Oxford English Dictionary New Inclusions

The OED has released it’s list of 2000 new entries. We thought we’d have a quick look at how these words are performing in terms of Google searcher demand and guess what – social media, as you would guess has come

in top of the leader board.

Geo-engineering makes an appearance in 2008 and is very driven by press events.

Staycation starts getting traction slightly earlier with people making the best of not having funds for those two weeks in the sun.

Carbon storage has a steady increase over the last half decade, although Google’s prediction is that demand will fall.

Microblogging doesn’t get any interest until 2007 and then whoohooo up  it shoots most likely as a reflection of the success of Twitter and follow me flavours such as Yammer.

And then comes Social Media.  Some interest at the beginning of 2004 and then almost exponential growth when we hit the beginning of last year;  a reflection of when social media became “mainstream” .

And yet with all the noise created  on social media about social media, how often do you come across someone doing it naturally and really well? How often do you see the normal everyday integrations as opposed to the shout it from the treetops “groundswell” examples?

Has so much noise ever been created by so many (gurus) with so little tangible results. Not saying that social media isn’t  changing the way that companies and individuals communicate but we’re still in a period of chassis – lot’s of proclamations of big changes but at the coal face any of us working in it are still struggling to get senior executives to embrace it, even if they “get it” in theory.

It doesn’t help that on agency side there are a whole lot of egos (sorry blame it on being weary from a really badly executed staged connection thing going on between “socialmediaistas” in one of our twitter streams) who are proclaiming SM as the new way of the world… but ignoring the substance.

Hurrumph – perhaps time for that staycation.

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