Can I just say? I’ve always thought “social media” has been the worst buzzword coined in the history of the Internet. To me, it refers to a bunch of out-of-job consultants who spend their life on FriendFeed and go around pitching stupid companies to use their “social media marketing” services. It’s a marketing ploy created by marketing folks, and one I hope dies before it turns us all into a bunch of “search engine optimizers.” More importantly, it has nothing to do with the real revolution that we’ve seen in the last three to four years, which has embodied itself into the DNA of the Internet and needs no word to differentiate it from what we call ‘the web,’ or ‘the Internet.’

fred-wilson:

can we perhaps all agree the web, from now on, is inherently social, and referring to social media is akin to referring to the movies (moving pictures remember) as The Talkies in the 30’s, when it was finally commercially viable (not to mention reliable) to synch image and sound. I fee like that is where we’re at right now, and while it is understandable that we seek out terms to define what this “otherness” is, I think we need to move beyond digital being a “thing”, and stop talking like social media and the Internet will ever be separate things.

Originally posted as a comment by davidgillespie on A VC using Disqus.