Social media, or social overkill?

My newspaper company (privately owned, one just-acquired small daily, and a couple of dozen or so nondailies) recently held a day-and-a-half seminar on social media and related website issues.

Other than the question of why it was more than one day in length, with lodging costs for staff from papers not close to the headquarters, as well as just the time length, I did learn some things about some of the "newer" social media, like Pinterest and Instagram. However, it was probably a fair amount of "bleah," and, it was bloated. Beyond larger issues, I know other reasons the timespan was bloated and don't need to comment more.

Here's, tentatively, the rest of my observations.

First, it’s “interesting” at least, but ironic at most, that a seminar about social media in particular and best Internet practices in general, is loaded with dead trees handouts.

Second, it’s also “interesting” that, as part of the seminar is about how all of us are getting busier, a lot of the presentation was about all of us doing “more” for our papers on social media. Related to that was the irony that other people are “ingesting” more and more social media how? By either becoming more addicted, or compulsive, about use, or else by “goofing off” on the job more even as “content provider” employees are expected to spend more time not goofing off and feeding that beast.

Third, as papers continue to age in readers, it’s “interesting” to have a presenter talk about some social media having users who are so young that “they’re not yet readers” of our newspapers or papers in general.

Fourth, the ways of getting around the worst of the social media world, or the worst of the commercialized online world, were not discussed. AdBlock Plus wasn’t discussed. A search-history free, and Google-free in general, search engine like Ixquick or DuckDuck Go, wasn’t discussed. Ghostery to block tracking cookies wasn’t discussed.

Fifth, the presenter noted that Instagram, Vine and Snapchat don’t support links. So, that makes them worse. However, doesn’t that challenge the blogging-era prime’s claim that “it’s all about the links”? Is this true or not? Should it be true or not?

Sixth, it seems that a small to medium-small media company with small-sized individual outlets should recognize that economies of scale would involve headquarters expanding its IT/web staff, for less commonly used social media, like Pinterest, setting up newspaper accounts and adding to them from stories on each paper’s website.

Seventh, none of the discussion covered the narcissism angle of some social media, especially ones that “trend” younger in user demographics. I mean, we all have some degree of selfishness, but selfishness is not the same as narcissism.

Eighth, is blogging social media or not?

Above and beyond all of this, is there a "narcissism bubble" in the world of social media that will burst someday? After all, a medium is a mode of interaction. Traditional media's interaction was weighted fairly in one direction, as in "Here's what we've decided you'll see/read/hear." Things like selfies/geeky videos seem to have the same mentality, even if coming from individuals, not companies.

This narcissism bubble has nothing to do with newspapers  in particular or media in general, of course. However, it does relate to their current and future decisions as to what to do with the world of social media.