Will Social Media kill PR?

Public Relations have served companies for ages and its always been a great source for publicity. Hiring PR professional invariably got expensive and thus, as a result, specialized PR agencies sprouted. They have done a great job ever since then, but as of 2006, things began to change.

The advent of Social Media aka 'New Media' changed the tables. In the first decade of the 21st century, the world was introduced to a powerful personal network. A network where people could voice their opinions. In span of just a few years this new media grew faster than any earlier media in terms of reach and adaptation. It had viral effect to such an extent that companies woke up to harness this new medium. Over a span of just 2000 days, it has further evolved to become a threat to most of the earlier mediums. Now I do not proclaim that it will kill all the other medium at this instant nor do i say it will not kill it. But here are a few points I am  willing to share how Social Media might kill PR.

Welcome to the ‘Decade of Games’

For those of you still trying to wrap your head around the meteoric rise of social networking over the past decade, this post might hurt a little bit. Because just as you and most of the world were getting a handle on it, the decade of social abruptly ended.

Why? Look around. When social networks have been around in the last decade 2001-2010, there has been an evolution. There has been a layer of games created on them so as to keep the users entertained. As more and more people tend to spend time on the net playing these games ‘the decade of being ‘just social’ is evolving.

This doesn’t mean that we will stop using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to share with our friends, colleagues and families. In fact, quite the opposite is true, our combined usage of these social networks will continue to increase. Rather, the decade of constructing the social layer is complete. The frameworks that we'll use to share socially are built, defined and controlled. Construction on the social layer ended with the launch of Facebook's Open Graph protocols over the last several months. All the interesting social stuff that will occur over the next decade (and there'll be lots, I'm sure), will exist within this predefined framework built and controlled by Facebook. In short, the decade of social is over.