Social media is...
Social media has a habit of inspiring people to purple prose. Here are some of Mediawatch’s favourite examples of flowery descriptions and ambitious analogies:
“Social media is like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. No one actually knows how. When finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.”
Avinash Kaushik of Google says what we were all thinking, March 2009
“Social media measurement is the meteorology of marketing, and a lot of social media ‘work’ might as well be rain dances.”
Tom Ewing of Kantar warns that some people don’t know as much as they claim to, September 2009
“The expanse of available content ranges from the list servers and bulletin boards of yesteryear to the more ephemeral staccato of Twitter.”
Scott Evans of Harris Interactive makes Twitter sound cleverer than it is, November 2009
“[Researchers have become] ticks on the back of the information hippo”
Tom Ewing again, in philosophical mood, October 2009
“In real life we can sit through a boring presentation and then have a whispered chat with our neighbour about how dull it was, before putting on a bright smile and congratulating the speaker as they breeze up to us and ask what we thought. If we thought that the entire conversation with the neighbour would be retrievable later by the speaker, we might act rather differently.”
Alison Macleod says social media isn’t always as unfiltered as we might think, May 2009
“As more human behaviours emit trails of digital residue, more opportunities reside for algorithms to harness those human-induced data.”
Max Kalehoff, ex-BuzzMetrics, makes it all sound rather messy, March 2007
“[The potential of tracking vast amounts of information] raises the question of why anyone would want to track all the information in the world. It’s a bit like saying, ‘Let’s drop in on every conversation in the UK now to see if they’re talking about our product.’”
James Cherkoff of Collaborate Marketing suggests that some of what’s said on the internet might not actually be that interesting, January 2008
“Adding ‘listening’ techniques to ‘asking’ is like going from an X-ray to a CAT scan.”
David Wiesenfeld of Nielsen on tracking your brand’s health, September 2009
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2 Comments
Duncan Stuart
16 years ago
...ooh err. Trails of digital residue. The quote reminded me of the old Frank Zappa song" I'm the slime." I am gross and perverted Im obsessed n deranged I have existed for years But very little had changed I am the tool of the government And industry too For I am destined to rule And regulate you I may be vile and pernicious But you can't look away I make you think Im delicious With the stuff that I say I am the best you can get Have you guessed me yet? I am the slime oozin out ....From your tv set Things have changed since Frank wrote those lyrics. Today, the slime is us.
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Scott Evans
16 years ago
I never thought that "ephemeral staccato of Twitter" would be construed as an endorsement of Twitter being clever. Rather, the vast majority of tweets are less than substantive and certainly short-lived and transitory in nature. Good for analyzing messsage propagation rates but hardly a sound foundation for understanding substance.
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