Download to Unload
I can’t imagine what life would be like without social media. Balancing work, staying informed and maintaining a social life are, for me, three full-time jobs. Lately, I’ve added apartment hunting to the mix, and rely more than ever on social media tools to optimize my time so I can do the things I care about.
Let’s take staying informed: I’m not typically sitting in front of a stack of newspapers or magazines when I find a spare moment. Using social media, I can listen to podcasts of my favorite French radio show during my morning commute, discuss issues with bloggers via IM on my lunch break — even listen to BusinessWeek podcasts, directly from the reporter, on my iPod while at the gym. This is invaluable if I ever need to speak to him about a client. Social media allows me to consume and interact with information when it’s convenient for me.
My apartment search is another example. Because the housing market is so tough in San Francisco, each ad on Craigslist receives hundreds of responses. Sifting through and responding to ads becomes a full-time job. Most responses become buried within minutes, so timing is everything. Instead of living in front of my computer screen, I set up RSS alerts for ads that fit my criteria. When one is posted, it’s instantly sent to my phone via email. I can access the ad, research potential roommates on Facebook or Google and respond within minutes if I think it’s something that is a potential fit — all while hanging out with friends at Dolores Park.
So what would life be like without social media? I don’t want to know.
November 26th, 2007 at 9:01 pm
I mostly agree. But as hard as it is for you to imagine what it would be like to not have the things you discuss, I think it will be equally difficult in 20 year to understand how you were able to really manage them. Downloading a podcast and transferring it to you iPod will seem as antiquated as using a crank handle to start your car.
I think we can see from products like the Amazon Kindle that the direction of Internet-related products is to make that whole process a LOT easier. I don’t see it happening now, but one major advancement that will have to be made is in data relevance. Even Google, with the most massive private data centers in the world can’t index the Internet properly.
Humans spend too much time on the Internet today in terms of what they get out of it. At some point, you won’t need a separate iPod, Desktop or SmartPhone to setup seperate subscription lists, RSS feeds, etc., and you won’t need to rely on how many people voted on a Digg article or whatever to decide if you want to read it.
Instead, in the future you be more than happy to complete a lengthy profile poll that will let the artificially intelligent Internet take care of all those selections for you and deliver appropriate multimedia content to a single dockable device. Exploring websites that aren’t relevant to your profile will be something relegated to the likes of channel surfing when you’re bored.
Of course, if it doesn’t go like that just let me know and I’ll give you a free refund.