Social Media's capital
I was intrigued to read last week on The Telegraph website how London has been confirmed as being the ‘top city’ when it comes to social media. Twitter, Facebook and Digg have all confirmed that London has the highest level of social media contributors of any worldwide city (in relation to population size).
Digg announces that “Nearly 10% of traffic to Digg is from London and the UK is our second largest country next to the US.”
As a Londoner as well as a keen Tweeter, Facebooker, blogger and general ‘social media meddler’ I was impressed. I felt a warm glow of pride swell inside as I considered myself to be part of the most progressive, digital nation.
In. The. World.
I finally felt like the hours I spend poring over what to blog, or how to condense my puerile ramblings into a mere 140 characters, was worth something. No-one knows my name, or gives a damn for that matter, but I don’t care, I’m an inhabitant of the ‘Social Media Capital’. Hear me roar.
As I pondered on this for a while longer I began to wonder what has been the reason for London, in particular, to rise to this remarkable level of social media usage. Is it because, as a population, we are just inherently more digitally advanced than our erstwhile neighbouring nations? Are we so super-tecchie with our fingers firmly pressed on the pulse that we are close to uncovering the secrets to The Matrix?
Just then my phone rang. The caller display informed me it was a good friend of mine calling. I stared at my phone as it called out to me like an needy infant “Answer me, answer me, answeeeerrrrr meeeeeee”, and I just let it ring through to voicemail as I thought to myself “I don’t have time to speak with her right now, I’ll just drop her an email in a few moments and deal with it that way”.
Then it hit me.
Londoners may not be any more digitally innovative and progressive than any other ‘hooked up’ nation. We’re not necessarily leading the charge towards the purely digital age. The reason social media is so successful in this City could well be because we are just generally quite anti-social. We may well be a melting pot of diversity, but we are surely also one of the world’s most anonymous cities. There’s not a person I know who hasn’t admitted, at some time, to actively dodging a colleague/friend they’ve seen on their morning commute just to avoid a polite conversation because they ‘don’t feel like it’ that early in the morning. Equally there’s the people who like to pretend they’re asleep in an aisle seat on the train/bus just so someone won’t ask them if they can occupy the vacant seat beside them thereby forcing them to interact with another human being. Or there’s my personal observation that a vast majority of Londoners moving around the city are permanently plugged into varying music/media players, or engrossed in tapping away on some PDA/mobile device, as a means of isolating themselves from all that’s occuring around them.
Does this sound to you like the behaviour of ‘social’ people.
I believe that Londoners, and Britons in general, could well be embracing social media simply as a means of avoiding direct contact with others. Why ‘speak’ to someone when you can email them? Then you don’t have to suffer the agony of small-talk or, heaven forbid, listening to the woes of others. You can just fire off a quick message via the varying digital channels available and the job is done.
Don’t get me wrong, I am probably one of the UK’s biggest advocates of social media and the opportunities it opens up. But then, I am also one of those people who’ll dodge to the other side of the street if I see you approaching and I haven’t had my morning coffee as yet. As proud as I am of London embracing the digital age, I’m also slightly embarrassed that it may just be because we’re so anti-social as a population.
On that note, I’m going to pick up the phone, call my friend and see how she’s doing….Ah, voicemail…..never mind.
