I just realized that I'm old and I don't get it. Or, if I get it, I don't do it.
I could never understand why my parents didn't use email right when it came out, when my friends and I started using it. It was even more useful to them - after all, they used fax machines all the time to communicate with business people all over the world. Why not skip the printing and feeding step (there may have been a third blurring and smudging step, too) and just send the file electronically?
The catch, of course, was that nobody they knew used email. It's a classic example of network effects - there was no usefulness to email for them, because there wasn't anyone in the network. So they didn't adopt it. And because they and their opposites didn't adopt it, neither did the people whose adoption of it would have sparked their adoption of it. Ultimately I had to force them to use it (by threatening to only communicate via email from college) for them to actually get computers in their offices and open email accounts. Perhaps everyone's kids did the same thing, and all of a sudden everyone had email and it was suddenly hugely useful.
Interviewing around the social networking and media companies of the present, I realized that the same phenomenon is happening all over again - but it's my turn to be in the late majority or laggard group this time. This time it isn't email, it's social networking. My friends aren't on MySpace, Facebook or Friendster. So why would I use those products? Just like my parents and their friends not adopting email in the early nineties, my contemporaries and I are getting along just fine without social networking. But eventually that will change.
LinkedIn, of course, is the exception - intentionally or by accident it's attracted the 20-something and 30-something professional crowd, and because of that will probably forever have a premium (or at least older) association with its brand. I use it and can see its value (especially when hunting for a job or trying to make a sale). But it isn't an integral part of my life, like MySpace and Facebook are for millions of younger people. It just gives me that feeling of being, well, old. I even think my back aches a little more now and my fingers are sore from typing... arthritis? Ugh.
The fact is that social networking is the next great communication technology, just as email used to be. I might not be on MySpace or Facebook now, but when I have kids and they get on it, I'll have to catch up. Because if I don't, I'll never see the photos they send around, never find out what cool videos they've found online, and generally be an out of touch parent. Just like my parents were with email.
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