Friend counts. Followers. Website hits. Comment counts. Views. Re-tweets. Likes. All things that are as often misleading as they are helpful when it comes to life online.
They are all simply (supposed to be) indicators of something else. We are ultimately interested in the something else. But our foolish hearts are too easily charmed by the warm-fuzzies of good “indicators” and we forget about the substance of what we are truly trying to do.
Whether we are creating content for a website or blog or we are simply posting something to our Facebook wall or forwarding an email, far too often we are motivated by what will drive our indicators. We think in terms of what will get us the most “likes,” comments, re-tweets or new followers instead of what will most effectively accomplish our goals.
Here are some outstanding comments by Seth Godin on this subject and the value of social networking:
We live in a world motivated by outward appearances. Such motivations ultimately lead to substantive failure. We do this in our parishes and ministries, for example, in regard to membership growth. Our goal should not just be to maximize the growth of our membership count, it’s to first maximize the growth of each individual member. We want quality. We want genuine conversion. These are the kinds of members that go out into the world and turn 5 talents into 5 more. I’ll take a handful of them to a hundred talent buriers any day.
In addition to social networks and organizations, this translates to our personal relationships as well. Having a lot of friends is great. But if we shoot for quantity at the expense of quality, we’ll end up with neither.
Most of all, don’t get tricked into chasing superficial indicators of success or popularity or whatever. It’s one of the easiest ways to waste your life.
Comments
Post a Comment
Real networking = static IPs; fake networking = DHCP.
Its’ interesting how these two conflicting types of networking have been shaped by the internet. Social-networking tools tend to provide a false confidence of communal engagement.
But in communal life, just as in the quest for holiness, numbers can not only deceive but distract. Making sure to pray EXACTLY 53 rosary prayers can deceive your spiritual growth, making you picture yourself as more ‘holy’ than you really are. At the same time, getting to the “magical 53” can distracts you from praying even one prayer in a fully present way.
Having 2,345 Facebook friends can deceive you into a false confidence that your relationships are all on par. And managing the hundreds of these shallow relationships distracts you from having a few deep relationships of worth.
Stats don’t measure influence, growth, or conversion. Community and holiness are not quantifiable.
I have enjoyed reading Godin and listening to Tom Peters. Both outstanding sources of information when they stick to what they do best!
Love this line, “Our goal should not just be to maximize the growth of our membership count, it’s to first maximize the growth of each individual member.” It’s the interior life that counts. If you have a huge number of members in your parish but the activities are all social and there’s no interior growth, you’ve done absolutely nothing. What metrics are you tracking? What is your goal? Those are important questions in ministry. Priority must be given to the growth of the interior life in souls.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.