Can you make assumptions based on the 'weirdos' and their social media?

I'm always writing and talking about people -- and there are a lot of them -- who just want to live in the "real world."

They aren't interested in creating a viral video, or writing on a blog or "engaging" with any brands.

Seems I've got some company now, and it's none other than Wall Street Journal columnist Jeremy Wagstaff, who writes about technology and its uses in the WSJ and on his blog Loose Wire.

Jeremy notes in this post here that there are several reasons why social media may not be the cure-all the evangelists believe it is, including the fact that the many people who DO create media tend to be on the fringe of society -- weirdos, he calls them, based upon his newspaper experience:

"The kind of people who contribute, or contribute most (to newspaper letters to the editor), don’t represent a good cross section of ordinary readers/users. Readers’ letters are always great to receive, and they may contain useful and interesting stuff, but they tend to come from the same people, or group or kind of people. And that means an editor would be a fool to treat his mailbag as a cross section of his readership. Same is basically true of the Net."

He also believes that many people consume social media during work hours -- where it's difficult to produce videos or write blogs -- and they have no desire to spend personal time doing so.

It's a must-read for anyone who is selling, promoting or using social media.

Quick hit: I'm not saying social media doesn't work. I believe it does -- and that it has a real place in the communicator's toolbox. I wouldn't blog if I didn't have a strong conviction about it. But it's just one tool ... and it doesn't mean the others are no longer viable.