Get on the Bus or Get Left Behind

With the proliferation of Web 2.0 – or the “Live Web” – which includes aspects such as blogging, podcasting, tagging and social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, marketers have no choice but to become a part of these communities or be surpassed by their competition.  With the exponential increase in the adoption of these media, customers now have an increasing voice in how companies offer products and services, which is resulting in more collaborative and participative efforts between marketers and consumers.  Although these media have given consumers and increased voice, they also provide marketers with the ability to create, influence and participate in conversations which drive real-time decisions.  The future success of marketers depends on engaging their audience across the aforementioned realm of mediums. 

The adoption and understanding of these media by marketers will continue to pose a challenge – and likely at an increasing rate – as the pace of technology continues to rapidly change (Moore’s Law) and these new forms of technology evolve into something beyond their intended purpose. 

So are these tools advancing our society or are they simply a distraction that takes our focus and attention away from more important pursuits?  My personal opinion is that the internet is the most powerful tool ever known to mankind and it enables us to make technological advancements at an exponential rate.  The only significant fault that I find with the internet, and social media in general, is that everyone now seems to have a voice, and they can populate these sources with as much information as they want to without any checks and balances.  As a result, the amount of speculative, non-factual data that exists across media continues to grow and grow.  Being able to obtain massive quantities of data in real time continues to drive innovation at a pace that was previously incomprehensible by humans.   Unfortunately, the quantity of “garbage” data may be growing at an even faster rate, so it will be a continuous challenge to sift through the fiction and find factual data that can lead to further transformations.