The Butterfly Effect and social media
Beyond being an online media cultist, I’m also a devout TV geek. So therefore I’m of course obsessed with Dexter, Showtime’s wonderful, whimsical, and occasionally haunting tale of a “good serial killer.”
Every episode has a theme, and this week the Butterfly Effect was thrown around, which is described as “the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that may ultimately alter the path of a tornado or delay.” While that’s a little dramatic, it led me to think about cause-and-effect with relation to social media.
I’ve been thinking about and writing to an extent about such topics as Blogging 2.0, distributed conversations, smart people networks (think Twitter, FriendFeed), and the trend toward a blogging/microblogging balance, and all of those things involve an ebb and flow of conversation, each point of which can kick off in any number of directions… or perhaps not at all.
Today, for example, I noticed a statement that Robert Scoble made on FriendFeed that I actually picked up on over on Twitter. It’s received a great many comments and likes on FF already:
“I invested a lot of time this year in FriendFeed and Twitter instead of my blog. Was that the right decision?â€
On Twitter I responded with a statement that reflects a piece I wrote last week: ” My working theory is that the best bloggers will also be strong microbloggers/social media participants, and vice versa.”
My response then kicked off a whole series of “side conversations” about blogging, “influencers” versus “broader audience,” social media, and even a fun but esoteric conversation about the meaning of accuracy and subsets versus supersets!
In essence I was reminded that the flexibility and openness of social media platforms bring a tremendous power. They’re not for everyone to be sure; I spend a good amount of time explaining why places like Twitter are important and useful for people, understanding that they are not yet mainstream communication hubs.
But I wouldn’t be surprised if one or several of them become so sooner or later. The call of the Butterfly Effect is strong.
