Final Slide Presentation - Aging with Social Media

Final project: Aging with Social Media

Obligatory cute dog picture

I noticed some issues with Slide-share conversions. Until I get a good transfer, here are some resources related to my presentation on Aging with Social Media. In addition, here is a link to a PDF version of the PowerPoint presentation.

}Web3.0 Accessibility Initiative (http://www.w3.org/WAI/)

}American Association of Retired Persons (www.aarp.com)

}Can technology help us to support the ageing population? http://www.guardian.co.uk/social-care-network/2012/may/30/technology-caring-ageing-older-society

}AARP Foundation Isolation Survey http://www.aarp.org/aarp-foundation/our-work/isolation/info-2012/alone-and-at-risk-isolation-survey.html

}Pew Internet & American Life Project http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Older-adults-and-internet-use.aspx

}Social Network Demogaphics in 2012 http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/08/21/report-social-network-demographics-in-2012/

}Aging Online – Technical and Social Media for Seniors http://www.aging-online.com/

}Social Media Users are Older http://fastwonderblog.com/2009/04/27/social-media-users-are-older-and-more-business-like-than-you-think/

}Your Fear of Social Media—Your Older Target Audience is Within Reach http://www.socialearth.org/your-fear-of-social-media%E2%80%94your-older-target-audience-is-within-reach

}"A little silly and empty-headed": older adults' understandings of social networking sites http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1671017

}Demographics on mobile social media from Nielson http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/for-social-networking-women-use-mobile-more-than-men/

}U.S Census Data: http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf

Square Payment System Analysis Part 2

The first part of my social media monitoring of the Square Mobile Credit Payment system was interesting, but not particularly illuminating. One of the difficulties was the volume of information that was not particularly relevant to the one aspect of the company I was studying.

In addition, I suspect that given the founder's role in social media, the marketing department is monitoring these areas, and are certainly privy to more information and data than I am. Still, that makes it interesting, to see how an organization in the midst of the tech world uses social media.

So, given the time and resource constraints for this assignment, I decided to narrow some parameters. Therefore, I am concentrating on only one small market segment, for one Square product. In addition, I am focusing only the competitor which are most similar to Square in this product space: PayPal. Both of these are non-traditional money-movement businesses that are not divisions or outgrowths of traditional financial institutions.

In order to make some more concise comparisons, after experimenting with various search keywords and combinations, for the purpose of the project I decided on "Square Card Reader" and "PayPal Card Reader" as exact phrase search terms. While this certainly will not provide comprehensive information, it seems to give a good sense of what is happening, and, as long as use is consistent, searches can be repeated with other variations.


Overall Social Media Involvement

I looked at some of the overall statistics in the first blog post. Since then, I have compared Google Trends and IceRocket searches.

Google trends show that both seem to peak and drop off. I attribute both of these to both business reporting and ancillary product announcements.

Square Card Reader Google Trends 12 month

PayPal Card Reader Google Trends 12 month

IceRocket"Big Buzz" results for Square and PayPal; Square clearly had more presence (approximately a factor of 4).



You can see the full IceRocket searches for Square here and for Paypal here

Addictomatic seemed to show the same differential, however, I also noted that Addictomatic results in some areas (such as YouTube) did not match well when searching elsewhere, so their results are suspect (and frankly, I think there is a lot of snake oil in all of this).

Addictomatic Results for "Square Card Reader"

Looking again at a consistent comparison between Square Card Reader and Paypal Card Reader:

Social Mention results for Square (left) and PayPal (right)

Here square is clearly doing better, but hard to say why. My guess is that there is a positive aspect to the "cool factor" of Square, in addition to a great deal of consumer antipathy towards PayPal in general. Clearly, intensive reading of comment/blog content is required here.

You can see full Social Mention searches for Square here and Paypal  here.

 YouTube

A number of demo videos provided by Square are on Youtube. Since this information is readily available on the company website, I suspect these are provided for use by bloggers and news outlets, as they seem to appear under numerous guises. There are also official and unofficial review videos, including a number of "unboxing" videos by amateur video bloggers. Square does have its own channel, which includes the following:

 



Facebook

There are interesting stories on the Facebook page, as well as product-related feedback from users. These include complaints and service issues, but there are also posts of praise and suggestions for improvements and product features:

Carlos Guerra I love avoiding those lovely AMEX fees with square. I don't dread taking AMEX anymore!

