Has social networking ‘jumped the shark’?

Dan Dennis knew he had a problem as he was riding on his motorcycle at about 110 miles per hour. Obviously he was speeding, but that wasn’t the issue. The problem was that while he was flying down the road, his cell phone rang. “I took my hand off the handlebars and reached into my pocket to get my phone,” Dennis recalled. “At that second, I knew I had a problem.”

Cell phones have become a key component in this age of “social networking.” Since the advent of the social network’s most primitive form of communication, e-mail, we have gone from being networked at the office, then at home. Now, thanks to “smart phones,” such as the Blackberry, Droid and iPhone, we can e-mail, text, surf the internet and get Facebook updates and Twitter tweets anywhere, anytime … even on a motorcycle at 110 mph.

Dennis, however, may not be the only one with a problem. Social networking itself may have one, too: it may have “jumped the shark.” The phrase, first originated following the “Fonzie jumps the shark” episode of TV’s “Happy Days,” is generally applied to a person, trend or product that’s been deemed to have reached oversaturation, burnout or usefulness too early. With a new movie, “The Social Network,” about the creation of Facebook, now in theatres (see review next page), even Hollywood has been able to capitalize on the trend. And – surprise – the studio has a Facebook page and is tweeting to help hock it!

Social networking may have changed forever the way we communicate, but in spite of this interconnected gadgetry and massive use of server space, has social networking peaked? Rich Menga with industry trade website PCMech.com thinks so.

“There is no doubt that social networking is an improvement in the way we communicate, in ways not possible prior to it,” Menga wrote in his regular column. “For example, Facebook allows us to connect with old friends, family members, acquaintances, coworkers and so on. However, social networking is not a new thing anymore and does have tenure. It’s definitely not the hot topic of conversation anymore,” Menga said. “Has the popularity of social networking peaked? I believe it has.”

How many users actually bother using social networking, and how many are “bouncers,” users who sign up then never do anything with it afterward? That’s what ended up stranding early attempts at social networking such as Friendster and MySpace, both of which have been dwarfed by Facebook.

The numbers are still on the rise as far as social networking usage is concerned, and while growth trends may be leveling out in most age groups, social media is still seeing expansion in at least one demographic: seniors.

Menga said he doesn’t want to imply that social networking is a fad that will go away, as some perceived the Internet as early as 1994. He maintains it won’t. “This is something that I believe will remain on the Internet for a good, long time,” Menga stated.

He and other experts suggest that how social networking works is its biggest downfall. Facebook for example has applications that constantly crash. “Even when you attempt to do something as simple as send a message to somebody else, you may get a server error. Twitter has had the same problem ever since it started. MySpace also has its bugs,” Menga observed. “None of them have ever been able to operate with 100% efficiency.”

“[Social media] can’t go away. It won’t go away,” says Sheet writer Colin Wolf. Only the applications will change. “Something we don’t even know about yet will take [Facebook’s] place,” he posited, citing how MySpace replaced Friendster, and was itself supplanted by Facebook.

Experts cited by Menga suggest that users have grown irritated with the fact that many such sites are continually changing their interfaces. What you clicked on one day to get somewhere may get moved next week, then moved again next month. Wolf, however, thinks that’s but a minor concern, observing that Facebook has survived such griping with what he believes is little or no observable user loss attributable to such changes.

Some users laud Facebook as being a great outlet for getting back in touch with old friends from years past, but is that really enough to justify having thousands of “friends,” including not only humans, but places, things and events?

Facebook in particular has arguably become part of the fabric of everyday life. “[Facebook creator Mark] Zuckerberg wanted the site to be this underlying subsection of our society and he’s managed to do that,” Wolf points out.

Which basically means we now have a medium where you add a bunch of people on a contact list, and trade messages, photos and silly cat videos. That brings up YouTube, which has become the butt of jokes for its hideous waste of server space, letting any nimrod with a video camera post any number of mind-numbing “blogs” and clips of their mundane, irrelevant and uninteresting everyday life.

