Business Blog: Hoover’s Business Insight Zone

(This post is about social media and the overly confident predictions that people make about it. Please bear with me a second while I lay some groundwork.)

One of my favorite Usenet-style acronyms is “YMMV.” It means “Your Mileage May Vary,” and when it’s used right, it’s a friendly way of indicating to others on a discussion list (or blog comment thread, etc.) that you recognize that what you’re saying is your own take — a matter of your own opinion — and that whatever you’re talking about is likely not going to be to everyone’s taste.

Part of the reason I like the expression is that it’s humble. We all have opinions; some of those opinions are more grounded in facts than others; even some fact-based opinions have a lot of room in them for personal variation.

All of this is why I rebel against word-from-on-high pronouncements* about the “right” way for social media to be used, or the way social media “ought to” or “has to” develop. This leads me to formulate an alternate definition for “YMMV” as it applies to social media:

You’ll Meet Massive Variation

I had the bizarre experience last month of sitting on a panel with a guy who blithely asserted a key, crucial, fundamental, unbreakable difference between “real” friends (i.e. friends IRL, “in real life”) and people you meet online. Three of us on the panel just stared at him as he kept making this point, before we finally regrouped and started picking apart his assumptions.

It ought to be obvious that different people will have different rates of “permeability” between their online and offline worlds. My mom, who’s past 60, spends lots of time online — reading the news, corresponding with family, and so on — but no time on social networks. She has, I’m pretty sure, zero online-only or online-first friends. Me, I’m well over at the other end of the spectrum. There are lots of points in-between.

These thoughts arose as I read this little post from Kent Nichols:

Offline becoming more online

Kent is one of the creators of my personal fave video podast, Ask A Ninja. The simple experience he related in his post — about finding a good podiatrist online — offers yet one more data point that we have ever-increasing opportunities to choose how much permeability and interconnection we want between our online and offline worlds.

Tara Hunt made a similar point in this post:

Yes. Internet Friends can also be Friends IRL

Tara recently went through a difficult breakup, and she chose to be quite open about the negative feelings she experienced around it. She was rewarded with many statements of support from people like me who “know” her either exclusively online or because we first encountered her work online. (I had the delightful experience of sitting down to brunch with Tara when she was in town a few months ago; I’m hoping we can touch base again when she’s in town for South by Southwest Interactive this week. Come to think of it, I met Kent Nichols and his Ask A Ninja partner-in-crime Douglas Sarine at SXSW last year, but I wouldn’t have known to seek them out if I hadn’t already been addicted to their podcast. It would be great to see them again, too — they’re cool guys.)

Different people will explore these supposed boundaries between online and offline — or simply jump right over them — at different rates. I doubt my mother will take up Twitter, just like I doubt Hank Paulson will suddenly take up using e-mail at this point in his life. There’s not a simple rule to it — and it’s silly to think, as that guy on my panel did, that there’s some bright line that applies to everyone.

And is this any different than IRL? A crazy comparison should hammer this point home: This morning I trimmed my fingernails — took about 30 seconds. Yet I have a friend who’s been getting an acrylic set-and-fill every other week since we were in college. Is it wrong (or right, or inevitable, or regrettable) that she chooses to spend that much time and money on her nails? Or that I don’t? Here’s a better question: Who cares?

The point is that — even in this crazy-wacky-boffo “new” world of social networking — we can confidently predict . . . that people will continue to express the giant array of behaviors that they do in other areas of life.

In other words: YMMV.

~

* Have I ever made any of these pronouncements myself? Oh my, yes. But that’s the beauty of being a blogger, right? Everyone is entitled to my opinion . . . ; )

[Photo by dayzeday.]