An interesting – and sleazy & calculated – tactic on Twitter

Filed under Rants, new media by Kate Brodock on 11 July 2011 at 14:10 {3 comments}

If you’re like me, you may monitor the folks who unfollow you on Twitter (I use a service called Twunfollow).  This is helpful to me to see what types of people are unfollowing me, so I might be able to intuit why they stopped following me, in case I want to make any improvements (one of the small assessments in the Twitter Management Toolkit… which maybe I’ll write someday).

Here’s something I’ve noticed a lot of in the past few months:

People who start following me one day, will quickly unfollow me within 3-4 days if I do not follow them back.

These tweeters fall into two categories:

  • Brands
  • People with enormous follower counts

What does this say to me and why do I think it’s a horrible idea?

  1. You likely have some tool set up to automatically unfollow people who don’t follow you within a set period of time (mere days).
  2. This means you clearly only care about the number that person adds to your Following count.
  3. #1-2 mean you’re not interested in conversation, and are probably never going to attempt to engage with me directly.
  4. #1-3 mean I have absolutely no interest in ever following or listening to YOU because you don’t actually know what it means to be in a digitally social space and probably just want to broadcast TO me.
  5. #1-4 means you lose.

Nice try, but no cigar.

Gladwell and the Laziness of Digital Activism Discourse

Filed under Digital Activism, Rants by Kate Brodock on 2 October 2010 at 07:16 {no comments}
Malcolm Gladwell speaks at PopTech! 2008 confe...
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By now, I can’t really keep up with the conversation happening around Malcolm Gladwell’s post on digital activism from Monday (“Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted,” The New Yorker, 27 September).  I’m a few days late, blame life.  But I still wanted to chime in, because it’s important to me.

My biggest problem with Gladwell’s discussion?  If you know me at all, you’ll guess it.  He focuses way too much on tools and tactics and ignores the role that strategy plays in any form of activism. I’ve talked about the difference between tactics and strategy before, emphasizing the absolute importance of strategy and wondering where all the strategy went.

Additionally, his use of data is very shallow.

Let’s get into a few of the things Gladwell talks about in his post.  The first thing that jumped out at me was:

“Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools.”

Not true.  Any smart person I talk to knows it’s not about the tools.  Nobody knowledgable on the space looked at the Iran incident or the Moldovan incident and said “It was Twitter that did it.”  We looked at the larger picture, how Twitter acted as a new way for people to express their voice, how far the reach was etc.  It’s also interesting that he spends so much time talking about the sit-in and fails to acknowledge that it’s the 1960s activists’ equivalent of a tool?  Whether it produced strong-ties, high-risk, or weak ties he spends little time talking about the strategy those activists had, and to me that seems like a gaping hole.

Is there still work to be done in the field? Of course.  One of the problems Malcolm could have talked about was the constant use of anecdotes to describe the digital activism landscape.  That’s one thing that MAP is trying to tackle.

There’s also the implication here that high-risk activism is the only one that results in success:

“What mattered more was an applicant’s degree of personal connection to the civil-rights movement….High-risk activism, McAdam concluded, is a “strong-tie” phenomenon…..But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.”

Does this mean that the only way to achieve success is through high-risk activism, that somehow, since lives might have been in danger at a much more apparent level in his examples of 1960s activism, it caused more of a fervor which was the only thing that drove people to act (or can drive people to act now)?  Ok, I didn’t know I had to have a life threatening situation to be an activist, or to cause change or to mobilize.

As he focuses on this issue of “ideological fervor” he misses the fervor – albeit of a different type – that was caused worldwide during the Iranian “Twitter Revolution” (for the record, I also disagree with this designation, and chock it up to a case of media sensationalism, but I digress).  He needs fervor?  What about the thousands of people sporting green avators in support of the cause?  While individual emotions might not have been as heightened as if you had a sit in with a direct threat of your face being punched in, the overall, collective emotions could be said to be even more powerful on a different level.

He simply ignores the numbers.

As does his rather direct, but unfair hit, at Clay Shirky (disclaimer, Shirky is on our board at MAP, and because we all have like-minded thinking, it’s natural for me to react to this):

“Shirky considers this model of activism an upgrade. But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact. The instruments of social media are well suited to making the existing social order more efficient. They are not a natural enemy of the status quo. If you are of the opinion that all the world needs is a little buffing around the edges, this should not trouble you. But if you think that there are still lunch counters out there that need integrating it ought to give you pause.”

