Ok probably it’s not only about social media, but digital world in general. I just get sick and tired of people comparing online and offline worlds as completely two different entities. Now listen carefully there is no two worlds, there is one world and it’s called the planet Earth. Internet is not a world on its own it just technological extension of our normal lives. I just can’t believe that in over 20 years of adoption, we still can’t figure it out. “You” online is not a different “You” – it’s the same person just in different environment. Your actions come not from some weird guy by the computer, they are done by you, so don’t try to tell me that there is someone else responsible for your actions online. That’s my view about privacy.

The irritation about products and services online – lets face that quite a few digital services became a big part of our lives, we like to shop on the internet , we like search via internet, we like to chat on the internet. Ok maybe these are not commodities, but well let’s be honest with ourselves we use them everyday like bread and butter, so why should we classify them as being different and from another world? There is a lot of buzz going on about online currencies, social commerce, augmented reality and how they will change our world. And what I don’t really like that people still asking the wrong questions – “Do we need it?” instead of “How to adopt it?”. Ok I have to agree, that probably it doesn’t apply to everything what’s digital, as there is plenty of rubbish out there, so you have to question some of the new inventions, but there is plenty of Chinese toys out there as well..(sorry about Chinese comment, I don’t really judge the people by the country they are from). So just let them be and time will show if we can put these new inventions to work for us.

Recently, I followed the interesting discussion on Trey Pennington’s Facebook Wall  about this Guardian article which depicts Social Media as evil in people’s relationships and it just makes me cry when some very clever people like the author of the article (Paul Harris) still can’t get it. Why we are still researching the comparison between so called online and offline worlds when it’s clearly both which influence us and it’s completely overlapping so much, that results just can be right.

Ok now about people being different online and offline – so let’s face it like mentioned in the begging of this rant, they are not different people, they are just people in the different environment. I don’t really care if they are better or worse in that environment, maybe its a problem of our society that we cannot accept that some people are just better in online world that in the “real world”. Personally, I don’t care, if I like the person it means I like the person and not the environment we communicate in.

From the marketing perspective, I think marketers have to think carefully before simply dividing people in these two segments as the buying habits are of course different between online and offline shops, but the reasons why people are buying is still the same and personally I believe this fact is a bit more important than the environment they are performing the action.

So what’s your opinion about these two different worlds?