It's an undeniable fact that social media has penetrated and saturated our culture. This should come as no surprise in light of the plethora of new marketing techniques and opportunities that social media has brought with it.
Indeed, Facebook has become far more than an engine of sexual innuendo (poke, poke) and a virtual pick-up bar for all-ages. It, and sites like it, are driving forces in mass-marketing, social mobilization, and, by some estimates, mass social engineering.
What is a contentious issue is whether or not the phenomena of social media (what Erik Qualman calls "socialnomics") is in fact a good thing or a bad thing for society at large. In his, Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms Our Lives and the Way We Do Business, Qualman answers this question with a resounding, Yes! Unfortunately, Qualman's praise for the social media phenomena is, as I will explain below, vacuous and misleading. Qualman's claims are largely based upon naive interpretations of hypothetical scenarios that clearly aim at placing social media in the best possible light, common sense and rationality be damned.
Believe it or not, I am a strong advocate of the principle of charity but not at the expense of sound level-headed judgement. Qualman goes way beyond charity and into the land of fantasy when he extols the virtues of social media.
As for the title concept, "socialnomics" is a vague and redundant concept that Qualman employs ad nauseum yet never explicitly defines. Apparently, anything related to social media is part of, or synonymous with, "socialnomics". The author brings nothing new to the table by introducing the term; it appears to me to be a shameful attempt to build a reputation by introducing trendy (but superfluous) slogans into a discussion already ripe with trendy superfluous jargon.
Chapter one, "Word of Mouth Goes World of Mouth," opens with the claim that social media enables us to have more meaningful face-to-face interactions. What does it mean to have 'more meaningful' face-to-face interactions? Well, here again we are left on our own to figure out what exactly Qualman means by this. The entire claim is based upon a hypothetical yet entirely plausible scenario:
We find Sally Supermarket at her favorite place and name-sake. It’s Fourth of July weekend, so a few of the checkout lanes are much longer than normal. It’s going to be roughly a 10-minute wait until she reaches the cashier. (16)
During these ten minutes Ms. Supermarket decides against using her phone to place a call (apparently that would be just too rude) and instead she will update her Facebook status (which is, apparently, not rude, or less rude than making a call). While performing this task Ms. Supermarket is, according to Qualman's story, made aware of all the wonderful new developments in her friend's lives. Furthermore, according to Qualman's interpretation of the story, when Ms. Supermarket next meets with those friends she is able to have 'more meaningful' discussions because she doesn't have to waste their time getting caught up on the more mundane matters that her friends have already communicated over Facebook. Apparently, economy somehow makes the face-to-face conversations "more meaningful".
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