A cartoon depiction of the author, wearing a hoodie and smiling motd.co

On Dark Social

I’ve been thinking about the "dark social" concept a lot ever since, funnily enough, it was emailed out to an email group I belong to that has become in some ways my replacement for Google Reader (although not the same, for sure, in a lot of ways that I should probably outline at some point) and definitely belongs within the area of “untrackable social networking” outlined by this article.

One thing that I find really interesting is the naming— chosen for dark matter, I guess, and possibly cynically just because it’ll make for a good book deal if this goes anywhere, but ultimately with or without the reference it’s obviously being spoken from the point of view of someone who is looking at THE DATA, looking at the traffic and doing analytics and/or marketing or whatever. I am the person on the other side of this curiosity, the one performing this black magic, and to me it’s not dark social at all— it’s warm social. It’s friendship.

I could say a lot more I guess (of course I could, have you MET me) but I should probably stop there except to add that it’s fascinating and kind of comforting to know that I’m participating in a world that frustrates and resists the efforts of corporate marketing, a world made up of the set of genuine relationships that I have with other human beings, people I love and who maybe even love me!