Social Media is DEAD, thanks to Facebook. Long Live Social Media!

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As the world grows increasingly interconnected by technology, websites like Facebook connect more people everyday than ever before, accelerating this global society to the realization that much conventional wisdom is now at odds with the potential of change in the new millenium. Slowly, but sure websites like Facebook that harness the power of the masses will transition to sites like Steemit that empowers the crowd, for the crowd to empower one another.

I.

Mark Zuckerberg has just announced his perspectives in a post on Facebook on what he describes big changes coming to one of the most popular websites in the world for connecting people as a bridge of communication.

We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That's why we've always put friends and family at the core of the experience. Research shows that strengthening our relationships improves our well-being and happiness. But recently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content -- posts from businesses, brands and media -- is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other. It's easy to understand how we got here. Video and other public content have exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years. Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do -- help us connect with each other.

He goes on to describe in an later post here as a return of focus on the individual, away from a long phase of promoting business marketing, in turn, converting community of communication into consumer-users.

This part of his post, I interpreted he's considering integrating some kind of cryptographic element or cryptocurrency feature into Facebook that will undoubtedly change everything about Facebook:

But today, many people have lost faith in that promise. With the rise of a small number of big tech companies — and governments using technology to watch their citizens — many people now believe technology only centralizes power rather than decentralizes it. There are important counter-trends to this --like encryption and cryptocurrency -- that take power from centralized systems and put it back into people's hands. But they come with the risk of being harder to control. I'm interested to go deeper and study the positive and negative aspects of these technologies, and how best to use them in our services. This will be a serious year of self-improvement and I'm looking forward to learning from working to fix our issues together.

II.

Even at a point some years ago, Facebook introduced promoted posts, allowing both businesses and people to "boost" the reach of their posts to a larger audience. In turn, this feature has allowed the big guys to shout louder and the little guys (thats us, the casual user) drowned out by the noise and discord of advertisements. Now, we call for a return to form that everyone can connect to the people that matter, the friends and family we've added since the beginning of the social network, much the very reason why many remain on the network today.

Facebook has since barred me from post sharing and commenting to the various art-related groups I've joined, which has effectively diminished my communicative ability. From what I have read from this latest news from Facebook in their commentary, I am positively sure I am not the only one experiencing such actions dealt by this gigantic corporation.

In all honesty, I find it increasing difficult to promote my own content simply by sharing to my news feed, if people I've added cannot see the post, have more connections that I do (that there is just too much streaming content to view at one time.), or simply have ignored me. The ever shrinking reach for my content is continually throttled at the source and extorted for immediate payment, when in reality, it is that very content had cost nothing to Facebook for the user to contribute. This relationship is terribly one-sided, and frankly, unsustainable. As an creative artist, its paramount for my artwork to be shared with other users on the network, at the least, seen primarily by my inner circles.

III.

Read Artsy's full article here

I would like to share part of a conversation I had online some time ago with another intellectual from my former network, Facebook, along some interesting talking points I'd like to later elaborate on.

This conversation was part of a thread, found under a post made by online magazine Artsy, on Facebook, on their editorial titled, "$38.6 Million Bacon Leads $310 Million Sotheby’s Sale of Post-war and Contemporary Art"

Mr. Tom Hendricks comments follows:

"Postism, is art for a new century, not a continuation of last century trends.

1. Mass Market Paintings like Prints.

When any art form is mass marketed it enters a golden age. This has happened with books, records, and film. Let's add paintings. Most art is in museum basements. Mass Marketing allows art to tour in copies and allows artists to make royalties on copies. Why do you think the world gets so excited about a new great book, record, or film; but no one cares about a new great painting? All are mass produced except the painting.

2. End a Century of Isms.

Dump the genres and formulas and let all kinds of art be a part of the art world.

3. Shift Emphasis From Trendy to Quality.

Shift emphasis from the latest trendy art, to quality art in any style. Just because art is weird does not mean it is great art.

4. Free the Art From Museums and Galleries.

Get the art out of the ivory elitist museum and gallery towers and back into the world. Have city art centers open to all artists. Make art that is relevant and communicates with people. Start with the first generation of artists online.

5. Postism is Part of a Bigger Revolution.

Postism is part of the bigger art and media revolution out of Dallas, that includes art, music, lit, film, media, and a lot more.

6. Postism online: Online artists are the new wave of art.

We had all the isms of last century. Now we have a free for all, of all kinds of artists, that are not sanctioned by any museum or gallery, displaying their work. Out of that comes the next wave and revolution of artists.

Last century the goal was to fit the ism. This century the goal is to do great art – no ism, no boundaries. Fractionalized art then, synchronized art now. Even calling something modern art is a type of ism that separates that art from the art of the past. The 20th century was a century of experimentation in art. Now in the 21st we can choose from all those styles and / or start one of our own. Then too if someone devises a way to charge and collect a penny per view on a webpage, that would allow any great artist to get money for their art and have a career without any middlemen.

The 20th century was a century of experimentation in art. Now in the 21st we can choose from all those styles and / or start one of our own.

Then too if someone devises a way to charge and collect a penny per view on a webpage, that would allow any great artist to get money for their art and have a career without any middlemen.

Thank you Tom Hendricks from across the ether of time and space.

--

Craig A. Hamilton
Artist - Imagemaker
www.artistcraigahamilton.com

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Agency - FLOATINGMARS
Creative Consultant - Intellectual Property Holdings and Asset Management
[email protected]

Art wizard Craig A. Hamilton, Imagemaker - Artist, founder of Floatingmars, FUTURE REPUBLIK! AUDIO WEAPONARY GROUP, and The Imagemakers' Guild. Based in Miami, FL, I am a maker of original graphic illustrations, sold as print, product, or for publication. Currently, I'm managing my entire art business through daily curation of my website, www.artistcraigahamilton.com, using a handful of websites and their respective networks to harness my own market niche.

Thank you Society6, Patreon, and Steemit for empowering this self-employed artist-illustrator to profit from my own labor and turn this talent into a real world business.

I belong to a select group of content creators here on Steemit and they keep me going and growing.
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@earthnation
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@qustodian
@originalworks
@originalworks2
@bumper
@minnowbooster
@lila-wish-genie
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