texting

eCommerce professionals already know the commoditizing effect of the Internet. Products lacking scarcity are quickly forced into a low price shootout where the survivor is determined by volume rather than value. Only scarcity, in its various forms of uniqueness, quality or quantity, can keep a product's value propped up against the assault of knock-offs, counterfeits, and clones.

As web 2.0 takes hold, and the triumph of social media is trumpeted through our mobile devices, this commoditizing effect is also occurring to this new media. Texters and twitters are measured by the quantity of their “friends 2.0” and how many messages they can hurl. Message uniqueness has a half-life measured in seconds while scarcity is often achieved through fabrication rather than fact. BFF's are now Binary Friends Forever, or at least until the Internet connection is dropped.

In social media, it's not the message that counts, it's the process. The minuscule but mighty endorphin rush from an incoming message reassures us that we are important. But the rush is as fleeting as the message and can only be sustained by repeating the process.

As I sat with 75,000 other people watching a college football game, I witnessed this process unfold around me. The students and recent grads spent most of the game head down, sending and receiving messages faster than the action on the field, only occasionally looking up to ask “what happened” or “did somebody score?”

I wondered if I was their age, would I still think checking out coeds was more fun than checking tweets, yelling and cheering was more cathartic than typing :-@ or :-(0) , and hooking up with friends after the game meant something more than adding a post to myspace or facebook for my “friends 2.0” to see.

I doubt it. That was so life 1.0.