I'm really not trying to sound like a media reporter
today but it's just turning out that way.
As I mentioned the other day in this column V-103's Herb Kent will
be hosting a day long tribute on Sunday to Don Cornelius who died as
a result of a self inflicted gunshot wound.
Last night I posted the information on Facebook and Twitter when
Robert Feder of Time Out Chicago's Media Blog published the details
of the services today and Kent's tribute on Sunday. Something to put
on the calendar for before the Super Bowl.
This column publishes a bit late for this one but Big John Nance did
an interview with LJ Reynolds on WSNR.US today at 11am CST I don't
know if he's going to do a rebroadcast but I'm sure he will let us
know.
Don't misunderstand this. I love the web... I've been doing stuff
here for quite a while but I do have concerns on the direction its
taking. I understand the whole social media thing (at times a little
too well) but I seem to remember a saying about putting all of your
chickens in one pot (no wait a minute that's don't put all of your
eggs in one basket) chicken or egg.... hmmmm.
The move has been slowly amping up as time goes on and more and more
people are putting there presence on Facebook because there's a big
market there to be appealed to. I get it. What does the future hold
for Facebook and the legions that use it?
With the IPO imminent who knows for sure what new changes will come
to the social media powerhouse. It's like any other business that
gets a new management team. Directions change at the whim of the
stockholders. More Below
One of the stated goals will be increasing
monetization on the site. In other words, there will be even more
leveraging the users (us) to spend money on the site like with the
Spotify music service.
Users in the US can't even use Spotify unless they use their
Facebook username and password to listen to (or buy) the music on
the service. At the moment steppers are doing all that for free in
our music group using YouTube but as the war between Facebook and
Google escalates who knows how long it will be before the sharing
deal us usurped by a monetized deal with another service (there are
reports of talks with several services for video on Facebook and
Google isn't one of those services).
At some point in time Facebook will end up going the same way as
MySpace did (I don't see it right now but this is the web things
change really quickly). So it's a good idea to leave your options
open so you don't get stuck in the past (left behind).
A good example might be the ever changing landscape in the online
gaming industry. I'm not a gamer but I read about how titles are
being removed because there's something "better" in the new version.
You may have paid for access to the game but you will have to pay
again to play with the new version but forget about access to the
old version they removed it.
Think it can't happen to Facebook? Remember many of
the things we do on the web were done first by the gaming community.
They have always been the ones to watch to see what tomorrow will
bring. Like it or not everything does revolve around making money
and if a business doesn't make money it either has to find a way to
make money of perish. With Facebook having to answer to a board and
stockholders you know they will demand profit and it will come at
our expense.
The moral of the story still is don't keep all of your eggs (or
chickens) in one basket or pot.
You can always tell when the people behind Facebook
are doing something major behind the scenes. Of course it's been no
secret they are planning on converting everyone to the timeline
layout in our personal profiles.
The site gets sort of sluggish, pages time out, did I say sluggish?
It's my guess they've started the mass transformation. Prepare to
complain... that's what we're all supposed to do when there is a
change. At some point we come to accept the changes just so we can
complain about the next round of changes.
Anyway I was visiting the group I decided to name "Dance Fanatics"
That's not the real name but the name I gave it is very descriptive
of the content and the people in the group. And they have been
talking about what I've been referring to for ages...
That's getting THAT feeling from a dance. Of course the majority of
the people in the group seem to be steppers (I probably wouldn't be
there otherwise I really don't have much interest in anything but
this dance but I can now say I know where the spinning really came
from in new skool stepping).
It is the dance fanatics that make the most noise in any dance genre
(before anyone gets their knickers in a bunch know this... the word
FAN is derivative of the word fanatic) I'm sure many of the people
reading this right now are fans of the dance. You know what...
that's a good thing!
When the fans become obsessed with their opinions of themselves and
their skills and talents that's the part of the definition of
fanatic I'm afraid we see way too often. When I'm reading about the
lead yanking the partner around the dance floor and just about
causing dislocations I know that lead is so full of himself... he's
become fanatic in the wrong way.
Continued
and Comment
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