In my opinion, if Gladwell wants to take this stance, he should be working as hard as Shirky is at trying to progress the field of digital activism into more rigorous analysis so that we can compare apples to apples when trying to make broad claims about the virtues or downfalls of social media tools, instead of the apples to oranges approach that Gladwell takes when comparing these two forms of digital activism.  To this end, Mary raises three really good questions on the distinctions that Gladwell is trying to draw in his piece.

I don’t want to dissect Gladwell’s argument much anymore (I could talk about how the 1960s instances he speaks of were carried out on top of very well-established “free spaces” that were available, and still are, to people at that time, and how those types of well-developed spaces and tactics are still being developed online, and yadda yadda yadda).

It really does come down to numbers in many senses.  Gladwell argues correctly that many of the connections made by digital technologytoday are, at the individual level, weaker than the forms of high-risk activism present in the 1960s.  However, what he 1960s didn’t necessarily have was the ability to affect  people across the world, the ability to create a collective ideological fervor that could potentially, with right foundational knowledge and strategy, rival any instance of high-risk activism around.

The Backlash Highlights

There were a lot of responses to this piece, and some of the other points made against Gladwell’s arguments were great:

Over at the Huffington Post (“What Malcolm Gladwell Doesn’t Understand about Social Networks” 28 Sept), Angus Johnston talked about how the high-risk activism incidents of the pre-internet era led also to the larger scale weak-ties activism that helped champion an entire movement:

“Gladwell is right that strong-tie relationships were a crucial part of the Civil Rights Movement, and is a crucial part of any organizing effort. But he misses the fact that all strong ties start as weak ties, and that even weak-tie relationships can spur action within and between strong-tie communities.”

Anil Dash hits the nail on the head (“Make the Revolution,” 28 Sept) when he argues that most of Gladwells problem is not accepting a different type of activism in different times, and that he’s stuck trying to find the activism of the 1960s:

“It wasn’t the birthers or the truthers who earned the nod for helping shape America’s future: It was the makers. Their protests, their sit-ins, take the simple form of making things and sharing them with each other, online and off. The quietness of their ways, the heads-down determination of the scientist instead of the chin-jutting attitude of the street fighter, might make them easy to overlook. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not a significant and enduring movement. it doesn’t mean the will of these millions of people doesn’t count, simply because it’s expressed in a way that doesn’t look like protest did five decades ago. Best of all, the people who actually make these things happen aren’t just sitting around clicking “Like” on things online.”

Allison Fine follows nicely (“Malcolm Gladwell Strikes out on Activism,” 28 Sept) by saying flat out that Gladwell doesn’t get activism for precisely the reasons I spoke of above (is the only type of activism high-risk activism? Is that the only way we can ever have success?):

“Activism has come to represent a wide continuum of efforts, voluntary and professional, that, like the tax code I mentioned last week, cannot all fit neatly under one umbrella. The term activism has come to include society changing social movements, political advocacy, and acts of loving kindness, like giving clothes or food to people in need. Gladwell lumps all activism into the social movement category. There will only ever be one civil rights movement, and the every day overuse of the word “movement” (akin to the overuse of the word “gate” to describe political scandal highlighting a true lack of imagination on the party of the “gate”ers.)”

Zeynep Tufekci at Technosociology talked about the difference between how problems are perceived at the local level versus the global level (“What Gladwell Gets Wrong: The Real Problem is Scale Mismatch (Plus, Weak and Strong Ties are Complementary and Supportive),”27 Sept):

“I will make two main points in this post. One, the key issue facing activists who wish for real social change is the mismatch between the scale of our problems (global) and the natural scale of our sociality (local). This is a profound problem and more, not less, social media is almost certainly a key element of any solution. Second, the relationship between weak and strong ties is one of complementarity and support, not one of opposition.”

And so……

Gladwell tells us all,

“…we seem to have forgotten what activism is.”

But have we?  Have we really?

