This is an excerpt from What Matters Now, Seth Godin's collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions from several leading thought-leaders. The entry below is from Howard Mann, speaker, entrepreneur, and the author of The Business Brickyard.
There are tens of thousands of businesses making many millions a year in profits that still haven't ever heard of twitter, blogs, or facebook. Are they all wrong? Have they missed out or is the joke really on us? They do business through personal relationships, by delivering great customer service and it's working for them. They're more successful than most of those businesses who spend hours pontificating about how others lose out by missing social media and the latest wave. And yet they're doing business. Great business. Not writing about it. Doing it.
I'm continually amazed by the number of people on Twitter and on blogs, and the growth of people (and brands) on facebook. But I'm also amazed by how so many of us are spending our time. The echo chamber we're building is getting larger and louder.
More megaphones don't equal better dialogue. We've become slaves to our mobile devices and the glow of our screens. It used to be much more simple and, somewhere, simple turned into slow.
We walk the streets with our heads down staring into 3-inch screens while the world whisks by doing the same. And yet we're convinced we are more connected to each other than ever before. Multi-tasking has become a badge of honor. I want to know why.
I don't have all the answers to these questions but I find myself thinking about them more and more. In between tweets, blog posts, and facebook updates. (emphasis mine)
Your thoughts?
That's a great one, Barb. If you post it on Twitter, I'll re-tweet it :-)
Posted by: Dave Harris | January 14, 2010 at 07:33 AM