It’s been a bad week for the social media gurus. First Mark Schaefer called them out collectively, and some individually, for constant backslapping and creating, inadvertently or not, a country club atmosphere where eveything is fine and cozy.
Sadly, he’s correct. And the pseudo gurus were none-too-quick to jump in with defenses of their own. My favorites were the ones who saw fit to establish their own credibility by outlining years of experience and other credentials. It was as if to say their words were somehow more credible simply because what they can verify on paper, which ignores that even the youngest and least experienced of all are sometimes the best teachers.
The dialogue below the original post is fascinating. Perhaps the larger issue raised is how social media handles popularity. If this interpretation of original research into the so-called “wisdom of crowds” is correct, essentially a small few are actually creating the most ingested content around the Web.
What that means for social media is that, as ever, despite its perceived democratic nature, social media, like life, is a game of winners and losers. We saw this with the Twitter Vote Report. A small few controlled the content of the larger stream, “empowered” (the chosen word of the chief “data sweeper”) to admit or delete on a whim.
The consequence of the minority of so-called “thought leaders” is the natural outflow of the majority being followers. One special example came up just yesterday. Marketing guru Seth Godin publicly announced his new project, a presumed social media dialogue maker he calls “Brands in Public.”
“Brands in Public” is code for “Brands in Seth Godin’s Paws for a Price.” Essentially he believes that since Amazon or Maytag don’t have a blog that he can find, he will pirate content from said brands in order to provide a forum for others to bash, or praise, the brands. The companies then have an opportunity to pay him $400 a month to be in charge of these pages.
Godin’s own words:
“If your brand wants to be in charge of developing this page, it will cost you $400 a month. And once you take the page over, the left hand column belongs to you. You can post responses, highlight blog posts, run contests or quizzes. You can publicly have your say right next to the constant stream of information about your brand (information that’s currently all over the web–and information you can’t “take down” or censor). You can respond, lead and organize. If a crisis hits, your page will be there, ready for you to speak up. If your fans are delighted, your page makes it easy for them to chime in and speak up on sites around the web.”
The shocker of this endeavor is that it was announced around the same time that Google announced Sidewiki, which is very similar in concept. Now users with Google accounts can go to any Web page and comment on it. A Google sidebar is added to the page where you may partake in a discussion about the page.
This is exactly what Ike Pigott did – to Seth Godin, who does not allow his readers to comment on his blog. In addition to two posts about the issue, Pigott started a discussion about Godin’s post on a Sidewiki and even invited others to see how long it would take Godin to notice.
The issue is not so much that this stuff happens; such endeavors are expected. The problem is that when people of Godin’s status do it, they too frequently get the mindless cheerleader crowd chiming in (Edit: The link that was here was deleted. The writer said she was being sarcastic about supporting Godin.) with nary a thought to the questionable ethical or even legal principles of such efforts.
If the wisdom of crowds exists, social media is not the place to find it.
autom
11 months ago
spot on, Bob. just had a look at the Sidewiki Isaac stated and as of writing this comment Godin hasn’t piped in yet.
all the annotations listed on the Sidewiki got YES votes for being useful—only 1 voted NO on Danny Sullivan’s comment.
i echo Danny’s sentiment when he says this:
“Nor are you actually helping these brands. Brands can’t respond to a twitterstorm? They do all the time. No, they’re not too busy running stores not to pay attention to PR. It’s also perplexing when you maintain no presence on Twitter to be suggesting you have a solution to reputation issues that emerge from Twitter.”
i wonder (rhetorically): was this blatant brandjacking exercise inevitable? and what to do indeed about these scared cows…hmm..well, in India, while venerated, people just seem to let them be and pay them no mind. moooooo.
Bob
11 months ago
OK, I’m an idiot. There was another complete paragraph for this post that somehow didn’t make it into the final version. (Please bear with me: I’m recovering from the flu and am helping nurse a very damaged dog back to health.) So here’s what I think I meant to conclude with:
If you are reading or following the most popular of the Internet’s spokespeople and simply agreeing with them, that’s probably a cue that you you might need to step back with a bit more of a skeptical eye. In other words, a tell-tale sign of mindless following is merely retweeting or parroting the content of those you follow or perhaps recently saw at a conference (I’m thinking here of those who assume they can start a profitable blog after attending a social media conference of some sort).
On the other hand, constantly being critical or trying to poke holes in others’ arguments all the time can come across as annoying too. So I think there’s good amount of balance that can be achieved.
A last point that I didn’t write originally is that really one way to avoid this whole issue is to find the people in your community, however you define community, that are setting good examples of doing this social media stuff — and doing it to achieve noble objectives. (One of my favorite local PR agencies does a fantastic job of using social media by embedding bloggers into balloons at the annual hot-air balloon race. It’s simple, costs little and is remarkably effective in getting out the words and images needed for such a great event.) Sometimes the shiniest of stars are those we notice the least, and we tend to discount them because they’re in our own backyards.
wolfy
11 months ago
“a tell-tale sign of mindless following is merely retweeting or parroting the content of those you follow”
that’s funny.