An old boss of mine - a senior and visionary advertising type - said that the average consumer is bombarded by 3,000 messages a day. The point was that to stand out from the clutter you need to do or say something special, or different or in an unexpected way.
Fast forward ten years, today we spoke with a client about people becoming overwhelmed with social network chatter. A colleague now tweets less to spend more time in nature.
So I googled ‘social network fatigue’ on a whim and saw lots on it last year, with this one from the Communication Overtones blog:
“Social Network Fatigue: Early adopters of social networks will begin to tire of all of the demands on their attention and will scale down to one or two properties. Companies will spring up to aggregate their attention to one place. The one to do it elegantly will become the new darling.”
I’m interested whether teens and 20 somethings agree, or if this sense of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information is more a 40 something phenomena. Has anyone seen any studies?
7 responses so far ↓
1 Wendy // Jun 21, 2008 at 8:26 am
No studies so far that I’ve seen, but as a 20 something marketer trying to keep up with social media, I tend to agree. I think as with all other ‘noise’, people will start to block it out. The plus side, I think, to things on the web is that you can turn it off at the push of a button. It’s a lot of places you go, but its not EVERYWHERE that you go.
2 Lesley White // Jun 23, 2008 at 11:09 am
Thanks Wendy
.. will be interesting to see what new ‘blocking’ or ‘filtering’ applications develop to help us sort out news (as we each define it) from noise.
3 Gavin Heaton // Jun 25, 2008 at 4:35 pm
While I would love one service to deliver all my social media … I am also highly suspicious and untrusting.
And while I sometimes become tired of the next new thing, humans are curious beings. It means that I will still lift the veil of my exhaustion to try something new. After all, the technology still has a long way to go
4 Josh Straw // Jun 25, 2008 at 6:30 pm
I wrote a piece not long ago about social media trends, I wonder if users will jump ship or if they are too bound by the work they have put in already.
http://ciims.blogspot.com/2008/06/is-social-media-fad-or-marketers-friend.html
5 Lesley White // Jun 26, 2008 at 11:27 am
@gavin yes to one service/decentralised/not too corporatey, multiple apps and OSs etc etc… Good coffee until then, eh?
@josh i love that term ‘barriers to exit’.. hadn’t come across it before, and it really rings true to me. and its not just the hours, but also being engaged, involved and creating.
6 Chris Chesher // Jul 15, 2008 at 12:19 pm
This year’s trend seems to be social network aggregation. This trend towards using multiple more specialised networking services may ultimately undermine walled gardens like facebook.
Services like feedly, spokeo, ping.fm, friendfeed and more ( http://mashable.com/2007/07/17/social-network-aggregators/ ) are providing ways of monitoring friends’ activities and broadcasting your own across several sites. The walled gardens seem to be resisting allowing deep links into their data.
7 Lesley White // Jul 16, 2008 at 3:26 pm
@chris great article, thanks! your comment about walls reminds me of my days in consumer electronics.
Companies kick and scream to hold onto proprietary operating systems and formats as long as possible .. while consumers want ease of use and seamless integration.
Which aggregator is your fave?
Leave a Comment