One of the biggest ironies of the social media is that those whose profession it is to get brands and companies to set up a presence within the social media environment themselves see it as a waste of time, and no substitute for what most people would refer to as real life, real life being the life that you live in the physical world rather than sat behind a computer, or online.

Almost everyone you ever talk to will tell you that communicating with people online is a waste of time, that everything is superficial and there is no gain to be had, on a personal and emotional level. Of course they’re right but not for the reasons they believe in. I was transcribing an interview of a 19 year old Belge girl speaking about how important her mobile phone was and how it helped her stay in contact with the world. In particular she was talking about the role of sms. When asked about facebook though she didn’t think that much of it.

A lot of people think this way. They are happy with the SMS, a technology that is about twenty years old by now. As a result of this interview