Either I’m Going To Look Really Stupid Or…

...I’m going to look like a divinely inspired prophet. I’m not divinely inspired, and the future will decide if this book is prophetic.

I’ve never been able to stomach fads in the fields of education, business, management and psychology both on principle and because of the cost of these fads to the people who adopt them (and then abandon them), and to society in general.

I’ve never been a fan of taking something that exists already, repackaging it and marketing it via the “hype and hope” syndrome to create buzz and momentum.

I cannot stand “researchers” who selectively gather data, and report on it to confirm their own self interests, and then spin the results to support their vested interests.

I believe that usually, cool technological toys without a useful purpose or function tend to always remain as cool techno-toys without purpose or function, and that it is not always easy to invent purposes after the fact.

I am not happy that our society has become so complex and so marketing driven that anything can be made popular and thus, profound, provided the marketing strategies are “good enough”.

All of these things connect up with social media, the current fad many have suggested is going to revolutionize business, and change society forever.

It’s not. In this book you will see that social media is nothing new, technologically and the few functions that it allows have been available even before the Internet was available to regular people.

You will see that the adoption of social media by individuals has been created via a lot of marketing, and celebrity endorsement and “coolness” rather than any particular functions that could not be undertaken in other ways.

More importantly, getting to the point of this book, you will discover that the pressure upon businesses to “get on social media”, is based not on data, or a predominance of huge successes, but on vague unsubstantiated notions that businesses must “be there”.

You will also get a chance to consider that social media is in the boom period of a boom-bust cycle that will resemble the burst Internet bubble of 1999-2001, and subsequent collapse of thousands of companies who took with them millions of dollars in venture capital.

Most important though is we’ll give you enough understanding of social media to make sense of it, and make intelligent, informed decisions about whether you should do business using social media platforms, the disadvantages and advantages, and how to go about it.

I have nothing to sell you, except of course this book, which presumably, you already have. You cannot hire me to help you with social media campaigns or marketing. I don’t take money for advising or consulting about social media. I don’t make money by doing research about social media. I have zero plans to do any of this in the future.

I have no vested interest in the success or failure of social media platforms.

I do have a strong bias towards intelligent thinking in business, whether that business is a huge multinational or a tiny one person micro business.

Hopefully I can share my knowledge and perspectives with you and you (and history) will judge whether I am prophetic, or just plain curmudgeonly stupid.