Rebecca Scott Anywhere I sell my jewelry- various different craft show locations and even on public transportation once in a random while! Thanks as always for a great service. Truly appreciated by this small business owner :)

And as we have seen with other firms, it can also be used as a support channel. To me, this can be problematic as you are now dealing with information about private business transactions in a public forum.

An example:

Square Hello John J. Powers, we've taken a look at your account and see that we reached out to you on October 28th with an application to increase your manual entry payout limit. Please fill out the application so that we can move forward with your account. You can read more on the application here: https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/3809-square-s-deposit-limitsDiann Benefiel The only thing I don't like is the tipping option that they can't choose an exact amount. Some of my clients tip more, some less. I think it's tacky to have to ask before. I don't want to miss that part of my income! Please change this option. Otherwise I love it.

 

This issue raised on Facebook is interesting, in that it demonstrates what can happen when a customer isn't even clear as to where the problem lies - is it with Square or the vendor?

John J. Powers I'VE BEEN WAITING TO HEAR FROM SOMEONE FOR 3 WEEKS!!! worst customer service EVER. GO TO COSTCO FOR YOUR MERCHENT SERVICES!!!! LOW % RATES!!! AND THEY DON'T HOLD YOUR MONEY FOR 30 DAYS LIKE SQUARE DOES!!!!!!

In general, they do not seem to be responding on Facebook. If they are responding to customers off-Facebook, they should indicate so.

Rami Qatami Please just respond to our emails , or we have each time to go to Facebook and ask for that , square is a big company you should have better customer service or a phone number to reach your customer service !

Spooks and Legends Haunted Tours Do you mean Square or us? I had no idea that you posted this. I got no notification. If you'd like to call us directly, call 757-784-6213. Thank you.....

Ron Menor @rami - i feel you on this. i went on the square page to try and voice my complaint. i can't believe a company like this, doesn't have any direct contact.

In the following exchanges, it is interesting that the responses to a Square post linking to an article elsewhere about using smartphone card swiping, Responses were both positive and negative; Square did not reply to any.

Daniel Dorsey I use my square all the time to raise money for my non-profit.

Rich Erb I use my square every day to take credit cards for "Class Act Sedan Service" to give my customers a choice of "cash or charge".

Jomo Drew I use my square at craft shows. It absolutely increases sales. At the last show, I only took two cash sales, every other sale was on credit cards.

Cheryl Taylor as a small business owner who has first hand experienced Square"s lack of customer service i would caution all users. they are awesome until you need help or want to speak to an actual person!!! BEWARE!!!!!!

The Wedge Mobile Phone Holder Just received our square - looking forward to making those "sales that should and could have been, into the sales that are and will continue to be" - https://squareup.com/directory/the-wedge-phone-cradle

Business Investor Funding Just makes sense...

Mike Newman Swipe or manually do $6k and listen to all the BS reasons they dont pay....then tell me its. Great product.

John J. Powers I'VE BEEN WAITING TO HEAR FROM SOMEONE FOR 3 WEEKS!!! worst customer service EVER. GO TO COSTCO FOR YOUR MERCHENT SERVICES!!!! LOW % RATES!!! AND THEY DON'T HOLD YOUR MONEY FOR 30 DAYS LIKE SQUARE DOES!!!!!!

 

This underscores the need to be responsive when you open yourself to the groundswell.

 

Facebook Conclusion:

Over 25,000 likes, and while that number may not seem large, if you do not have the card reader, you are probably not that interested in following this company .

It is crucial that they begin to address negative posts as soon as they appear, and engage more, in general with the posters.

 
Blog Posts

Aside from tech and news blogs, I did find Square's card reader mentioned in other blogs written by small business owners. Icerocket searches on "Square Card Reader" gave good results as how both vendors and customers were using it (including people using the reader for personal rather than business reasons). Comprehensive reading of the Twitter and Facebook results might give some insights to Square's marketing team.

