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Will success ruin social media?

2 min read

Social Media

Parties are funny things. If just a few people show up, it’s kind of depressing. The more people the event draws, the more fun it is — up to a point. Eventually, if too many people crash the party, it gets overcrowded and dramatically less fun. Now imagine if all those extra, uninvited guests were shouting at the top of their lungs, constantly trying to sell you something. That’s the problem facing social media right now.

Mike Schaffner argues that the party problem will drive social media churn. We’ll all get fed up with spammers and marketers on Twitter so we’ll all move over to Twitter Clone A. The money men will catch on and the cycle will repeat, he argues, until we’re willing to pay for premium networks that keep marketing out of the equation. I’m not so sure about this last point. I love social media, but I don’t know if I’d be willing to lay down hard-earned cash for it. There are just too many other diversions and communication tools out there to make paying worth my while.

Are you worried about marketing ruining social media? Do you think social networks will be able to recover from a potential ad-pocalypse? Would you pay for a network where no marketing or use of your personal data was permitted?

Image credit, dianne39 via iStock