No bullshit social publishing news and opinions. Follow Brandon.
I’m not a huge fan of Jeremiah Owyang‘s opinions. I don’t know the guy. He could be awesome, and so this is not meant as a personal attack against Owyang. I just feel he has a tendency to state really obvious things.
The good news, for him, is that he states these obvious things to people who don’t know any better, and they pay him a lot of money to do that.
Which is why I started Soap Box Included …
Uh, do you know what a “mark” is? In professional wrestling lingo, it’s the term used for fans who think what they’re watching is real. That’s not meant to be a philosophical head trip. It means the folks watching think the fights are real. Marks make up Owyang’s, and to be fair, pretty much every audience gathered to listen to social media prognostications.
The fact is, no one knows what’s going to happen. It’s all speculation, and it doesn’t matter who you pick for your prophet, it’s mostly bullshit. Jeremiah just tends to give you the obvious kind of bullshit.
Here is a brief video synopsis featuring Jeremiah Owyang discussing his most recent report from Forrester about where the social web is going:
Owyang is on the right track, but as Jason Falls mentioned, it likely won’t happen as fast as Jeremiah suggests.
Plus I’m a little creeped out about having an “entourage in my pocket”. That must be uncomfortable, and I can’t imagine the conversation every time you need to go to the bathroom.
The Argument For Editors
Given too many choices, people become paralyzed and do nothing.
People need editors to decide for them, so let’s not get crazy with the idea of people choosing and customizing everything on their own and having that be the driving force in the future.
Just ask the 1% of folks at Wikipedia who do most of the editing. Or the small amount of Digg power users who seemingly control access to user submissions making the front page. Or the sneezers and influencers who spread the news to us in the first place.
Not to mention, people don’t really care what people only loosely connected to them are doing. In fact, most of them don’t care what the majority of their friends are doing. Foursquare works because it’s a game, but the other location based services are lagging because … you guessed it, nobody cares if someone is nearby. Unless they’re going to mug them. In which case, jackpot.
A universal ID to access all social networks? That is the one thing that is virtually a lock to happen, and anyone listening to regular users could tell you that.
Too few in the social media crowd actually do. They’re too busy listening to each other and feeding the marks.
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