For all of you who don’t know Seth Godin….IT’S ABOUT TIME! He was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, the industry’s leading interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in late 1998. He is also a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. Godin is author of ten books that have been bestsellers around the world. He also has a very successful blog under his own name, Seth’s Blog.
The reason I’m talking about him is because he made a fantastic blog post. I really can’t summarize, or state it even remotely as he put it himself. The issue is that by quoting him, I am going against everything his article stands for. Read it and you’ll see what I mean…(I almost feel guilty):
Due to the extraordinary explosion in video, blogs, news feeds and social network postings, the internet is dangerously close to running out of room.
Nothing can grow forever, and exponential growth is always short lived. We’re running out of disk space, so if you have something left to say, better hurry. Once it’s full, it’s full.
Of course, the decentralized nature of the net means that it will never be physically full. As long as we can keep making hard drives, we won’t run out of space to store those inane videos of your Aunt Sally. What is full is our attention.
Ten years ago, you had a shot of at least being aware of everything that mattered. Five years ago, you had to be really selective about what you took in, but at least it was possible to know what you didn’t know. Today, it’s impossible. Today, you can’t even read every article on a thin slice of a thin topic.
You can’t keep up with the status of your friends on the social networks. No way. You can’t read every important blog… you can’t even read all the blogs that tell you what the important blogs are saying.
Used to be, you could finish reading your email, hit “check email” and nothing new would show up. Now, of course, the new mail is probably a longer list than the mail you just finished processing.
…now you understand why I feel guilty? I’m just adding to the clutter. But here’s where I think he went wrong (man oh man, I hope Seth doesn’t see this). “See A Need! Fill A Need” is largely the reason new sites pop up every day. If there’s a need, why shouldn’t it be there? The major issue is when one company feels they can “do-it-better” than the other. That is when you see 1,000′s of social networks, similar blogs, etc. popping up.
Seth also didn’t include a solution and in my originaly blog post, I had one…but it was horrible so I took it out. I’m hoping Seth see’s this and offers a solution of his own. “Seth, if you’re out there in cyber-space, HELP! How can we stop this epidemic?”
…now I sit and wait.
Posted under Blogs, E-Mail, Social Networks
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