It’s easy to forget, when you are caught up in the leading edge of social networking, that not everyone is on the same page as you.
The realisation came to me recently, while attending an event held by the Confederation of French Industry Medef — the equivalent to CBI. I was getting ready for a session of live blogging when a woman stopped me to ask a question.
“Tell me”, she said while eyeing my “blogger” badge which signalled that I was one of the 50 or so Internet experts invited by the confederation to cover the event, “what is a blogger?”
I must admit that I must have looked pretty flabbergasted.
As the media is awash with blog reports and web reviews, and even mainstream Hollywood films like the recent ‘State of Play‘ feature blogs alongside more established press and broadcasting, I had assumed that blogging was an established fact of modern life. I realised then Joe public still doesn’t know what it is about.
Blogging is still exotic to many, and not just this side of the Channel. Judging by the frequent questions I have on the same lines in England and even in the United States, it’s clear that we are not there yet.
So how long will it take for everyone to understand? Judging by what happened with core Internet activities, one started talking about the information superhighway as it was then known in England as early as 1994 but things only took off seriously towards the end of the 1990’s.
Will blogging follow the same trajectory? Maybe it just won’t happen like that. It is highly probable that people will all use blogs/microblogs (such as the outstanding Posterous service) and other Social Media gadgets even before they understand the weird names we have given them. To a large extent, this is what this Social Media revolution is all about – forgetting about the buzz-words and just going ahead with it.
Yes, it’s true not everybody knows what bloggers are, but we’ll keep blogging while the rest of the world catches up.
