Opting Out of Social Networks

Social media networks have become so large that they have lost their original purpose. Look for something smaller to come around. Apparently, I’m in an elite group of millionaires. Not in the sense that I’d like (i.e. a million dollars in loose change), but part of the first million users on LinkedIn.

By Tony Wanless / March 30, 2011

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Social media networks have become so large that they have lost their original purpose. Look for something smaller to come around.

Apparently, I’m in an elite group of millionaires. Not in the sense that I’d like (i.e. a million dollars in loose change), but part of the first million users on LinkedIn.

I’m an early adopter of LinkedIn. I’m one of those … uh … prescient beings who figured out the potential for worthwhile connection in this social media thing. Especially, I saw the potential for business connection in Linkedin.

I discovered my millionaire status last week when the social media site for professionals announced that it had surpassed more than 100 million users. LinkedIn co-founder and chairman Reid Hoffman personally lauded me in an e-mail for being member number 742,402.

“In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are early adopters, those that help lead the way,” enthused my new buddy Reid. “That was you.”

I’m not above accepting praise when I can get it. I mean, we all need a little loving now and then.

But I do wonder: If being part of a million makes you special, what does mass mean today?

There was a time, of course, when being part of a million meant you really were mass. Now, apparently, it merely makes you part of an advance squad.

(I’m still waiting for a thank you email from you, Mark Zuckerberg. Although, since I saw The Social Network, I’m not holding my breath.)

I blame this swelling of the concept of mass on the advancement in communications. Mass media once meant a few hundred thousand subscribers to a newspaper or a magazine.

But online, that’s a failure. If you can’t gather millions of users every month, no one wants to know you. Analysts ignore you. Venture capitalists laugh when they see you coming. Social media enthusiasts give you the finger and race off to the next big thing (cough, Groupon, cough).

Oh, the poor website that has less than millions of members! Condemned forever to the fringes of social media-dom.

Except, perhaps, some people prefer to be out of these gathering herds of buffalo. The mass becomes just noise – and encourages lowest common denominator thinking. So there’s an increasing desire for smaller social networks based on a common theme that’s about more than simply being able to connect.

Certainly, in my business I’ve seen the need, and am answering it by providing virtual private networks – which are closed discussion sites to which one has to be invited. Other than for SEO branding purposes, why would anyone want to hold a serious discussion on a site on where millions of others can lurk, flame, or simply join in with a vapid opinion?

That’s a recipe for the trite, obvious, and outrageous. Just ask Charlie Sheen.

I’m not dumping on mass social networks. They have their uses. I’m just saying there should also be something for those of us who don’t always want to be part of a giant grazing herd.

Maybe we want to talk about something more than grass.