I Have a Square Card Reader! ...32 days ago by Nicole

A few days back, my friend Chris and I were talking about credit card readers that were available in Canada. He is a graphic designer, and a musician, and wanted another way for people to be able to pay him, other than cash. Makes sense, right? Getting paid is always a good thing. Anyway, Square ...Knit, Nicole, Knit! - blog.knitnicoleknit.ca · Rank: 128,695 · 12 references My Experience With The Square Card Reader ...30 days ago by MonaMajorowicz... name with your finger seems to be particularly interesting. So overall I rate the square card reader a really good item for artfair events and unbelievably easy to use. No complicated techie skills required at all. All you need is an android or a iphone, pad or tablet. set up an account, download ...Fur In The Paint - mona.myartbliss.com ·

 

Twitter

There is an official Twitter feed. It consists primarily of corporate news, promotions, and re-Tweets of  industry news and vendor Tweets. Given the nature of the company and product, it is not likely that you would even be aware of this feed if you were not already using or at least interested in the card reader. Square appears to be using twitter more as corporate/industry level information dispersal.

The best opportunity for groundswell engagement her is if the Twitter accounts interacting with Square also have followers in the small/micro retailer target market.

Suggestions for Promoting in Social Media:

I need to repeat that it is essential that Square work on its customer support response time as it appears in social media that the company is lax in this area. After that, focus on some themes for promoting in social media:

• Focus on the "cool factor" - superior to Paypal and Intuit - (perhaps a reason for the alliance with Starbucks for their "digital wallet" product. This is also what appeared to have caused the spike in social media buzz during this past year.
• Tell stories that are likely to go viral. As there is little differentiation among the three services, the goal is to get vendors to select Square as their payment system. The stories must be interesting enough to go viral (even if this is done with the assistance of traditional media).
• The focus will not be on card holders - the retailer's choice of merchant service is mostly irrelevant to them, it is simply a utility. Their stories, however, may be useful in groundswell efforts to promote acceptance, if vendors see this as a real consumer-driven need.
• Focus on how the service is helping drive their business. There were blog, Facebook and YouTube contributions from the groundswell that were talking about how it fit the specific needs of their business for mobility - Artists, food truck vendors, etc.

Just from my work on this project, I have seen that Square (and others) are using targeted web advertising and SEO. This may be a case where good old-fashioned application of cash may spur more market penetration.

A promotion Suggestion:

While I won't presume to second-guess Square's marketing team, I do  have one suggestion for a groundswell-driven promotion:

"What is the most unusual transaction/business that you have used a card at?" Encourage the vendors and public to submit, and allow voting for "best swipe of the week" , with that person's purchase is paid for by Square, and something for the vendor - publicity on the Square social media program.

A last minute update from The Picture Framers Grumble, where a discussion of Square arose with some perspectives from business owners.

A Perfect Storm of Tweets



My 21st century homage to Georges de La Tour

And what happens if the groundswell is wrong?

Like many in New England, we were without power for the past couple of days (news flash: lack of electricity has an impact on the use of social media), and as usual during these events, we are hungry for information (as well as incredibly bored with a non-digital lifestyle when thrust upon us).

After going to a social media marketing presentation a while back, I decided to give Twitter a try. I confess, I didn't follow many, but those I did follow I found less than scintillating, and felt that they were simply one step above talking to themselves. During the storm, I think I would appreciated Twitter more if I had a select group to follow (I didn't even bother with any storm hashtags, as I assumed the volume of Tweets would be overwhelming, and I was wondering when I would be able to recharge my phone.)

I am glad, however, that my copy of "Groundswell" is the 11th edition, with an updated Chapter 10: Tapping the Groundswell with Twitter. 

When I first heard about Twitter, it seemed silly. And when I heard one of the Twitter evangelists almost wetting his pants with excitement about the fact that His Local Coffee Shop Could Tweet Him about Specials!!!!!, well, I figured, it's just the end of civilization as we know it. Maybe it's the grumpy old man in me, but I don't want to hear more from entities where I don't have any real personal relationship (and I am not even that enthusiastic about the ones I do have relationships with).

The limit of 140 characters (although I understand they are going to expand that, at least for some set of uses) did seem intriguing. And perfect for celebrities such as the Khardashians, who probably don't know enough words to use up more letters than that.

As with other strategies outlined in Groundswell, I can't quarrel with them, but many of the tactics they ask businesses to employ were (or should have been) done by responsive businesses in the analog era. The difference now is that we have added the elements of speed and visibility.

