Social media pied-pipers disconnecting from the net
UPDATE: Jeremiah is back from vacation, though wading in slowly. He's still looking back over his shoulder and wondering if the vacation wasn't long enough. No vacation to Hawaii could be long enough!
Hugh McLeod, as you probably know, following a "thank you...we'll miss you" which many of us signed.
Scoble is back from Israel and will have much to say I'm sure. Be sure and read the first post he wrote upon his return. It's not what you'd expect and is very touching.
By now everyone knows clever cartoonist Hugh McLeod has become a hermit, moving to the remote, little town of Alpine, Texas and, even worse, deleting his Twitter account. In one of his final Tweets, Hugh said, "Sorry, Gang, I just don't think I can do the 'Blogosphere' thing any more. Gonna do something else. Already doing it, actually."
Internet pioneer Doc Searls hints that he's giving up blogging.
Robert Scoble is telling everyone to turn off the Internet.
Even Jeremiah Owyang is disconnecting for a few days after "being on the grid for over 900 days." (That's got to be some kind of record.)
For years these Internet pied-pipers have led us down a primrose path touting the virtues of blogging, social media, social networking and all-around general connectedness, themselves connecting to 1,000s upon 1,000s of people via Facebook and Twitter.
Now, they're disconnecting and, in the case of McLeod and Searls, disassociating themselves from the blogosphere, at least to some extent.
What are we to make of this? Is "disconnection" the next path we'll follow these internet entrepreneurs down? Should we be concerned? Perturbed? Am I making too much out of this? (My wife says I do tend to overreact.) For some reason I do feel a bit disenfranchised.
Perhaps it's that they are simply tired of living their lives online 24/7/365. Or, maybe it's just the change in seasons.
Of course, each has their reasons:
- Hugh now has a book deal and wants to focus his attention on that.
- Robert needs to get things done.
- Doc says "Blogging today ain’t what it was when Dave (Winer) started..."
- Jeremiah just needs a vacation... to Hawaii no less.
I don't think it would have bothered me had it been just one or the other. But, all of this is happening inside of one week causes me to wonder what's next. When the guys who got us started on all this social media stuff suddenly wake up one day and write blog posts saying different variations of the same theme, it gives me pause. But that's just me.
What do you think? Am I making mountains out of molehills or is there a larger issue at stake? What am I missing?
