Social media is not a tool of radical and transformative change but rather an instrument of the status quo, argued a world-renowned pop sociologist.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of a string of best-selling books including The Tipping Point, played devil's advocate during his keynote address at F5 Expo, a conference on refreshing business strategies through changing technologies, by saying there's no foundation to social networking.
"Weak-tied networks using things like social media are really easy to put together but that means that they're really easy to take apart," said the Canadian-born journalist. "Networks, on the contrary, that are built through strong ties are really, really hard to put together but they are hard to take apart."
Gladwell cited the rise of U.S. President Barack Obama, who used the Internet to build an extraordinary organization, which allowed him to bypass normal institutions of political life in America. Only one year into Obama's presidency he suffers some of the lowest approval ratings at this point in his tenure.
"He built an organization that was a mile wide but it was also an inch deep," he said. "And that's what happens when you build organizations overnight."
Gladwell suggested the social networks can't inspire social change because the ties between users are tenuous.
"If you have 3,000 friends on Facebook they're not actually your friends," he stated bluntly.
He added true change couldn't come about on social networks because they're built on anonymity, which can't create a high-trust environment.
To bolster his argument, Gladwell said true change has deep roots and is built brick-by-brick, rather than spontaneously as done through social networks.
"Social media, unless we do something about it, is crowding out a much harder and important work of creating coherent messages and real organizations built on bonds of trust."