It's been a little over a year since my noble experiment withTwitter began (see my blog, ”I'm all a-Twitter“), going on 2 years since lauchingthis blog, and several years since I've been on Facebook andLinkedIn.

Speaking strictly for myself, I'm still not completely sold onthe value of social media, at least for myself. To be completelyhonest, the more I become involved with these communicationmethods, the more I feel enslaved by them, and I wonder ifother users feel the same way. In fact, I wonder if the wholesocial media thing isn't getting close to reaching the saturationpoint.

I realize that this sort of thinking is tantamount tohigh treason, especially in an industry that lauds social media asessential to marketing and branding. I also realize I maybe contradicting myself, because I've writtenrepeatedly about the importance of insurance agents usingsocial media, in this very blog and elsewhere. But I'mspeaking personally right now, and isn't that what social media issupposed to be all about — transparency and authenticity?

Facebook alone is single-handedly doing a lot of harm tothe concept of social media. On top of infuriating users bychanging its “fan” settings to “like” and generating lawsuitsby changing privacy settings, just this week there wasanother “security flaw” that allowed users to view otherpeople's private live chats and friends requests. Twitter, with itsnew ad platform, seems to be going down the same path. Bothshare a common strategy: insinuating themselves into ourdaily routine as a “free,” easy-to-use,“fun” service, becoming indispensible — andthen monetizing that service. I'm just waiting for the daywhen Facebook, Twitter or both announce that they're chargingusers for their services. Wonder how many “friends” we'll haveleft when that happens.

Our industry's acceptance of social media happened with analmost science-fiction-esque rapidity. Remember how long it tookinsurance to even start thinking about adopting e-mail and Webpages? Social media reached that level of acceptance in ananosecond. Twitter has only been on the scene since 2007, but it'salready an indispensible part of the branding tool kit, with eventhe most staid insurance companies tweeting away, like somethingout of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

IMHO, as we hepcats on the InterWebs say, I think we are in fora major consumer backlash on social media, whether it's due tooversaturation, overcommercialization, or being eclipsed bythe Next Big Thing. And I don't think this backlash willnecessarily be related to older users, either. You can make thecase that I feel this way because I'm an elderly curmudgeon, butstatistics show that only 16 percent of the 24-and-youngerdemographic use Twitter, and that the highly prized Millennialdemographic is even starting to be eclipsed on Facebook byolder users. Maybe the younger users arealready beginning to sense that these sites are becomingoversaturated with commercialism.

I'm not saying that that people will stop using socialmedia, or that we'll suddenly go back to issuing quotes on papervia snail mail. But people don't like to be “sold” — especiallywhen the selling comes in the guise of friendship and freeexpression.

Perhaps today's forms of social media will be eclipsed by somemonster merger of FaceTwitLink, or something new and different thatwe won't even see coming. Or maybe people will just get tired oftweeting, texting and talking on cellphones and rediscover thepleasures of face-to-face contact. At least I hope so: Arecent study shows that one of 10 of under-25ers wouldinterrupt having sex to take a text message. I sure hope that textmessage isn't a tweet from an insurance agent.