Is it just me or are the attempts to get some real use (and thus value/benefit) out of social media getting more desperate by the day?
Today’s was a facility for the Jewish community to Tweet prayers and have them then – I presume – printed out, folded up and stuck in the cracks in the Wailing Wall. Which is great – a genuine service and all credit to the ‘young man from Tel-Aviv’ who’s responsible.
A great use of Twitter, thereby providing a little more grist for the social media justification mill. Yes, social networks, they get everywhere. In every walk of life. Social networks – they are your daddy.
Only, only – would it be as easy to email ‘the young man in Tel-Aviv’ and get him to print that out? Or, in fact, if you’ve got a friend in Tel-Aviv or Jerusalem, you could email them. Or text them. Or fax them. Or – how about this – you could ‘phone them up and get them to write it down.
It’s a great idea, it genuinely is and it’s a real service. It just doesn’t need Twitter. Or FaceSpace, or MyBook.
Other uses for social media today – publicising Aleksandr the Meerkat (if you’ve been in a hole in the ground for the last six months, this is the eponymous Aleksandr the Meerkat from comparethemeerkat.com, which is a sort of search engine for meerkat-related paraphernalia. I think).
I like Aleksandr – simples! – and he reminds me of a lot of people I work with, but, let’s face it – sorry Alex mate – he’s a fluffy PR stunt. A very, very good one, but a fluffy PR stunt nonetheless – here today and gone tomorrow.
And therefore an absolutely perfect fit for the social media phenomenon.
thewordmonger 