A few weeks ago I co-opted Quinton Michael onto the multimedia team at my church. The Sunday morning he started
working with the team, I asked him if he has a Facebook profile, to which he politely responded in the negative. “Oh how I envy you” was the very first thing that sprung to mind when he uttered the words “No I don’t”. I truly, genuinely and utterly envy Quinton. He is probably one of the last remaining true “individuals” that I have come in contact with (besides my wife of course). Quinton’s fortune lies in the fact that he has not yet techno-mutated from a single person into a network of people like most of us that make use of social networks. I really do envy that.

Yes dear friends. If you read this and you have a profile on any of the vast array of social networks out there, then you have ceased to be an individual. Let me explain with real life examples. It’s really simple. If someone sends a tweet to you directly on Twitter, everyone following that person can see that tweet as can everyone that follows you on Twitter. If anyone posts something on your wall on Facebook, everyone connected to both of you can see that.
Depending on your privacy settings, if that post contains a keyword that a total stranger searches for on the network, that post is very likely to be shown to that person. So you see, a message sent to you is no longer just sent TO YOU anymore.

Social media has taken the concept of individuality and flipped it on its head completely. What we think is just one person has become a network of people. This is just one of the reasons promoting anything on a social network has become so attractive to companies and brands. My good friend and brand architect Boni Xaba gets so cheesed off everytime
someone tags her in an event or on a photo on Facebook. What she did not know at first was that she now has so much influence and reach on Facebook that marketers will do almost anything to get a piece of what she has – for free too.
Marketers recognize that these “influentials” have become excellent conduits for brand messages as you can’t even begin to fathom how far the message will travel with a simple tweet or wall post. Now you know why your Facebook wall is so busy. Bet you had no idea – did you?

So these days our connectedness and the extent to which we’re networked means that speaking to one person is now the equivalent of speaking to an army of connected, networked individuals who are themselves connected and networked. You see where this is going? The age of individualism is slowly coming to an end. Thanks to social media.
This of course brings up the issue of privacy, but that’s another discussion we’ll have – soon. So as with everything else, there is a price to pay for using social networks andsocial media in general.

So the real question here is.. how willing are you to give up your individualism and pay the price for becoming a “social individual”?