What's so incredible? Why is she so awesome? How does she do it?

Why is social media so great? Supposedly because it fosters conversation and helps you find new stuff more easily. It makes the internet and companies, brands especially, more human. It’s interactive. But is it really?

While most of my colleagues herald social media as the wave of the future, I differ. I think social media has largely been a failure. While networks like facebook and linkedin amass more and more members, I grow more convinced with each passing day that social media is going in the wrong direction. Crowdsourcing is a neat idea, and some of twitter’s implementations are interesting applications of social networks, but proof of concept do not a success make. By and large, I think social can’t stand on its own two feet.

I’ve said it before time and time again, if your social network has no value without a circle of friends, it won’t offer anything even with your circle of friends. Said another way, social networks only seem to succeed when they’re related to services, or when they offer something that functions regardless of the interactive bit.

Let’s look at some practical examples. Look at the sidebar to the right of this post. I’ve got a section listing other places you can find me online. What do I use those networks for?

There are two really important attributes of this list. Firstly, every one of these sites is public, as are the few other services I use. You don’t have to create an account or subscribe or sign up or add me as a friend to see the videos I post, the songs I listen to, or the pictures I take. This is important because it means with one click, my grandmothers can find out about what I’m doing without jumping through any hoops. Secondly, almost none of my friends are on these social networks. That’s okay, because my friends in real life don’t need to subscribe to my youtube channel or follow my audioboos. They don’t need to comb through my twitter timeline because they know me in real life. They’re already privy to my travel plans and my favourite restaurants. This is where the echo chamber is. I’m following strangers, and strangers are following me. What’s missing is real interaction.

Do you see the problem? Do I really want to be alerted to the locations of strangers? Do I actually need to submit my photos to groups and pool? If I didn’t use youtube as a video hosting site, would I still be a member? No. I’d just watch the videos. Herein lies the failure of social networks. They’re fabulous platforms for output, for broadcasting, but they’re not so good for interaction. Maybe to network executives vote-via-text is meaningful audience participation, but to me it’s a novelty, not actual interaction. Anything a shell script could do doesn’t interest me.

Luckily, I’m not the only one that feels this way. Leo Laporte, one of social media’s biggest proponents, suddenly retreated and cut off his other profiles because

It makes me feel like everything I’ve posted over the past four years on Twitter, Jaiku, Friendfeed, Plurk, Pownce, and, yes, Google Buzz, has been an immense waste of time. I was shouting into a vast echo chamber where no one could hear me because they were too busy shouting themselves. All this time I’ve been pumping content into the void like some chatterbox Onan. How humiliating. How demoralizing.

Leo isn’t the only one to question the mysterious “conversation” so many people claim is social networks’ greatest asset. Many bloggers have closed comments on their sites, sparking huge debate. After all, blogging is supposed to be a social platform. By disabling comments aren’t we shutting the door and the appeal of blogs?

I don’t think so. As Dave Winer says,“some people think that blogs are conversations, but I don’t. I think they’re publications.“ I agree. Blogs are a publishing format. Herein the meaningful conversation can begin with trackbacks and relinking and quoting and you know, general discussion. Like this post. Comments, as Mitch Joel points out, are rarely a back and forth, and even more rarely add insight that enriches the post. Most comments are impersonal, and blogging is a personal medium. Unlike news sites, which claim to be a) objective, b) fair and balanced, and c) timely, blogs aren’t bound by any of those aims. Yet perhaps because blogging so closely resembles other publishing formats like news sites and books, they come under such scrutiny. My point is, the social aspect of these social mediums (comments on blogs, subscribers on youtube, contacts on flickr) isn’t the compelling bit. The compelling bit is the product, the broadcast, the output, be it a band’s music on myspace, a writer’s comment-free post, or even my vlogs on youtube.

All of this begs the question: if I lack faith in social networks, why am I on so many of them? Because I’m not. I use the social networks I’m on as services, services to host my files or to remember my history. I blog to broadcast because meaningful interaction with my writing is a perk, and unexpected surprise, not a given. Granted, there are some examples (the YouTube J-vlogging community comes to mind) where genuine collaboration and conversation exists, but even then it’s a closed circle. Social media has failed, but it hasn’t failed at everything. It’s failed at conversation. It’s succeeded as lowering the radio towers so that anyone can broadcast, and even though that isn’t social media’s express purpose, it’s still got some potential.