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Wikileaks, Transparency, Responsibility, and Constructive Action

Filed under DigiActive, Digital Activism, International, Media, Publications, Rants, Thoughts, new media by Kate Brodock on 30 July 2010 at 13:53 {one comment}

We’ve been having a really great conversation about the recent WikiLeaks incident on an informal Fletcherite group list, and I wanted to get some of the thoughts up that have been spiraling about, as well as refine my own thoughts.  For those I mention below, if they’ve got a blog, they’re well worth the follow so I suggest doing so!

My biggest issue with this situation from the get go was whether or not this leak was handled in a responsible and constructive manner.  I don’t think it was. I am in complete support of transparency and open government and all those high-aspiring concepts we work so hard for (especially in the digital activism field).

However, I feel there are effective ways to accomplish this, and ineffective ways. This, in my opinion, was an ineffective way.

In our conversation stream, the first question I brought up was something to the effect of…”This isn’t everyday information, and while I feel the government should be more transparent, I also wonder what level of expertise Julien has with that sort of information and *everything* (consequences, people involved, military structure, etc) included with it.  Did he actually do a “responsible” vetting process before leaking, to the point where military info could be appropriately consumed by the public, the regular Joe, in a constructive, non-agenda-based way?”

I always try to push the responsibility aspect of issues like this, as I think it works better than willy-nilly throwing around of information for sensationalist purposes….soap-boxers and dramatic whistle blowers don’t strike a chord with me very often in a situation like this, and it’s very clear that Assange and WikiLeaks had an agenda they were trying to push.  This means that it wasn’t about transparency anymore, it was about an agenda.  This is further supported by the fact that the original source of the information has essentially said that the leak was not for the purposes of broad-based transparency… it’s because he himself had become disillusioned with the war he was involved in, he didn’t like his position, and he wanted to “strike back.”  Even people close to the course felt compelled to bring the original leak to the government’s attention because of the way it was handled…

Carol Waters said it very well in our email discussions:

“I’ve been a fan and supporter of Wikileaks since its inception in 2007, and I still strongly believe that it occupies a critical space for information that needs to see the light of day.  But the biggest issue right now –embodied in the current case of Wikileaks– is the establishment of a code of conduct as leaks and transparency become more and more common over the next few decades.

I’m concerned with the direction WikiLeaks has taken recently — the site’s power resides in its stateless existence, but this is also its greatest weakness, for it chooses its own code of accountability.  And now that WikiLeaks has received so much attention as the new hip place to break dirty-dirt on various governments, organizations, corporations, individuals, and movements, this is an even greater issue.

When Assange released the video of the bombing a few months ago and titled it “Collateral Murder,” he lost me as a supporter.  Not because I disagreed with his sentiment that the acts in the video were murderous in nature, but because it showed that Assange was going overt with his political editorialization of the material on the site, and I couldn’t trust his judgment any more.  Not because he stamped his opinion and politics on the video in such a bald manner, but because it implied something more serious and dangerous in my eyes: selective leaks to serve political agendas, taking the culture of wiki away from the site. Selective political leaking has always been an issue, but I can no longer view WikiLeaks choices of leaked material as anything other than deeply politicized, and I find this a sad element in Assange’s recent decisions.

I agree that “official” journalists shouldn’t have the exclusive stamp of legitimacy in the realm of “fair and balanced” reporting, and I think transparency is good and preferred (albeit with some heavy caveats), but I think when Assange only chooses to leak documents that promote his political beliefs and agendas, he becomes a variant of a cleverly edited cable news show, be it Jon Stewart or Fox.  What’s disappointing is that whistleblowing and “leaks for good” still have a positive connotation, but Assange’s choices and contextualizations may change that, throwing all of it into a barrel labeled infowar or counterintelligence as we move into the future.”

If Assange/WikiLeaks had firstly done a more thorough job of sifting through the information – really curating it for the readers he was trying to reach – and been more sensitive of that information (it’s generally agreed that the amount of time that was spent on this process was not nearly enough…), I might be ok with it.

If he had also presented it in a way that was more compelling, and more constructive than a “hear me roar” I may have also listened.

Before I get carried away – which would be easy in this case – I’ll leave you with a few more comments from my colleagues, which really sum up the breadth of issues and takes on the matter.

