READING | 3 social media challenges...to overcome by 2015
The importance of serendipity
Connections among people, the report states, are more important than measurable outcomes. That’s “counterintuitive in a world where we’re so interested in metrics and outcomes,” says Patel, but it’s true. When an organization builds a network, people and relationships must be at the center.
Your social media platform may have only a few hundred visitors, but if those people are connecting, that’s far better than having tens of thousands of visitors who don’t interact at all.
“Investing in networks and designing for serendipity is really an investment in a community’s infrastructure,” Patel says. There will be outcomes to measure, he says, but they shouldn’t be the No. 1 goal.
I found this to be an interesting post that attempts to put into words how social media - and our interactions with one another - will change between now and 2015.
Suffice it to say that the idea of predicting the nature of our social interactions four years from now is challenging, at best. However, the article does seem to say that the same things that make for good "offline" relationships are similarly powerful in the online arena.
Though the tools are different, it is still essential to enable individuals to connect, not only with one another, but also with a larger community and sense of purpose.
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