Is social media heading for a backlash?

This is the second Brass blog post inspired by the Advertising in Social Media Conference we attended in October; an event that gave valuable and candid insight into how brands are approaching social media from the likes of Nike, Panasonic and more.

One speaker in particular really stood out for me.  Martin Thomas, co-author of Crowd Surfing, talked about the strategic opportunity of social media and made some interesting, thought-provoking points.

The trough of disillusionment
One thing I did pick up on was his assertion that ‘social media’ is currently at the peak of inflated expectations in the Gartner Hype cycle and so will soon be destined for the ‘trough of disillusionment’.. Martin urged agencies and brands to think carefully about how to manage their way out of the trough.

Gartner is a well referenced model and provides a graphical view of the adoption, maturity and business application of specific technologies.  The idea of a ‘social media decline’ seems to be gaining momentum and throughout 2010 I’ve read a number of posts that talk about a social media backlash or early adoptor burn-out.

Of course a backlash, crash or bubble burst can make good copy but the very process of generalising social media into one big group of technologies is fundamentally flawed and not in line with the Gartner approach.

Take Facebook.  Facebook now reaches over 27 million people in the UK and over 14 million of those use it every day.  For the first time this year traffic to Facebook outstripped Google and this week sees a campaign from the networking giant to make Facebook your homepage, a move which should see the site significantly increase traffic, page views and time on site.

In the trough?  It certainly doesn’t seem that way.

After 15 or so years blogging is now very much in the mainstream.  Yes, there are plenty of ‘dead’ blogs out there, but to counter that, there are plenty that are attracting big numbers and we have seen many blogging stars courted by the mainstream media in 2010.

Internet video is approaching 40% of all consumer internet traffic according to Cisco and it has high expectations for that figure to grow significantly up to 2014.

Now, social media being what it is, there are always new kids on the block so, by its very nature, there’ll always be something that’s on the peak of inflated expectations or sliding down to the trough.  Take Location Based Services, Augmented Reality and Stickybits as cases in point – there’s a lot of hype around these technologies at the moment and for some brands a pressure to experiment before they’ve been proven, or in any way could be considered mainstream.

So I say, stop generalising about ‘social media’.  Some social media platforms have been proven and some haven’t – that’s the truth of the matter.  And, when all around you are flapping about the latest thing, stay calm, consider it, and use it if it meets your objectives – if it doesn’t, then don’t.