Cutting Through the OMG Factor

The promise of social media and, by its ultimate extension the mobile web, is that it can make our lives easier and more interconnected. We’re approaching a point where we can (maybe) pay for groceries by using a Wegman’s app for our phones and can order coffee at Starbucks via a Twitter direct message or have our iPhones tell us what tie goes with that shirt. We’re already at a point where a given person’s individual reach is bigger than it’s ever been.

Which is why it’s both sad and inevitable that the social space – and Twitter in particular - has been appropriated as a cause celebre for the rich and famous. Yesterday, Ashton Kutcher and CNN were misguidedly racing to a cool million followers just as the news that Oprah Winfrey was planning to start tweeting sent excited, nervous susurrations through the interweb tubes (Oprah had tens of thousands of followers before her account was even updated – many of whom probably hope that she will give them a car).

The circus around these little news nuggets is a distraction from the ideal way that the social web functions. It’s not about numbers and name-dropping (though, maybe I do treat my DMs from Chris Brogan like the hand that Lewis Black shook, at least in the respect that I will never delete them), which is exactly what social’s worst critics characterize it as.

Which brings me back to my original point. This morning, I was driving into the Cactusplex and saw, looming over the Cross Valley Expressway, a billboard asking me to follow Ashton Kutcher on Twitter. I was stunned and a little weirded out. Over on my personal blog, I’ve also been writing about the intersection of real life and online life and whether or not it’s a false distinction. I’m still coping with people I’ve never met recognizing me or getting phone calls about my Facebook status updates, but the billboard – that freaked me out the most.

The media’s been talking so much about how Ashton and Demi and Britney and Kanye and Colbert and Miley and Diddy and whoever else have been leveraging the web that you might be getting the wrong idea. It’s not a race; it’s not a competition. It’s collaboration; it’s community; it’s…other words that start with ‘c’, like cool and communication.