Is Social Media Dead?

An interesting thing happened to me as I was sitting in the darkness of Blog Potomac.  I found myself, who is comparatively new to social media than others in the room that day, listening to the social media veterans in the room (you know who you are, I won’t rat you out). 

The general consensus and tone of those whispers went something like “tell me something new already,” or “I’ve heard this before” or “what about measurement?”  And I slowly realized that many of these folks have been hashing around this stuff for a while now and while some of it is new to me, little of it was new to them.

So I reacted with little surprise when I saw the recent series of blog posts from Blog Potomac creator and recent CRT/Tanaka (our friendly RVA competitors) acquiree Geoff Livingston proclaiming that “Social Media is Dead.” 

If I had been talking and writing about a subject for as long as he has I’d want to move onto the next thing as well.  Not only that, I tend to agree with him.  I even used his line in a presentation the other day.

Social media is dead, sort of. 

It is dead in the sense that its platforms and practices are becoming increasingly mainstream.  CEOs of major companies are blogging.  NFL players are talking about tweeting from the sidelines.  Every organization out there is looking for ways either harness its power or ignore it and pray it goes away.

It is that mainstream-ness that makes it easier to have a Jacko-like memorial service for it.  It is not this special, optional, shiny new marketing toy anymore.  It should be a vital, important mandatory arrow in everyone’s marketing quiver.  In that sense Social Media as a cool, new thing is very dead.  Whether it should be now called something else less sexy like online-direct communications is a debate for another time.

So as initial evangelists like Geoff move on to the next thing, what do more recent social media marketers do? 

We continue to learn, to work with organizations and companies to help them use these tools properly.  Just because media relations has been practiced for decades doesn’t mean we don’t continue to learn and practice.  The same thing goes for social media.

We also try to gaze into our own crystal balls to see what’s coming next.  At THP, we think that includes the evolution of this direct form of communications as a media relations and direct-to-consumer platform and a way to help our clients enhance their reputations.  We also are very interested in, as Geoff and others are, how this is migrating on mobile devices (I was tweeting on the beach at Kiawah, sick…I know) and how companies will use these platforms to drive traffic and monetize.

What do you think?  Is social media dead?  On life support?  Or should it just be called something else…like…Fred?