Why Social Media Shouldn't Exist

I've just been reading about a one day seminar on The Future of Social Media, and it made me realise just how big a deal this sector of the internet has become. Just check out some of the 'big name' brands who'll be attending (and the price tag of course).

But then it got me thinking about the validity of Social Media - as a buzzword, a trend, niche, sector or topic. Is it possible to argue that Social Media or Social Networking as descriptions shouldn't even exist, because all our online activities should be social in one way or another?

Is it time to move beyond the Social Media catch all and start trying to integrate the pinricples of communication, interaction, dialogue, recommendation and opinion sharing into everyday websites?

For example, if the Boden website allows it's customers to post and share their own honest reviews (sometimes negative) of their produts, then surely the Boden site is social. Each review even includes details about the reviewer; gender, location, age, and frequency of purchase. It would be one simple step to enable Boden customers to actually find and engage directly with each other based on these criteria, on a social basis, or for users to see what else the reviewer bought or where they shopped just like the same principle of social bookmarking.

Maybe social recommendation by a site's users and customers will be the next evolution of Amazon's classic 'people who bought this also bought this....' sales tool, once that technique gets so overused it loses effectiveness (or users start to mistrust the recommendations of site owners).

It certainly makes a case for websites to start engaging users in a more active way, through the creation of user generated profiles integrated with internal transactional and buying behavoural data... think Facebook for ecommerce shops.