“In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” Andy Warhol
I have a theory on why social media is popular with kids. I think it is all about fame, or a variation of fame I call “e-fame.”
This is how e-fame works. Social media is the stage. Your child is the star. Their friends are the audience. Every tweet, status update, message is the performance. Replies are the applause. Viola, your child has achieved e-fame.
So what about adults using social media? My business friends tell me they use social media for business purposes, to improve customer relations, to increase revenues. They make a compelling case. But, I have to wonder if maybe it is really all about e-fame.
Social media is awesome because it can scale. Anyone and everyone can be a star on their own stage. The size of the audience (friends, followers) doesn’t matter. All it takes is one person, one reply, one applause to achieve e-fame.
What do you think? Is the obsession with social media related to an individual’s 15 minutes of fame (or e-fame)?
Shaun McNerney
P.S. – For those readers not familiar with Twitter, 140 characters is the maximum number of characters that a Twitter message may contain.
