Are Social Sites like Music?

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Are “social sites” like music? Yes, I’m asking YOU.

By social sites, I mean social networks, social news, social bookmarking, micro-blogging, etc. I’ve been thinking and that question just popped up. Well lets try to find an answer.

When a song gets pretty popular, what do we do? We play it on the radio, listen to over and over again, tell our friends about it and listen to it a few more times. The band (or the singer) is glad that everything’s going perfectly and the album was a great success. But, what happens after a few weeks or maybe months? Doesn’t the song feel overplayed? Don’t we get sick and tired of it? Don’t we start to hate the song? Don’t we just move on?

Are you starting to figure out why I’m comparing these? I personally would say that social sites are a lot like music. They’re both fads. But, know what? Music is actually a lot better than social sites. I don’t know if I can call music a fad because we do move on after a song (or the album) gets overplayed, but we also go back to it after some time. Whether its months, years or decades.

But, what about social sites? Do you think we will ever go back to an old site? Do you think you’ll ever go back to a site that was once popular years ago? Do you think we’ll start using it again because it once had cool features? Music lives forever. Want an example? How about Led Zepplin?

Remember MySpace? Friendster? Do you think you’ll go back to use them? They were once really, really popular. Well MySpace still is, but Facebook took over. Plus I would say that Facebook is also going a bit dead. Like when it first went popular, people at school were talking about and were like going crazy about it. Now, no one even mentions it. They still use it, but its not that cool anymore.

Sucks to be a social site. They’re like toys. You play with it, get bored, throw it away and start playing with a new one.

Image by Janneke Hikspoors.