Social Media Dying?

No I am not saying this to add that shock factor or wow factor. I am actually being serious. Is social media dying slowly but surely?

There are around 3 million users on Twitter. 4,272 of them are Internet marketers, 1,652 are social media marketers. Their jobs revolve around, and rely on, social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace etc. They rely on building trust and conversations around a brand, service or product. What if those conversations were being hindered by Twitter Tools?

Twitterhawk is a new Twitter tool that has been created. Acting almost like Google alerts, Twitterhawk allows you to set up keyword phrases that you would like to be alerted about. So for example if you are a coffee shop and want to receive people’s tweets related to coffee, then Twitterhawk will notify you. Ontop of this, Twitterhawk allows you to create an auto-response to be tweeted about that topic and/or give you a list of potentials that you can choose from. So going back to the example of the coffee shop, if people are talking about wanting to grab a coffee in your vicinity, then you can tweet them saying that you are close by them and that they should drop by. This can just be automatically sent to them, or Twitterhawk will give you a list and you can confirm which ones you would like to respond to (confirm replies). All of this for a tidy 5 cents per tweet sent via TwitterHawk.

Sounds great and harmless doesn’t it? But what happens if you aren’t the only coffee shop around town that’s on TwitterHawk? What if you are a Twitter user and really don’t want 10 tweets telling you were to go for a coffee? What happens if you get tweeted at even the slightest mention of something? For example: I am hungry and want to grab lunch. Will every restaurant around me tweet and suggest their food? What about spammers? Will this scare people away from Twitter?

This can get very scary and overwhelming if everyone jumps on board. The thought of being bombarded with thousands of tweets at the mention of a keyword phrase scares me into thinking social media sites might start to lose the “social” in social media. What happened to good conversations? People on Twitter are already starting to complain about auto-response direct messages, what will their response to this be?  Will social media turn into an auto-response machine?

I don’t think enough thought was put into the potential damage Twitterhawk could have and I don’t think it will encourage new Twitter users and could scare off current Twitter users.

This could very well be the end of Social Media as we know it.

There is no easy way to Social Media. Companies need to realize the value of conversation when it comes to customers, and taking short cuts such as Twitterhawk will not give them any more advantage over their competitors. In fact, I can guarantee in a few months people will be so frustrated with the amount of tweets they will receive because of Twitterhawk that people will actually look negatively upon these companies.
Social media is a tedious and slow process, however, when done properly it can be used as a great advantage!