Social Media Rant: Mashable & The Juggernauts

When you go to the Mashable site you are automatically bombarded with three lines of linked up options of Social Media and its tool packs. Full of overwhelming options, one can go to Lists, Channels, or you can get more Mashable-specific infomation in a nondescript gray bar beneath the Lists and Channels. Good grief all this text and I haven't even hit the fold! Let's overwhelm the noobs who are following the Chris Brogans, MarketingProfs and Pistachios -a sampling of the many juggernauts of the Twitterverse. The poor unsuspecting noob follows one of these folks or another juggernaut and chased a few tweets down the rabbit hole into the Dashboard of the Social Media God, Mashable!

(pardon the graphic -

I'm NOT a graphic artist and have nothing but MS paint to edit screenshots)

So I'm complaining a bit. I guess I have a right. I love Social Media as much as the Juggernaut quartet mentioned above. I'm probably 80% (if we could measure skills with numbers) as capable of playing around with social media as they are. The problem is, I'm not earning money off of it. I guess I'm still a hobbyist with the art. (BTW - I will JUMP at the opportunity to take my Social Media Skills to a funky cubicle lined Boston-area office for a paycheck. I come packed with enthusiasm, skills, Masters in Marketing and a little bit of fearlessness - who wouldn't want to work with me!) So these juggernauts are earning money learning, evangelizing and churning through new social media tools like the latest and greatest eatery in the Back Bay.

Ok, so what's my problem with them? Well it's nothing, but it's what they are doing to social media. They are making it intimidating for the Noobs - and I'm sorry, I guess so am I - who wants to be called a Noob! The juggernauts are making social media intimidating for the new users.

I'm volunteering as a Social Media Integrator for a local grassroots project. I think I struck fear in half of the team when I uttered the word "ning" (Ning is a fun, flexible platform in which users can create their own social media groups around a hobby or passion in their lives.) I've shelved Ning at the project because folks are still getting used to Twitter. I realized then that there's a need for someone like me in Social Media. Someone who can break it down so that a new user can dig around my blog and find out how to use social media. Let's take a step backwards with Social Media and make it fun again. Let's help the later adopters figure these things out without feeling foolish or intimidated by what they don't know yet.

I have been on Twitter for well over a year now - maybe even 18 months or so! People are coming up to me and asking me all sorts of questions. When I tell them I've been on Twitter so long, no fail, they tell me "You were on it before it was cool". Oh jeeze! I guess I found this technology fun a little sooner than everyone else. I think there were 200k users when I started my love affair with Twitter. It was a slower pace and it wasn't intimidating at all. I slowly worked my way up to power-user and have three accounts - my @LilMissSocMedia account being the newest of them. I've found tools to enhance my experience at my pace. That's what I hope to do for the rest of the users that come to me for Social Media advice....break it off in small bits for them and let them build their "nest" one social media tool at a time!