Mark Belinsky, Founder and Co-Director of Digital Democracy and a new media strategy consultant with his company New Words, put his thoughts on his blog, well worth reading (“Notes on Wikileaks,” a few snippets of which I’ve place below):

“Julian’s point, which I agree with, is often that newspapers are failing because of bad journalism. How many stories has Wikileaks broken vs the Times. Or the Guardian. Combined. And as budget cuts increase, it allows for good journalism to emerge from Global Voices and other interesting new projects.

This disruptive media source is something that western governments are now struggling with. I’ve been speaking with members of EU Parliament about it and have even presented to US Congress on the subject. Pinning the internet to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as Secretary Clinton did in her “Internet Freedom” speech was a bold move, but not one entirely based in reality. There is a lack of general consensus as to the nature of these right, making it hard to implement policy after the fact of making a strong declaration. The US needs allies in this battle in sympathetic governments (and vice-versa since so many tools are built here), but there’s a lack of consistency with what’s happening across the pond….

….After all, even an internet based-system is not “stateless.” It is bound by servers and wiring, of which only a few people know. And only a few lawyers know the legal frame that allows it to exist through the cables and servers of a handful of friendly States. In this sense it continues to be “centralized” even if the system for leaking itself is distributed and protected.”

From Josh Goldstein, who writes over at In An African Minute:

“Reality is far too complex for the 20th century institutions we are burdened with. How can a government, or even a small number of new and old style journos that make up the media elite, possibly claim a monopoly on truth in a situation as complicated as Afghanistan. Wikileaks matters because it will provide the raw content for those of us who are conceiving of new ways to interpret the world…..

…Money quote from the New Yorker article Mark points us towards:

“He had come to understand the defining human struggle not as left versus right, or faith versus reason, but as individual versus institution. As a student of Kafka, Koestler, and Solzhenitsyn, he believed that truth, creativity, love, and compassion are corrupted by institutional hierarchies, and by “patronage networks”—one of his favorite expressions—that contort the human spirit. He sketched out a manifesto of sorts, titled “Conspiracy as Governance,” which sought to apply graph theory to politics. Assange wrote that illegitimate governance was by definition conspiratorial—the product of functionaries in “collaborative secrecy, working to the detriment of a population.” He argued that, when a regime’s lines of internal communication are disrupted, the information flow among conspirators must dwindle, and that, as the flow approaches zero, the conspiracy dissolves. Leaks were an instrument of information warfare…..”

John Rahaghi, a former active duty military member and current reservist, offers his take on the situation:

“I think this was a clear demonstration of contempt for the government, among other things. Many people have noted the leak hasn’t revealed alot of new information, at least so far.  Then why do this? Were there war crimes exposed?  Possibly, (I’m sure we’ll find out).  Were there 90,000 of them?  What was the whistle blown on?  That we are in a war?  That its conduct has gone poorly?  That we have differences with allies?  Is this an indictment of government secrecy in any form, the fact we have a military at all, or some combination of other factors?  Maybe its an attack on the very structure of the government altogether.   A leak this massive doesn’t lend itself to any simple explanation, at least for me. In the military, you are supposed to take the oath and follow lawful orders.  Ostensibly, if you see something that you feel is egregiously wrong, illegal, unethical, immoral, or whatever the case is as you see it, you bring it to the attention of the chain of command, the JAG corps, or your civilian leadership.  Naturally, this can be difficult, but this wasn’t a leak of an incident or pattern of behavior, it was years of classified documents covering many areas and I personally don’t think this was a credible way to change policy, if that was even the intent.

While you can talk about government secrecy as a separate topic itself, I think its important to understand some things about classified documents and the negative effects that can result from their disclosure.  JFK conspiracies, UFOs, or specs for a new death ray aren’t the only topics under confidential and Top Secret. The majority of what is classified is not as super cool as people think and I would bet seems innocuous or even obvious to a casual observer. I’d wager many people would read these documents and think whats the big deal, I knew that/guessed that/assumed that. But anything about tactics, sources, methods, operational details, assessments, and mission planning, to name a few, are in fact valuable to an enemy even years afterward.  Airing the fact that we have doubts about allies only complicates matters further (the State Dept cables could be an even bigger bombshell), and even something widely known in the press can take on different meaning when its seen to be the official thought or assessment of the U.S. government.  These are broad strokes and I suppose someone may not care about any of it because of how they feel about the conflicts, conduct, and administration etc.”

