Has Social Media Become Too Social ?

As social media perpetuates through the enterprise the question becomes “Has social media become too social?” The use of social media is now fairly common in enterprises that allow and encourage social media as either part of their online or customer service strategy and have people gone overboard?

Social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Buzz and Linked In are serving their purpose. Is it really necessary for people let everyone know what they are doing every moment of the day and how annoying has it become?

As a business user of these social networks when we are involved in a group of users with common interests one of the reasons you join a social media group does it bring me value as another business to know you are at the Starbucks or Walmart or when speaking to an influential person or organization, does it value the other users of the group? From a business point of view it makes not much matter to other businesses within the group. If the outcome of who you were speaking to is interesting that can be worth sharing or something interesting or valuable that can inform a business of some type of value for food for thought or an interesting piece of information that might help them in running their business are of value. How to articles are of value, guides, whitepapers,some video and podcasts with specific content, articles that enlighten new trends and strategies that can be detrimental on how you plan your own business strategy are and interests that the group has in common. Aren’t some of the goals of social media to enhance business effectiveness, investigate new ideas, explore new life experiences

It has come to the point where thieves are using these social media sites to find their next targets as people report or check in as to what they are doing. It is of no consequence to anyone outside of your circle of friends that you are going to see a movie tonight but thanks for giving unscrupulous characters free access to let people know you are not home. Isn’t that why you used to ask your neighbor to watch your place when you are away?

On the plus side, twitter has also been used to break stories, give real-time updates and even save people from disaster.  Does this benefit outweigh the negatives.  In the case where the young lady was actually killed by a stalker due to the access he gained through a social network because of the extent of the profile and not managing your online identity was definitely a case where this went too far.  Does social media interaction also make participants more prone to identity theft ?  These are all questions that will surely be answered as this medium ages.  On that point, will social media interaction decline if there is too much risk and it loses it effectiveness if too much “noise” is generated and when will people start to tune this out ?

Is this social behavior part of the evolution of social networking ?  As more sites evolve and come into existence new applications will surely develop and surely evolve new types of interaction which may cause social media to reinvent itself yet again.  What makes a social network “current” as shown by the decline of MySpace or was that the flavor of the month for social networks too ?

As can be seen, this space has seen a rapid rise to popularity and is evolving everyday.  When considering the marketing plans for your business be sure to think about the image you or your company would like to portray and build your brand accordingly.  As all businesses may not fit the traditional types of social media.  ERP and software vendors both in-house and cloud have taken notice with the release of Chatterbox, Streamworks and the like.