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  2. I agree with Oliver in philosophy alone. When Google's email servers died earlier today for about an hour, people turned to other forms of communication — forms that some email addicts may call fads or has-beens.

  3. Here's my take.

    The hype is a fad. We're (well, a lot of us, anyway) all still excited about all this technologial whiz-bangery.

    Me? I'm with my friend, Clay Shirky, on this – the technology gets interesting when it gets boring. At that point, we can start focussing on what we're doing and with who.

    At the moment, it seems most of the buzz is about what we're doing and with what. Wrong focus.

  4. Annoyingly slick. The choice between 'fad' and 'the biggest shift since the industrial revolution' is pretty silly – surely it's somewhere in between (and perhaps there are other contenders for the latter).

    While I wouldn't call it a fad, I do agree with Stephen (and with Clay) – the technology itself (and its related stats) is far less interesting than what we can do with it.

  5. Nice video.

    While I don't believe Social Media is a fad, I certainly believe we're only seeing it in its infancy.

    There will be plenty of stumbling along the way, but the core concepts are here now.

    This is an incredibly exciting time to work on/with the web

  6. Personally I consider mass media a fad. It rose to prominence with newspapers in the late 19th century, splintered with radio early in the 20th and then with TV in the second half of the 20th Century (and cable followed).

    Now 'mass media' is splintering further into small communities of interest with some overlaps based on media diversification and the internet. The only real question is how small an audience do you need to be financially successful.

    Of course since all living human being grew up with mass media, we think mass media is normal. However there's no real reason to believe that mass media will last a second century in current forms.

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