A Myspace Girl in a Facebook World

Have you seen Paris Hilton’s new TV show in which she yawns across L.A. in a pink Bentley? 2007 this is not, although the resurrection of Miss Hilton into our living rooms has elicited some interesting comparisons between her relevance in our current age. Paraphrasing The New York Times, she is a MySpace girl in the age of Facebook; a Blackberry in the age of the iPhone; Web 1.0 in a 3.0 world;  and, well, you get the idea.

Chuckle all you want, but take a moment to consider whether you are a single-process person in a double-process world. Has your website been updated this week? Do you have at least one Gmail account? Can you explain the relevance of a hashtag? And these are just the easy ones.

Relevancy requires vigilance. The Internet plays host to a thousand fleeting mediums, and it’s important to sort through the chatter in order to speak directly to your audience. If your audience moves on, so should you, no matter how comfortable you’ve gotten with the syntax of a system. A final hint: if Paris Hilton is likened to your favorite website, that’s usually a sign to delete your own account there as well.