The Bruno Brookes Syndrome
Bruno Brookes used to present the UK Top 40 when I was a teenager. And Bruno had a policy (well, OK, the show did). You play the stuff at the top, and the stuff on the way up, but you don’t bother with records once they’re going down the charts.
That worked fine for the Top 40. But when I see the same policy being applied by tech and social media commentators I have to raise an eyebrow. I saw a tweet today from a quite well-respected tech journalist saying, in essence, “God why does anyone care about Yahoo! What year is this again?”
Now Yahoo are the #2 destination in the world, according to Alexa. 1 in 4 Internet users globally goes there. Facebook might overtake them this year but it hasn’t yet, and yes, their audience is in a slow decline. But, you know, 1 in 4 people. That’s a lot of reach.
And then there’s MySpace - whose decline is more precipitous, and who have been written off by most commentators as far as I can see. Here the issue isn’t over a service’s long-term prognosis but over its short-term use. I saw a blog post on social media expertise which took the line that you shouldn’t take any consultant who mentions MySpace seriously. This is idiotic: not only are lots of people still using MySpace, they’re probably a different group of people to the ones who go on Facebook (or Twitter, which MySpace still dwarfs).
Why do people go all Bruno Brookes when it comes to websites? Fashion plays a part, but mostly it’s pretension. Social media types want to believe that they’re leading edge, and that doesn’t just mean embracing the new shiny things, it means ruthlessly discarding the old ones. The annoying persistence of the likes of Yahoo doesn’t fit with this self-perception and so they’re simply better ignored. What year is it again?
For some websites there are good reasons for taking this editorial slant. A site like TechCrunch, for instance, lives and breathes new start-ups and a strong line on which of the big players is worth caring about helps its reputation. The equivalent of paying most attention to the climbers and the number one works well for them. But not every tech site should be TechCrunch, and certainly social media commentators should think twice before aping its approach. As for market researchers - it shouldn’t even be up for discussion!
Think of it this way: social media is about the people who use it. If you dismiss Yahoo or MySpace as yesterday’s news you’re essentially dismissing those people, suggesting that their interactions, creativity and choices are of zero interest because of the platform they’ve chosen. It’s hard to think of anything less in the ‘social’ spirit.
