Shashank Rana

I have been working hard to understand the Buzz behind Google’s latest product. While Wave, their previous offering, has not be of any productive use for me so far, I do not know how can one make use of this Buzz!

Social Media on Internet has become too many of ‘me too’ type websites. With the improving bandwidth and technology, it has been easy for companies to get inspired by Facebook and start websites to ‘connect’ people. VCs have been investing the money and the Entrepreneurs have been burning it on crowd-sourcing. No doubt there are various web communities that have added value to the people. I have been really impressed by the likes of Mint, which have helped people in learning from the best practices of others and improve their financial situation.

Twitter have become a place for link building and sourcing more and more traffic to the websites. Every time I login, I find people sharing websites and content that is mostly not developed by them, but is RT or just shared. There are less people who are getting into a conversation, and even if they have conversations, they can always use IM, which is real-time! Why would someone use a service to shout out to the world, ‘what have you been doing’ and then raise all the hue and cry about privacy with Buzz.

Facebook, which started as a place to connect people, has turned into an online gaming site. There are more people who login only to play games than to reconnect with old lost friends. More and more people are getting on to Facebook but probably they do not know what is the purpose of signing up. They are getting on to the Facebook bandwagon because everyone they know is already there, or signing up. Most people on my friend list have not responded to any wall posts or messages because they do not login that often. It is easier to call them!

Social Media has to have a purpose. It is supposed to be an aggregator where people from different walks of life can come together and create, discover, collaborate and contribute. Websites that are only a place for people to signup and forget why they created a login are no good for the internet or for the society. Email has a purpose, IM is for real time conversations, VoIP is cheap telephony, Social Media similarly has to prove its mettle before it can be considered a medium. Social Media should be used as a facilitator to provide the solution to a problem. We have not identified any problem but are creating websites for people to come together and… do nothing!

Social Media is about engaging visitors in something that is productive for them. It is about providing a service, a solution to the visitors’ problem. It is not the ultimate panacea and neither is it the solution itself. It is only a medium for providing solutions.

My point of the post is: If you believe that a particular website or web-app can solve one of your problems, signup. Rest all is noise.