Even Twitter has soared to moronic heights. When astronauts repairing the International Space Station tweeted on the drama happening live in outer space, that’s a constructive use of tweeting. But, does anyone need to follow Jennifer Aniston’s EVERY move?

The family that tweets together

Rick Phelps, who’s been using computers his entire adult life and has information technology management experience on his resume, said he thinks social media has made it simpler for families and their kids to keep in touch. “First came cell phones, and then personal e-mail, but then those became ‘intrusive,’” Phelps recalled. “Then came texting, which unlike the other two, is much harder, if not impossible, to ignore.” Tweeting and its sibling, texting, are analogous to web pages on Facebook, Phelps thinks.

“What Facebook does is let you see things about your kids — what they do, who they know — that you wouldn’t see otherwise,” Phelps added. “They can go to a Halloween party dressed as one of the Fruit of the Loom guys and parents can see the pictures on Facebook.”

Kids, he points out, just have to be willing to “friend” their parental units. One of Phelps’s has not, not wishing for Dad to know too much.

The politics of social media

Political campaigns, both for candidates and propositions, have turned to social media. Besides official websites, many candidates in the recent Mid-Term Elections employed YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to update followers, as well as pull in those all-important campaign donations and get their respective messages out.

Even for local candidates here, Facebook pages filled with platforms no one will read are mandatory.

Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (he lost Tuesday) said, in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, that new media outlets are changing campaigns. He thinks they are a good way to connect with students and young voters who don’t read papers or watch TV news,” he said. “New media doesn’t replace other efforts, such as network TV or cable … and I don’t think direct voter contact will ever be replaced.”

How effective social media outlets are is hard to determine, since no real polling data exists yet on voter impact. In the end, it may not really matter anyway; unlike the big money involved in major TV advertising, most (if not all) social network sites are free to use.

Social media’s real marketplace

Marketing on social media can be one good use of Facebook (for the marketer anyway, if not for their annoyed friends). Mono County has begun using it to help promote tourism. But even that makes you wonder whether its reach has only further exceeded its grasp when small municipalities, such as the Town of Mammoth Lakes, are tweeting, hoping to carve out a social network niche for itself alongside Los Angeles and other bigger cities.

Politicians and towns, however, aren’t Facebook and Twitter’s prime users. That dubious honor falls to you and me, people who have too much (or too little) time on our hands, and don’t mind being just another click on a bot-driven ad counter somewhere.

Think about it. What do you see when you log on to your home page? On the right-hand side, mixed in with reminders, friend requests and the like you’ll also find (drumroll, please) advertising! The social networking equivalent of “spam,” one can only assume that advertisers pay big bucks for the millions of potential clicks they can solicit.

“Facebook is intrusive,” Wolf conceded. “The ads are programmed based on how much you share [about yourself in your profile] so that Zuckerberg makes money.”

On the other hand, if you own a business that sees an advantage to taking the plunge into social media, but haven’t a clue where to start, the town’s Destination Marketing Organization is hosting a free Social Media workshop on Nov. 18 at Cerro Coso Community College. RSVP to John Urdi at jurdi@VisitMammoth.com to sign up.

Why can’t we be friends?

Part of the reason so many people “bounce” from all this social networking is the very thing it purports to help us achieve: having more “friends.” The problem: most of us don’t need or want any more friends, especially hundreds or thousands of them, most of which we will never actually meet. And the process is wonky. What if someone tries to “friend” you that you don’t want to be friends with? I have left some people hanging. I’ve also intentionally put in “friend” requests to people I know won’t accept.

At least some of us aren’t adverse to calling it like is: just a big forum with some extra added crap in it nobody uses or cares about that takes up even more of the time technology was supposed to be saving for us.

Maybe what we’re really looking for is a way back to more simplicity. Maybe we need to stop following what’s happening to Lindsay Lohan and thousands of other lives, and take the advice of the lampoon website that spoofed “SecondLife.com” by suggesting its users “get a first life.”

That being said, you can leave responses on my Facebook page.