Ben Mazzotta transferred his discussion over to his blog post, which is well worth reading.  A few of his thoughts to wet your appetite (definitely read the rest of his piece if you’re interested in the topic):

“Graph theory or no graph theory, Assange’s intent here is to wage war on the Obama Administration, by attacking the American public’s political will to continue the fight. He is specifically opposed to the policy of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and with disregard for the law he attempts to bring about a change to the Administration’s stated policy. Let’s grant him that the information is too cold to be acutely dangerous in a tactical sense, although that’s another argument worth having….

…Imagine if your small business was targeted, or if Google were targeted, or if Lockheed Martin were targeted by a similar disclosure of thousands of internal reports and communications not intended for public release. The damage to shareholders and management would be immense, partly because of the sheer irresponsibility of the leak per se, and then again from regulatory penalties, civil liability, and ruined corporate strategy. Malicious disclosure in business and government goes by the same name: espionage. In private life it can end marriages, friendships, and careers. The fact that the adversary here is The Man does not change the character of this leak….

…

This disclosure is a watershed event. It drives home the ease with which any individual can compromise the boundary between internal and public information. Actions of this type can undermine American strategy in the war. Political decisions about partnerships have tactical consequences, witness the importance of Turkish air bases in 2003.

In order to applaud Wikileaks for its role in this disclosure, I believe you have to hold two opinions. First, that the injustice of the Afghan war is so immense that citizens have a responsibility to bring about its immediate end, through civil disobedience or comparable means. Second, that Wikileaks is well qualified to assess the potential harm that might be inflicted as a result of the disclosures. You have to make up your own minds about the ethics of the Afghan war. On the second question, though, I invite you to think carefully through the wisdom of giving unaccountable, private organizations the power to disclose stolen, sensitive information based solely on their judgment that the benefit outweighs the harm. Can you reconcile the indiscriminate, voluminous, and quotidien nature of the leak with a story about plucky and righteous individuals bending unjust government to their will? To me, the leak betrays haste, youth and passion. I cannot buy into Assange’s vision of a world without confidentiality or privacy.

I don’t buy the Robin Hood argument here, and I don’t see this as a Tank Man moment.”

Chrissy Martin got into some of the implications on journalism (of which there are many in this case!)

“I think this raises interesting questions regarding the interaction between new media and traditional journalism.  Julian basically decided to do the newspapers the favor of offering them access first, a decision that I think was better for everyone involved because it allowed the documents to be vetted and analyzed before being released to the wider public.  But a decision that was not required, or enforceable, and may not happen the next time around.

This a case where regulation cannot keep up with technology, a situation that we are now seeing on an increasingly regular basis.  I am all for open government, transparency, citizen journalism.  However, I also think that the dissemination of information and how it is presented is a vital and often overlooked aspect of open initiatives.  Is it really a service to post a mass of information that may or not be true, as with intelligence reports that might have already been determined to be misinformation, but are not marked as such when posted on the internet?”

If you’re curious about some history of leaks in general, Mary Joyce put up a good post over at the MAP site (which she added to our discussion as well).

I’d love there to be further discussion in the comments below.  What do you think about the whole affair?  Who’s right?  Who’s wrong?  Who’s effected and how?

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Doing Business in Boston: Why it’s good and why we should move on

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Rants, Thoughts by Kate Brodock on 27 July 2010 at 21:56 {5 comments}

On Monday, Henry McCance wrote about why he moved his firm from Boston to Silicon Valley, and why Boston isn’t a good place to start a company.

Well, I found this to be crap, and sent it to a few locals in high places to see if they had a response.  One of them was Doug Banks, Publisher of Mass High Tech, who wrote a wonderful rabble-rouser of a post on the MHT blog (you should definitely read the whole thing, there are a lot of good retorts).

I wrote a comment on the post, and I wanted to repost it here and break it down.

“Completely awesome retort. Glad I sent you the article as you’ve done a great job in countering the many points.

To add a few myself, I think it’s a pretty weak claim to say that you shouldn’t do business in a place because it doesn’t have name brands. As far as I’m concerned, probably half of Silicon Valley went to Silicon Valley simply because name brands were there, not necessarily because it was a better place to do business…..”

