I’ve noticed a lot of people asking the same question on Twitter… “Is social media a fad?” I’ve seen varied opinions ranging from, “Yeah, people will eventually forget about Flickr and Twitter,” to “It’s more like a necessity.” Despite what people think, the facts point to one answer: Not really.
Blogger launched a decade ago in 1999. While it’s numbers are declining, MySpace has held it’s presence on the web since 2003. Facebook, now the number two site in the world according to Alexa, and Flickr, one of the largest photo sharing sites, launched in 2004. YouTube was up and running a year later.
With most of the major social demonstrating success for several years now, I think that it’s safe to say that social media itself isn’t a fad. To me, it’s similar to calling emailing or texting a fad. Social media is just a means of communication, and therefore shouldn’t be (and isn’t) considered a fad, since it’s not likely to change until the next new thing comes along.
I think the more appropriate questions are “Is Twitter a fad?” and “Was MySpace a fad?” Some social networks may demonstrate a lot of popularity for a few years, but then something better comes along (or they don’t keep up with new developments and improvements) and people move on to the next thing. In that case, then, yes, that site was a fad. Other social networks may have a lot of initial appeal, such as Twitter, Posterous and Flickr, but people may not see the value in keeping up with it since their friends and family aren’t there, and in that case, the site is somewhat of a fad for particular users.
Tags: Blogger, Facebook, Flickr, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
