The Era of Squandering

Getting someone’s attention is not a big deal these days. Social media has made this process considerably easy. Keeping and earning someone's attention and trust...now that’s a different conversation. We can make most folks look our way at least once--or like us or retweet us. But because we often squander this trust, they, too, will eventually ignore us. We will be treated like the Jehovah's Witnesses of social media.

I've often said that this period in time will be known as "The Era of Squandering." The year 1928 was the time of the Great Depression. The year 2019 is the Great Disconnection.

We have access to millions of people for free, and what do we do? Show up empty-handed. Show up with nothing to say (At best, having something nonsensical at our fingertips ready to be typed into cyberland!). We show up, leaving no good reason to be invited back into folk's social media homes again.

The problem with most is that they don't know life without all of these modern social media platforms for connection: Facebook, Snapchat, Linkedin, Twitter, Tumbler, Blogger, YouTube, Skype, Vimeo, Flickr, you name it. I knew of a time when folks would have paid top dollar to have access to these kinds of databases.

Back in the 1990s, folks would pay several hundred dollars for mailing lists containing only a few thousand names. Or as I like to call them: potential spamm(ees). Just look at Twitter, for example. There are over 126 million active users. You can post as many words (280 characters), pictures, and videos as your heart desires. And it’s FREE. But many squander this opportunity to connect; this opportunity to make a difference. Opting to do like Jerry Seinfeld and put on "a show about nothing."

These free social media platforms things won't last forever. And will probably become monetized at some point (I suspect...) And many will look back on this time and say "should have," "would have."

The good news: The story does not have to end like this. We can start by doing something worth doing, saying something worth saying. Today. Tomorrow. Tonight.

To quote Charlie Parker, "Now's the Time."  And it's free.