As I’ll allude to later, a lot of what McCance talked about was simply “I gotta be where the cool kids are.”  The Googles, the Facebooks.  I might argue that many of those made it out to Silicon Valley for the same reasons.  Granted, they are actually the cool kids, but couldn’t it be that the reason is because Silicon Valley is a great place to start a business (it’d be silly to say otherwise) and not necessarily that Boston is a bad place.  And Doug has some really great points about the reality of this claim as well – there a lot of intricacies to the Silicon Valley vs Boston landscape that aren’t so simple as “SV/Cali is bigger and better than Boston…”  As an addition here (forgot this in the comments), California in general is actually a really tough place to do business in overall – employee insurance/taxes are atrocious, rent in at least San Fran and LA at least equals and in many cases well surpasses Boston and even NY….. I could go on, but will stop…..

“….I started right out of college in the start-up environment in Cambridge. To your point about MIT, in most cases, the first place MITers would go is right across the street to CIC (founded by MITers). It was like their second home. If they couldn’t get something thru the MIT tech tranfer office, they’d go next door, not across the country. And based on the success of CIC, I’d say it’s a pretty supportive environment to start a company in, and it just keeps growing.

From there, I also had my stint at places like Bose. In terms of encouraging innovation, it’s not as cutting edge as Google, but the stuff that goes on in that place, and the support Bose gives to research and “tinkering” is amazing (Dr Bose started the company based on the premise of trying to solve many of the worlds huge problems, including cold fusion. They have a car that can jump over a curb, which Dr Bose developed based solely on a physics graph that said to him “this is possible.”…”

In addition to Bose, Doug mentioned a LOAD of other rocking start-ups that started and stayed in the Boston area.  Are they Google? No (well, actually, as Doug mentioned Google’s second largest “center” is in Boston…).  But they’re powerful and successful companies (zipcar, Staples, Monster) and some of the newbies are poised to be big names (Carbonite, iRobot).

That reminds me, someone should do a tally of the companies that have also gotten sold for valuable price tags, because I would also consider those a success…..

“….I agree, there is some work to do, but there are plenty of organizations that not only realize this, but are pushing for progress. Orgs like Mass High Tech, Girls in Tech and Boston World Partnerships are actively pushing for more visibility on the benefits of doing business in Boston….”

And this is important.  Doug points out several gaps we have, and the fact that we know we have them.  This debate has gone on for so long, we would be silly not to be trying to fix every hole.  As Managing Director of Girls in Tech Boston, we had several conversations about this issue internally and externally.

We’re all proud of Boston and the supportive entrepreneurship community that’s here, and we darn well know we have a lot of substantial, meaningful things to offer to any business that wants to be here.

“…..McCance’s argument seemed to be based a lot on PR issues…. Silicon Valley has the brand, Boston doesn’t. That’s no reason to claim that Boston is a bad place to do business though. It needs a few improvements in that area, and a good PR campaign… that’s all.”

This is where I think the bulk of the problem lies.  It’s a PR issue.  McCance really doesn’t give any more substantial argument as far as I’m concerned.  Doug says, “Even [he] agrees there’s “no compelling reason” why Silicon Valley should get all the credit for consumer e-commerce companies. So if it’s a matter of perception, then what should we be doing to change that perception?”

And THAT’s the question we should all be answering.  It’s not about whether Boston is a good place to have a company.  It is.  But what can we all do to change peoples’ views on it?

We’ve got to develop a solid PR strategy, and the organizations I listed above along with plenty of others can get the job done.  There’s no point in just letting this argument be an argument, a we’re-better-than-you-are discussion, because that’s not constructive.

Doug called for solutions and progressive movements forward, and I’m calling for them as well.

I’m also calling for collaboration and partnerships to get the job done. We’ve got the people, we’ve got the brainpower, and we’ve got an awesome city, with awesome people in it.

So let’s do it.

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Hasty Use of Social Media and Responsibilities as Users

Filed under Rants, new media by Kate Brodock on 19 July 2010 at 21:30 {2 comments}

I listened to Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson’s FIR podcast (#555, 12 July…yes, I’m a little behind on podcast listening) on my way to work today, and they had a conversation about something I’ve written about before (see #7), but only briefly. It’s time to open up the conversation more, because I really do think it’s important to talk about as social media users.

