The Modern Journalist

Yahoo Attempts to Get More Bloody Social

Social media bugs me.

At least, the term social media bugs me. I’m still looking for a definition that suits my needs, one that doesn’t include every media that’s ever been created and yet captures the essence of what we all think social media is.

Not to get all Supreme Court on you, but while I can’t define it, I sure do know it when I see it. Dave Thomas and I have started exchanging some ideas about what social media is — and what it should be — on The Modern Journalist listserv.

When I see moves like the one Yahoo made, I’m starting to get a sense that social media is actually the next logical step in our move towards the metaverse. (Also, see a great description of Yahoo’s new open strategy at TechCrunch.)

The idea that all of our information becomes inter-connected and mashed up together, delivered in streams wherever and whenever we are is behind the push of social media.

We want our music streamed to us, our documents in cyberspace our Flash drives with us, our WiFi enabled, our BlueTooth sniffing, our iPods constantly updating.

Social media at its heart seems to be about connecting our email with our real mail. Our texts with our conversations.

A much less invasive form of the metaverse, one that doesn’t require a Matrix-like plug in the back of your head, but one that can pull all of your disparate information from every site imaginable into one, easy-to-access data point.

Social media is the confluence of our lives with our cyberlives, open APIs and compartmentalized realities crashing together. I think we’re going to see more companies doing what Yahoo and others have started to realize — you’ve got to open up your informational back end (digital hindparts?) and let go of old notions of control while simultaneously balancing the need to maintain the fallacy of privacy (both legally and perceived).