Social Media, oh Social Media.

Dont you feel your life is much more simple before there is no facebook, twitter, or even blackberry? Now, you say that you cannot even live without them. Blah.

For me, social media is complex in its simplicity, especially twitter. Before, when there is no so called social media, no twitter or even facebook, have you ever heard about a so called Social Media Specialist as a job? Well, helloo?? Since when did social media became a major in univeristy? Since when exactly, can someone claimed themselves as the expert in social media since, there are no exact rules and guidance about it? No comperhensive text book in school or univeristy that teach us about social media?

From my point of view, everybody in social media, and even the so called social media experts -- they all learn by themselves. They are in it, so they are capable of doing it. Which means, there's nothing wrong or right in social media, since, then again, there are no written rules or guidance about it from a legitimate source.

No, i will not talk about text book, theory, and so on, because me, myself, is not a book smart kind of person. I learn something by doing it myself. Like what i did in social media, which later became my daily routine because i work in that field.

What i want to emphasize here is that, because of social media, twitter in specific, the world has changed. Quoting Hermawan Kertajaya, "it's now horizontal, it's no longer vertical".

The horizontal world then made brands think that it's a very good opportunity to stand out amongst others. But then, when finally almost every brand in the world (especially in Indonesia) have their own twitter and facebook account, with the same vision "to make an added value towards their consumers", doing activities to please their audience -- the next question would be, "what's the difference from them after all? When all of them are now in the same cubicle? Doing almost the same thing because one is copying another and the cycle continues?"

Then, when they think that activity alone is not enough, they created the term "buzzer", which are people (common people or real celebrities or the other new found term "twitter celebrities") paid to buzz a certain topic in 140 characters or in another words: promoting the brand. Which leads me to confusion. Who the hell "invented" that term? And who was the one using it the first time? Is it only happening in Indonesia or what? This then occur to my mind and made me think.

Recently, i saw a tweet that said "the usage of a buzzer means that the brand is not creative enough to sell their ideas to public, therefore they need help from people to spread the news." but then, someone else said to me "buzzer is necessary. Because even if we make a very creative ideas but no one knows about it, it's useless."

It all made me think. Okay, i can accept that brands are using aocial media sites as a channel to promote their brand. But what bothers me most is the usage of buzzers. Is it necessary? Or.. Is it the plan from twitter itself so that one day people can monetize their twitter account without giving any advantages or let's say commision to twitter itself? Is it.. Legal? :|