For the marketers out there, notice I said AS USERS. That means forget about the marketing components for a second (tough, I know).

Shel and Neville were talking about a case on England where a man had committed murder and was on the run. The police started using social media as part of their hunt. The public started to follow alerts etc, and then….well…. somewhere along the line the public got out of hand. They created fan pages for the hunted man. One even uploaded a photo of the man minutes before he shot himself with a gun to himself.

Why am I telling you this story? Aside from the obvious dramatization and frankly disgusting nature of this, one point came out that’s applicable in a lot of our lives, manhunt or not.

Sometimes (and for some, it’s a lot of the time) users move too quickly, without thinking about the consequences of their actions.

There are several mechanisms at work here that make it easy to be irresponsible as users:

Speed
Platforms have made it really easy to respond, make comments, like or dislike.  If you can start the ball rolling in a quick 140-character rant – which takes about 10 seconds – there’s not a whole lot of time to think about it if you don’t force yourself to do so.

Anonymity
People will make statements – good or bad – that they might not normally make if they can do so with little more than a first name or a Twitter handle.  At the very least, even if you’re identifiable, there’s something to be said about initiating a conversation or making a case for something online versus doing so face-to-face.  It’s amazing what standing in front of someone will do to your diplomacy….

Hype
The new “cool” thing to do as a consumer/user is to bash brands in public when they’ve wronged you, or hunt them down to vent to them.  While there is absolutely some degree of accountability on the part of brands, wouldn’t you say it’s a little much to sign up for a Twitter account just to find your cell phone company…and cable company…and [insert other company here]…. to try and see if you can get money off your bill by complaining about them because you heard someone got answered by @ComcastCares?  Afterall, we deserve a voice too, right?

I argue… well, yes, but not in a manner that cuts them out of the first round of discussions and is just used to kick them while they’re down. I try to treat online conversations/statements/comments/debates as if I were talking to a family member or a coworker.  I’m not going to organize a group of my coworkers to hammer another coworker because he wore a shirt that was red and it reminded me of getting my heart broken 10 years ago (that’s not true, by the way, you can wear red around me).

One prime example of this is the Motrin campaign from last year. Ignoring the poor response on the part of Motrin (yes, it could have been better), let’s look at the first part of this scenario: the mommy bloggers.

I refrained from saying this while it was happening, but I found the collective actions of the mommy bloggers to be repulsive, irresponsible, and disrespectful. It got out of hand, too quickly, with no thought to what all of these quick, reactive responses would snowball into.

How can we as users demand brands to listen to us, to respond nicely in 2 seconds flat, to have conversations, to not push their messages on us, without giving them the same in return? How is it that a few angry moms let their message get out of control to the point where a company is shelling out I don’t even know how many dollars to fix a PR problem concerning a video that just wasn’t as offensive as it was getting trashed for? A few disgruntled people started a quick downward spiral into the kinds of depths that no company likes. Was it deserved?  I sure don’t think so.

Then they get bashed for having a slow PR response to boot.  As I said, they could have done a lot of things differently and better, but companies are still learning.  A mark of a good company isn’t always whether they mess up or not, but whether they learn from their mistakes. I say we ought to cut them a little slack in a space (social media marketing) that’s still pretty new to many folks.

More more urgently, I call for us as users to think before reacting so hastily and reactively. We owe the brands we’re “now having conversations with” an ear that’s listening. They should listen when were upset, yes, and we should pause and let them address us before it gets to heated battle. Last time I was in angry at someone, I knew without thinking that screaming at the top of my lungs was going to get us nowhere, and fast.

What we ask from our brands, what we’ve demanded, we owe them right back or these relationships we speak so highly of aren’t going to work.

And the first way we can do that is to stop and think about what we’re saying and how we’re using social media. So ask yourself….am I being responsible?

A small note on Personal Brands, Transparency & Digital Technologies

Filed under Rants, Thoughts by Kate Brodock on 16 December 2009 at 13:16 {no comments}

There’s no escaping the recent headlines of big names having something “private” being discovered, and having their brand tarnished – sometimes severely.  And there’s also no lack of backlash by said big names on the issue of being able to have a private life that’s private.

