Missing the point

                                                                                          Image - **ckyeahreactions

A quick question…have you been living on Saturn, Mars or even the moon since…hmm let’s see, ohhhhh…2002, 2003? I'll give you a few seconds to think about it...

"No." Great. We're on the same page then.

So if you have been on earth over the last 10+ years then in some form or fashion you’ve experienced the invasion of ‘social media’. It’s disrupted the newspaper industry, has annexed vast amounts of the media landscape, and has democratized the communication world in ways unlike any in recent history.

Yes you can post a video of your kid chasing the family cat around the house to the tune of three million hits.  Yes Starbucks can amass 33 million likes to their FB page (whoa...). And yes all 28 million of Rihanna’s followers can tweet how she may have ‘killed it’ at her last performance, followed by hundreds if not thousands of retweets to the tweet. 

Not to mention the huge megaphone around 'big data' (just ask Obama's re-election team), the ongoing proliferation of online video content, and the continual assertion indicating how ‘mobile’ is now the next business frontier.

Yet from blogs, to the news to social media punditry, more often than not, conversations around digital are missing the point. 

With all the Daytona 500 racing to get to what’s next we’ve zoomed right past (and paid little attention to) the 800 pound gorilla sitting in the room with wayfarers on with his name tag 'value' stuck to the middle of his forehead.

The breakneck speed chase for likes, fans, retweets, page views, and mentions have outstripped any real serious conversation around value.   What is value in a digital market and why is it valuable? 

In the age of social media we’ve gone 20 miles wide on ‘media’ and half an inch deep on social…and it’s social that drives all real value… not the other way around. Focusing so much on social media is like having a conversation on Super Bowl Sunday about the commercials, and for a few minutes at best, any discussion about actual football. I mean, yeah, sure you can have a great time enjoying the commercials but what are they really without the game?

The same with today’s landscape of digital disruption: we can have a grand ‘ol time with debating the merits of 'social', influencers, 'community' etc., but what is it all without any meaningful dialogue around value and what the new dimensions of today's social/digital disruption have truly created?