Thursday, February 10, 2011

Is the Internet dead or just dead to some of us?

I thought I would go ahead and follow up on the very question I asked myself at the first of my last blog: is the Internet dead or just dead to some of us.

I have been getting a lot of feedback to my recent blogs about the current state of the Internet from an artist’s perspective. Positive feedback, I would like to add, and some really great points to go on top of what I had written. It has become apparent from your comments that many of you see the Internet through the same lens as me.

So my question is, do we all think the Internet is dead from an artist’s perspective? Or are we just looking at it the wrong way?

Let's a take a look at the future of the social media world, maybe our answer lies there.

Just like the past, new technologies start to become apart of our daily lives, soon lose their buzz over time, and we move on to the next big thing. Just like cell phones, email, the Internet itself and many other recent techno-marvels that were all the rage at some point over the last 10 to 15 years. So what makes social media different and thus giving life to the Internet?

In just the past few weeks all of the major social media sites have undergone huge revisions, implemented new polices, given their sites face lifts and now shifted towards on demand content and marketing services to reach new potential users and customers. Would they being doing this if they were going out of business or are they doing this to stay in business?

Marketing departments for companies in the past never put a plan into place to develop their email department or their own website departments. These things were just adsorbed into their way of doing business. They never thought about focusing more time on how to email better or how to Google search better, these tools just made their jobs easier. Now though, companies are spending lots of time and resources to build their own social media departments. There are some that believe that social media will become its own stand alone discipline in the marketing world.

That's a lot to take in isn't it? The idea that some college kids got together and created a handful of websites that let people interact with each other, to the idea that these very sites are so influential in our lives, that kids will now be getting college degrees in social media is breath taking! It also answers our question.

Social media is evolving. It's finding its place in our lives, how we work and how we work with it. There are going to be up's and downs. New advancements and technology. Some sites will grow to take on a larger market share then others, while a few will fall by the wayside.

Just like the music industry itself, artists are going to have to wade through all of the progress and turmoil of this social media revolution. Myspace was a successful outlet for many artists in the past, and who knows, it may be again in the future. Right now there is no 'best place to be' for artists trying to find a foothold in the music business. Using social media can be aggravating and difficult to say the least. It can also be rewarding. Don't give up though, keep blogging and tweeting, keep your profiles up to date, post those status updates and maybe, just maybe, success will find you!

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