Even before LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, et al, came on the scene, it was easy to come to that conclusion. We all leave impressions with others, whether through the media or through personal contact. Those impressions get repeated.
So, messages about you and your business that you communicate to employees, customers, prospects, friends, or family will be repeated. The Internet has only increased those opportunities many times over. Hence our conclusion that everyone is media.
With the addition of devices like PDA’s and camera-equipped cell phones, you may be able to run, but it’s unlikely you can hide. At least, not for long. These things are widely used and widely known and recognized. So, it comes as something of a surprise that the man often credited for “inventing the Internet” thought he could escape the inevitable.
The irony of former vice president Al Gore banning the media from a speech he made to 4,000 attendees at a wireless cell phone trade show is well documented by
Sascha Segan in an online column at PCMag.com.Traditional media may not have been in the room, but the crowd was rampant with bloggers and tweaters, and their messages were quickly picked up by the mainstream folks, as well.
Whether Gore’s ban was based on a long memory and revenge, as suggested by Segan, doesn’t seem to be as important as the fact that he apparently thought he could keep accredited journalists from getting the story, which was naïve, at best.
Your own relationships and today’s technology have combined to end any age of innocence. Just about anywhere you go, you’re surrounded by media.
It’s a fact too important to forget!
Very true. Your slogan and reasoning are right on target — today more than ever. Anyone from the kid next door who is ‘friend’ to thousands on Facebook to the local newspaper can splash your good and bad points all over the digital world.