cycle years ago and was smartly ignored this time around – first rule of PR is never re-use a dead buzzword, even if all that you have left are stupid ones. I’ve been involved in many stupid terms, from push-technology to parental-controls, so I should know when I see one.