Social media is not ready to be a trusted source of news…
I get a lot of information everyday from Twitter and Facebook – stuff people have shared online… For the most part I find that to be very convenient and useful. And while most of the time people share links to blogs or online newspaper articles, sometimes it’s just hearsay. That means I’d need to verify the information I just get before I take it in as facts.
Case in point… there’s a lot of talk about Google’s pending withdrawal from the China market and all kinds of rumors are flying around online. Often people say things without citing their sources. Other times, people say things without making clear if it’s an opinion or a fact. In short, it exposes a problem with reading stuff on social media — it’s not always validated. (Maybe the next question is, do they have to be?)
This is not to say I think everything I see on New York Times or CNN.com is always true and I never question their reporting. But there’s a stronger sense of trust and accountability with established news resources (excluding Chinese media, of course). With them, you know someone can get fired and have their reputation ruined for writing something unsubstantiated and posing it as a fact.
As I’m waiting (as everyone else is) to hear an official statement from Google on its China plans, I’m sitting here and wondering if there is in fact a danger with social media as it is great at spreading information which sometimes can be false and misleading. In the extreme cases, it could indeed lead to less than desirable results, say, social unrest…
Don’t get me wrong. I love the free flow of information. I think it’s vital for a society to have that. But it is also scary how people as a collective can be ignorant in dissecting what they see and read or waste too much of their time and energy on silly things (just look at the online celebrities in China and how disturbing they can be and yet they manage to become wildly popular public figures).
I guess for now it’s a double-edged sword that I’m happy to have. It certainly is something that brings us more good than bad.
The power for us to connect
I’ve always known that the Internet has the power to bring people together. It’s changed social dynamics and inter-personal communication. Recent events proved that point and more to me once again. It’s a very powerful reminder to live in a very inter-connected world.
Back in December a “friend” on Facebook proposed to me to give his EMBA class a lecture on social media marketing. I actually never met him in real life and couldn’t even remember if I had added him first or he added me. In any case, I accepted the offer and conducted the lecture in Shanghai a week ago. I had spent some time putting together the material and I was pleased with how the lecture went. Afterwards I shared the presentation on SlideShare.net, which if you don’t know is a web service that allows people to share presentation documents online on all kinds of topics.
Then today on my way to a Twitter user meet-up (or a tweet-up) I got an e-mail (on my iPhone) from a professor in the US saying that he saw my presentation online and would like my permission to use it in his class. I quickly wrote back and said yes. Of course I would. I believe in the spirit of sharing, not to mention it’d be for a class. Plus, if anyone really wanted to use the content, it’s not that hard to re-create it from scratch – the original file really isn’t necessary.
First I got the opportunity to give that lecture from an online contact. Then the presentation will be seen by a class all the way across the world in a university in Wisconsin, because the professor saw it online. I find this pretty amazing.
The Internet is quickly changing the world and changing the way we live our lives. I’m really glad to be part of this change!