I was informed this morning that today was "social media day." There were parties and meetups and well excuses to go drink (we need them now that the USA is out of the world cup.) Really, it was a chance for "gurus" to pretend that because Facebook and Twitter are now on the news every night, that they need a special day to prove how guru-tastic they are. In fact, most of the people I know in the social media sphere just made funny remarks about how dumb it was and moved on (I was also in that camp, BUT...I also blogged about it.) The fact is, social media is exactly like the social part of real life. Where you have to be nice to people, not be a dick, be honest and be interesting. Hard stuff, I know.
So what does this have to do with UX? Well, honestly having special days for social media, to pretend that it's really any different than having a real social experience are making something awesome and empowering into something more complicated than it really is. This is bad for UX for social media, esp for people who aren't on the cutting edge, because making something out to be more complicated than it really is always leads to a less enjoyable experience. But hell, it sells books and speaking engagements, so screw everyone else.
For the record, this blog SUPER hard to write. I had to send an email, and we all know how hard that is. Good thing I found a guru at the bar.
