Evening grumpiness and nostalgia


Much as I’m delighted to have a job that’s based around social media, new technology and journalism, I do somewhat miss the days, a decade back, when I was still just experimenting with these new tools.

The endless hordes of people who have rushed in since, declaring the rules, the one-true-ways of blogging/social media/Twitter etc do somewhat spoil the swashbuckling fun of it all. Oh, I know everyone’s desperately keen to stake out their territory, establish their expertise and make some money off the Big New Thing, but I’m still convinced we’re only in the foothills of the change, that the true changes in publishing, commerce and society that a permanently connected, networked world will bring will take years, if not decades, to emerge.

As a rule of thumb, people who:

• tell you what the rules of success are, without acknowledging their provisionality
• use the word “brand” more than twice a paragraph
• declare confidently that social media is xxxxxx, where xxxxxx is a pre-existing business concept
• tell you that platform x is the only solution you should consider
• have no sense of humour about the whole silly, wonderful, inspirational, informative and useful social media thing

should probably be ignored.

Harrumph. 😉