The Evolution of Social Media

It’s tempting to think of technology as somehow alien. Faced with a shiny new gadget, whose mechanics are too complex to grasp, we are often amused or astonished by what it can do, but seldom pause to consider how it enriches our lives – or how it fails to do so.

In fact, technology shouldn’t strike us as so remote, so other. As the product of human ingenuity, all technology inherently expresses human desires. Once we think it up, we can’t seem to help ourselves from trying to realize it. And yet, throughout the evolution of technology, our own inventions have consistently outpaced our ability to meaningfully apply them in our day-to-day lives.

As the rate of technological development continues to accelerate, its patterns of evolution have become more transparent. Just looking at the last few decades reveals a cycle of extension and refinement, in which splashy technology initially grabs our attention, but must be calibrated later to actually improve our lives. For example, the 1970s and 1980s were dominated by the rise of cable and home entertainment via VHS and Betamax. It offered consumers unparalleled control over their media intake, but stranded them alone in their dimly lit dens, communing with a screen.

By the 1990s, the early Internet began to undo this isolation. Unlike a one-way broadcast, in which viewers were always passive recipients, forums, chat rooms, and email allowed users to commune with one another through a screen. Accounts from that first wave of settlers of the digital frontier are characteristically utopian, describing the way communities formed with the same folksiness as a barn-raising or planting a community garden. Such testimonies reveal not only how hungry we were for new ways to connect, but how precisely the technology fit the need.

In the last decade, the web has been defined by this trend toward socialization, as sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter have sought to replicate the feeling of burgeoning community that sprang up naturally among early Internet enthusiasts. But, ironically, this quest to personalize and network has undermined the intimacy and excitement of the Internet’s infancy. Now, we can share every passing thought in real time, indiscriminately grow our circle of Òfriends,Ó and make-believe we are part of tabloid culture, where minutia is traded as headline fodder. That is, the personal has become solipsistic. Social media has made us nearly as isolated as we were in the 1980s – only now, we are the one-way broadcasters of information, transmitting for an imaginary audience.

So then where can we expect technology to go – and take us with it – next? At Citizen, it’s clear that the pendulum is poised to swing back toward technologies that cater to the intimacy of the tribe. We are working on several apps now that forgo the reach of the most popular social media sites for a targeted network that connects individuals in meaningful ways. FamWiki, for example, helps nuclear (and sometimes extended) families keep in touch throughout their busy days with destination and activity check-ins, photo and video sharing, and more. Wingman, a new networking app designed primarily for dating, is similar in its emphasis on reality-based, interpersonal relationships: users meet new people, but only through vetted referrals. In both cases, the wow factor is limited, the functionality pretty much familiar. But the scope of the app – which zooms its focus in on genuine, real world connections – is telling. From our point of view, both FamWiki and Wingman presage a move toward technology that will enhance – not augment or mediate, definitely not substitute – our lives in the real world.

We’re not sure exactly how this pendulum swing will manifest itself, but we expect it will facilitate quality interactions, not high-volume networking. These social bridges will be based on substantial real-world connections, whether through relationships, in the case of FamWiki and Wingman, or through shared interests. Simply, social media will evolve to enable us to fully express ourselves as members of a social body – whose binding ties exist in the physical world, not a digital or virtual realm. Put another way, we expect the next generation of social media to restore our belief that technology is the product of human desire because it will promote the kind of socialization that makes us who we are.