What is the Purpose of Social Media?

All the writers I know struggle to balance time on twitter/facebook/blogging and time spent writing. Possibly, probably, other people have this problem too, but I dare say it's more extreme when you work for yourself. And ultimately, no matter whether a writer is a hobbiest or professional, has a contract with a big pub or is an indie, when it comes to writing, you work for yourself.

What purpose does all that social media stuff have anyway? I mean in the BIG picture? I came across an article advancing an interesting theory, and I'd like to share it with you.

Why do moose carry such enormous and metabolically expensive horns? Why do some gazelles jump up and down when they see a predator, wasting time and energy instead of running off as fast as they can? Zahavy's insight was that this wastefulness ensures the honesty of their signals of fitness and speed: Only animals with an excess of the signaled resource can afford to waste it on expensive communicative displays.

Similarly, observers have been puzzled or concerned by seemingly irrational behavior on SNSs. Users may spend considerable time updating their pages, adding new pictures and music; the comments they send each other are often in the form of jokes and images. Why spend so much time on seemingly inconsequential changes of imagery and uninformative communication? Deep concerns have also been raised about young people who create overly revealing profile pages, in which they appear in provocative photographs or recount illegal activities such as drug use or underage drinking. Warnings about the dangers of doing so have stopped some, but not all. Why would someone choose to post such material once he or she was aware of the negative consequences? Signaling theory can help explain such behavioral phenomena.

While an outsider might see as wasted the time expended on profile updates and exchanges of the latest pictures and URLs, another interpretation is that these seemingly trivial activities are examples of online fashion, signals of social position in an information based society (Donath, in press; McCracken, 1998; Thornton, 1996).

Fashions, the constant change in the way of doing something, are signals whose form—the currently popular object or saying—changes frequently, while the meaning—social position—remains the same. There are fashions in clothing, slang, and management techniques. Their individual instantiations are easily-copied conventional signals; it is the constant evolution of forms that creates the reliable signal. Fashion is about information, about knowing the changing social meaning of an object or way of doing things.

There is no doubt that books are judged by their covers. But these days, books are also judged by their authors' covers. This is what agents talk about when they want to know an author's platform. It's not just about connecting with potential readers, though that is there, certainly; it's about building trust with potential readers. This is critical to all writers, but perhaps even more so for indie writers, who lack other ways to build trust, such as relying on the brand name of a Big Six pulisher. 

A writer who can maintain a blog, facebook and twitter presence, and still find time to write, is demonstrating a huge commitment to their art. It's the equivilant of a peacock's tail. Only the healthiest cocks can afford to strut their stuff.

What about those of us who aren't quite so cocky? What about those of us who can barely find time to write, never mind spread a peacock's tail display across the internet?

I don't know. I am only posting once a week on this blog now. Although I'll be posting twice daily over at 500 Words, I still worry it's not enough. I'm not the world's greatest social mediaist. I just struggle to do the best I can, and hope that even in this strange world of e-posturing, those of us with feathers designed more for hiding behind bushes than winning beauty pagaents can still compete.