Take Tiger for example (I didn’t even know what link to use there, since there are pages and pages of them just from today).  Is it “fair” that millions – really billions – of people just found out about his private affairs?  I  mean, the  guy just wanted to play golf, right?  To some extent, I feel for the guy.  A lot of people cheat and no one hears about it.  I don’t need to belabor the point, you’ve heard the argument.

Here’s why this case (and other similar cases) are different though.  Aside from just playing golf, he was taking millions upon millions of dollars from sponsors to be “their guy.”  Now, a lot of those sponsorship dollars were because he’s good at what he does and he’s not so bad to look at.  But you can bet your bottom dollar that a pretty decent chunk of that money was to either explicitly or implicitly go towards being a role model – for golfers or dreamers of any age.

By taking that sponsorship money, he – and others alike – are also taking with it the responsibility to actually be good role models.  And I don’t mean this in the idealized “what it means to be a role model.” blah blah blah.  He is literally paid to portray an image that gets people to buy xxx product.  Last I checked, that image probably didn’t include late-night rendez-vous with numerous (kind of trashy?) women who aren’t his wife.

Let’s take a look at another example.  Yesterday’s New York Times had an article on how a couple of French political big names have gotten themselves in a some sticky situations because of the openness of the Web.    After being caught in various trysts, the echoing reply has been “The Internet is a danger to democracy.”

Wait.  Really? It’s a danger to democracy?  Because you were caught drunk and grinding at a club with younger male voters, or berating one of your countryman, or insulting cameramen? Because your privacy was violated?

What’s my point?  Not to say “You deserve it.”  These situations that are becoming public now after so many years of remaining private are actually marks of someone’s character, and often the people in question are in positions where that very character matters.

What do you think of when you hear that someone’s cheated on their spouse, even just once?  Do you think “Oh, that’s not smart, but that’s his private life”?  Or do you think “Huh, that probably says something about his or her overall character that could play out in bigger ways.”  If I saw a prominent political figure getting down on the dance floor after several drinks, I’d at the very least say to myself, “Gee, I don’t feel like I want them waking up tomorrow and making a major decision on the long-term future of my healthcare benefits.”  Maybe that’s just me though.

Perhaps it’s the reverse, maybe NOT having this level of transparency is actually the danger to democracy.  If we’re going to instill trust in our officials, I might feel better knowing they’re respectful and…well…trustworthy.  Getting out of the political realm, maybe some background checks should be conducted before multi-million dollar contracts are signed with sports figures or celebrities.  If you’re going to try and rope in the next generation of teenage golfers… you might want to make sure he doesn’t have 2 or 15 relationships with random waitresses and ex-playgirl models (hey, it’s their mothers who buy them the golf clubs).

So yes, I do have some sympathy towards respecting peoples’ privacy in most matters, and to some extent in the matters listed above.  But honestly, I’d have to say you were just plain dumb if you thought that your actions off the course or out of the office don’t matter, and you really can’t think that pulling the “please respect my privacy” card is going to work (or is even justified).

In short, a few things I’d like to point out to Tiger and others:

  • I know all you ever wanted to do was play golf, and man can you play golf.
  • But if you want your privacy respected at the same time, just play golf, and don’t take sponsorship money.
  • And if you do, respect that sponsorship money because it will stop coming at the drop of a hat when your private life gets a little bit too much to handle.
  • PS in taking sponsorship money, you’ve created a brand.  It’s the Tiger brand.  Which you then had to hire a PR firm for.  Yes, a PR firm for one person.  And a manager.  And a publicist. This means you’re public, and transparency issues still stand.  If you start a fire, you better be prepared to deal with it, because “please respect my privacy” doesn’t work anymore.
  • Oh, and also expect that you’re going to disappoint millions billions of people.

[Endnote: I should have titled this "A small rant on...." but was thinking it was going to start out tame and organized... so much for that].

Update – 17 December: I was out to dinner last night with a man named Bernie Schilberg, which may mean nothing to you, but he knows a lot of big time sports figures, so naturally we got to talking.  He recently talked to one of his all-time favorites, who’s background may have been…checkered.  His advice to Tiger? “If you gotta let off some steam, go have a Saturday afternoon game of guys golf and leave it at that.”

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