The Real Purpose of Social Media

This is a long but excellent video by Dough Rushkoff, author of “Program or Be Programmed” (sorry, the video host won’t allow the video to be embedded). He makes a fundamental point toward the end of the video that social media is really about the value exchange between the participants in a distributed network. If brands want to have meaningful value in this exchange, they have to contribute value. You can do this with entertainment (hard) or you can do this with information (not so hard) but however you choose to do it, you have to be real. As Doug points out, “Nobody wants to talk about what the Keebler Elf is doing…unless he’s been caught having sex with the Pillsbury Doughboy” or something like this, is hilariously true.