Social Media Top 5: Faces of Death

I frequently tire of the “xxx is dead” statements that are cavalierly thrown about the social Web. Here are a few, real and imagined, that caught my eye lately, and why they may not be true.

RSS is Dead: I understand that Steve Rubel is saying in his post, “As the Decade Closes, Has RSS Faded Too?” that he is migrating away from RSS readers (like Google Reader) to get his news feeds, and more to places like Twitter and other human-curated sources. The thing is, RSS is not only not dead, I would argue it’s immortal.

RSS has morphed from some sort of tool for end-users that nobody will ever understand in that context (despite the best efforts of some smart folks) to an underlying technology that drives a lot of the easier-to-understand interfaces– basically, any content site with a news feed.

As Shel Holtz said on Twitter: “Those who proclaim RSS dead are often those who herald the arrival of the real-time Web — largely RSS-driven.”

I would call RSS the “ghost in the machine” – but ghosts are dead, so…

Marketing is Dead: Granted, Forrester Research Senior Analyst Augie Ray admitted the title of his blog post was hyperbolic (and it worked), but there were some interesting points. No, I don’t think for a minute that marketing is dead in 2010, but Augie lays bare some of the big challenges we are already seeing. First point: Augie includes advertising, PR and other related practices under “marketing” and basically takes Advertising out back for a beating. More interesting is that companies have not figured out social media yet– no kidding, right?– but more specifically, the measurement metrics they are pursuing to date are not meaningful. So is 2010 the year marketing gets lost and can;t find its way back, or is the social media riddle solved by finding more effective metrics? What do you think?

The “Twitter will Never Make Money” Meme is Dead: Apparently, all Twitter had to do to get into the black was sign a lucrative search content deal with Google (and with Microsoft). How many clients have i had in the past who started out with content syndication of some sort as a means to “real” revenues? Rarely has it led to profits, but Twitter’s insane popularity made this possible. I also believe that it’s not the long-term revenue solution– that there’s more– so, that meme will live on as we continue to guess what Twitter’s next revenue scheme will be.

Blogging is Dead: Peter Kim did not actually say that in his post, “Some Thoughts on Blogging,” but he sets a good reminder that fading in frequency of blog posting- or in any medium– can make you forgotten or irrelevant fairly quickly. And Peter, I would love to see more regular posts from you.

Technorati Tags are Dead: Aw, sugar. I got nothing. However, I was actually asked by someone recently about the Technorati Authority score of this blog.  Can someone show me that Technorati retains relevance? I’d love it if it did, but I don’t really know.