Is social media a fad?

Whenever I give a presentation to a group of people, I open it up for questions at the end. This usually leads to some interesting questions. It also tells me what topics people are interested in that I might want to cover in future presentations.

One question that always comes up is the one about social networking, or social media. It usually comes in one of the following flavors:

“What is this Twitter thing?”
“My daughter told me to get on Facebook. It seems like a big waste of time to me. Is it worth the trouble?”
“Who cares what someone had for breakfast this morning?”

I always struggle answering these questions because social media is one of those things that you either get or don’t get. So even when I explain what it is and how it can be used (more than just letting people know what you had for breakfast), some people still just stare at me with a blank expression.

Recently, someone sent me a link to this social media video on YouTube. I posted something similar to this a while back but this video concentrates exclusively on social media while the other video I posted was more generic to the entire Internet.

Think social media is just a fad? Watch the video and see if you are once and for all convinced it’s not.