Experience Media, the better social

Are you for or against social media? It can be a fun question to ask at a party, much like, what do you think of Trump? It is a question that can come back at you with very heated opinions. For most people, their opinion on social media isn’t generally a simple yes or no, good or bad. Mine is no different.

I can see why people like social media. You can share your thoughts, opinions, and photos with people you are “friends” with. But notice I put the word friends in quotations, as in “are they all really friends?” 

How many of these “friends” have you actually spoken with in the last year, let alone spent time doing something with? Yes, spoken, as in you are in the same room and look each other in the eyes and speak words between you.

There’s that elementary school chum that recently found you after 25 years. There’s also your workmate that you see in the office every day, but you rarely talk. 

And then there are those “friends” that you haven’t actually even met. There’s your best friend’s neighbour’s cousin who liked a photo you posted (he only saw it because of the sharing rules which are too complex for most to understand). Unfortunately, now you also have to endure seeing photos of his dog dressed up like Santa and Princess Leia.

Social Media was created to connect and reconnect people and to share content in a one-to-many way. There is no arguing that it does that really well. There is also no arguing there can be value in that. 

What it doesn’t do well, though, is foster real relationships. That only comes from spending quality time with others, sharing experiences and creating memories together. It’s being able to say to someone “that restaurant was fabulous – we have to go back” or “I can still see that look on your face when you saw that barracuda…so funny.” It’s not just looking to see how many likes you got or thinking that your life isn’t as great as someone else’s because they just went somewhere fantastic and you didn’t.

Let’s think about the times in our lives that we have been the happiest? I know mine have been when I was doing something somewhere with someone I cared about. I think most people will say at the end of their lives that they wished they had spent more time with their nearest and dearest doing things they enjoyed. It won’t be, “I wish I had spent more time posting about it and got more likes.”

Sharing your photos and thoughts is great if it is with the people you actually shared the experiences with. Those are the people that really care, and they care because they can relate. It means something to them. Not to take away from those that couldn’t be there but still would like to see some of your photos. They are important too. But I would guess they want to see the content in the context of the actual experience and not just a flat posting. It is this belief that got me thinking about how to best organize my own time.

With every experience we have has three common elements: where we are, what we are doing, and with whom we are doing it. You could be on a hike with your partner in the Himalayas, alone on a spiritual retreat in Sedona, or hosting your child’s baseball team’s year-end barbecue in your backyard. I call these three things The Triad of Soulful Living. It is the who, what, and where of personal experience. It is what makes experiences different each time and what makes them unique to you. The great thing is that they can be whatever you want them to be. They are yours and yours to make worth remembering. In order to do that properly, they require planning and execution. Wrap all that up in a single solution and you have Experience Media.

Experium is an Experience Media™ platform. It was built for people that love to live life fully. It allows its users to connect meaningfully and helps them to plan, invite, collaborate, share and remember their event and vacation experiences.