A Wealth of Information Creates a Poverty of Attention
fliptop writes:
I stumbled across this interesting blog post that explores three opportunities where social media / networking could be improved:
I'm old enough to remember when the web was new, and honest enough to admit that I was a skeptic at the time. Fortunately, I was wrong, and I owe my career to the digital revolution that the web enabled.
When social networking and media platforms came along, I was more open-minded. I joined LinkedIn in 2003, Facebook in 2006, and Twitter in 2008. I hosted my own WordPress blog and later posted content on Medium and Quora. I learned about social networking and media by experimenting on these platforms, and I derived significant personal benefit from them.
Nonetheless, I quit most of them a few years ago. Why? Partly because of where I'm at in my life and career: I don't get as much upside from self-promotion as I used to, which makes me more sensitive to the downsides. But part of it is disillusionment. These platforms could be so much better!
The author goes on to propose suggestions on how social media companies should treat customers' attention as something other than a commodity to be auctioned off to the highest bidders, how they could better promote expertise, and steps they can take to addresses the trust issues users may have. He then concludes:
Today's social networking and media platforms aren't great, and they seem to be getting worse. It often feels as though their creators read dystopian science fiction novels and are treating those books as how-to guides. [...] We deserve better, and we can do better.
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