The Quantity Monster, Sabotaging Good Information with Immediacy
You know this monster, I know you do! He's the little gremlin who lives in the back of our minds whispering sweet nothings into our ear to tweet inane one-liners, post untitled photos and "like" with such frequency that your community wonders if you can form a full sentence. And no matter how hard you try, taking a breathe to ponder an idea before your finger goes trigger happy, he's hitting over the head yelling, "post, post post".
Granted, the Quantity Monster has his merits. When you're eager to build buzz for a conference or an event, this is your man, err monster. He's the guy who's going to get the community excited and help build emotion. But when all is said and done, and there are hundreds of untagged and untitled photos with zero context, tweets unrelated to any hashtag, and snippets of ideas posted on facebook without any expanded reflection, what then?
Maybe this is where Quality Monster comes to the table? With his furry mitts wrapped around his pipe, his larger than life monocle propped infront of his third eye, he calmly suggests that we take a breathe and ponder our idea before sharing it with the world. Rather than broadcasting his ideas on various microblogs with lightening speed, he'll analyze his thoughts, going so far as to talk with others first, or writing several drafts, before he presses "post". His photos are always carefully chosen, edited, titled, tagged and published in a set based on a theme. As for his tweets? Well, those are carefully crafted, of course, meticulously spelled and hashtag friendly. In short, he wants his information to be thoughtful and valuable to the community at large.
The question is, do we need both? Sure, Quantity and Quality Monster bring an invaluable box of tools that are incredibly useful in the world of social media, but where is the balance?
