No Room for Snobs in Social Media

I encountered a couple of snotty people at a social media-based gathering recently. It was one of those moments where an accomplished Master's degree-holding Marketer, wife, mother and pretty nice person in general slunk away ashamed that I'm more concerned with paying my mortgage than getting the latest iPhone. Ok, so I'm not ashamed at all of my priorities, but I did feel like I was missing out on a great secret to social media success without an iPhone or at least an iPod touch! I felt feeble for not having the data package on my Voyager Smartphone.

(Image taken from the apple store - thanks!)

It took me a few days to process just why these Gen-Y devotees instantly diminished my sense of belonging with the social media it-crowd du jour - they were being snobby. Serendipitously, a few days later I was sitting in a room of real social media it-crowders - people actually making money from it - and was buoyed instantly through a brief conversation with one of the panelists. He said to me "Social Media is not about the gadgets." Our conversation went in another direction, but he was right - my lack of a job begets my lack of a data package for my schlumpy voyager and it certainly is why I don't have my iPod Touch. I don't have a job, I'm a subsidized brainiac on the couch at the moment. Yeah Yeah, no secret there. I would have the gizmos if I had a guaranteed salary next week.


What I have working for me is the ability to churn out content and create relationships around this amazing technology. That is what social media is about. Now the snobby kids have one thing right - getting together over a shared interest in something is great...but looking down your nose at someone and immediately ousting them from your little cool crowd is a sure fire way to fail at social media. If Snobster & friends had really understood the value of social media, they would have branched out a little further and showed me the coolness of their iPhones. They could have set up one of the cooler features for me and let me play with their phone for a minute and engaged me in a conversation about it. Not only do I really want an iPod touch, but I really want to try one out first, so these people lost out on an opportunity to be true social mediaphiles and brand ambassadors for Apple. I'm fairly certain Steve Jobs would be dissapointed in their lack of innovation on this point!