The example given about Fadra, the mommie-blogger hunting down the "correct" McDonald's action toy may be "feel good" (although curmudgeons like me wonder about parents advertising how happy they are that a corporation has co-opted their kid), I was more impressed with the use of Twitter to provide at least a semblance of immediate resolution and response to issues by companies such as AT&T, which, like other companies can now use Twitter as a formal customer support channel, and Intuit, which was able to build a stronger relationship by providing tax preparation advice.

While engagement with all forms of social media can be mutually beneficial, sometimes it may be adversarial, and in this chapter, the book didn't seem to give good, workable solutions to fighting deliberate misinformation. And then I wonder, are there times when you simply should not engage?

First, a little fun:

 

As a result of Hurricane Sandy, there were postings that demonstrated the lack of accountability and veracity provided when "anyone" can use social media. Tweets and pictures purporting to show effects of the storm that were deliberately faked or were from other weather events, or even from disaster movies quickly appeared:

But it can take a while for the ruse to be exposed. According to the Washington Post:

The Chinese Web has picked up on one of the most popular photos from Hurricane Sandy. It’s from Brigantine, N.J., and purports to show a shark swimming through the town’s flooded streets. It was originally posted by a guy named Kevin McCarty, who earlier posted another shark-in-Jersey photo that TheAtlantic.com’s Alexis Madrigal demonstrated was fake. It’s been shared almost 7,000 times on Facebook and has now made its way over to China, where users on the country’s massive Twitter-like service, Weibo, picked it up. (Spotted by Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter.)
 

You can see a slide show of similar photos at WKYC news.


But it's not all fun

While there was an amusing side to this, there are more serious implications to consider. Particularly as stories "go viral" there can be an assumption of truth (and of course, as time goes by, and more and more fake stories are exposed, it may then reverse and create the assumption that most information through social media is wrong). You can't win.

Slate reported on the false story about NY Stock exchange being flooded, how the tweeter was outed by Buzzfeed, and the implications for effects of false stories on financial markets: BuzzFeed Outs Twitter User Believed To Be Behind Sandy's Biggest Lie, by Josh Voorhees, posted Tuesday, Oct. 30, 2012, at 1:00 PM ET

The Sandy-themed whopper that caused the most fuss was that the floor of the New York Stock Exchange was under three feet of water, something that was reported as fact by CNN and others late last night before Twitter users moved quickly to self-correct the false report.

And in another article, Will Oremus considered the effect of false reports during an emergency:

Dear Twitter, Don't Believe Everything You Hear on a Police Scanner.

 

We also see social media promoting their own version of medical and scientific theory, where again, it can directly affect people's health and well being. Most famously, Jenny McCarthy, a model and actress, led the now discredited fight against childhood vaccination, believing it caused autism. And in this Sunday's New York Times, the article: A Controversial ‘Cure’ for M.S., by Paul Tullis talked about a medically unproven surgical therapy for multiple sclerosis, promoted by a Dr.Zamboni:

 

Even Zamboni agrees with this sentiment. “With this big attention in social networks, it has generated a black market with speculation, with not properly performed procedures,” he says. “It’s unethical to offer a treatment when it’s in an experimental phase.”

 

(And already the reader comments on-line for this article include stories of "cures" due to this procedure, and other unconventional therapies.)

All right, all right, I'll get to my point

So what happens with a false hit and run blog post, Tweet (or re-Tweet)? As we know with traditional media, everyone remembers the "sexy" part of the story, and when proven untrue, the retraction/correction appears briefly, in a far less prominent position. Yes, if the story seems hot enough, social media can be self-policing, but do you really foresee Tweets of "I was wrong" going viral? 

Are the stories about "Twitter revolution" giving social media  the appearance of authority it doesn't yet deserve? And will social media threats be the Tylenol scare of our generation? The use of Twitter over other media may give it an immediacy that makes it less liable to careful scrutiny, which brings us to Mr. Liberty Mutual .

In spite of the name, this is not an official site, but a place where one person/group has made a personal crusade against the insurance company. And boy, do they have an axe to grind:

 

I noticed that there is apparently no official input from Liberty Mutual on the Mr. Liberty Mutual site  or Twitter feed (and, like many corporations, a Google search on "Liberty Mutual Complaints" turns up many web sites built expressly for the purpose of venting frustration).

Perhaps they see no upside in participating when the playing field is not level. One difficulty is that any message from "corporate" can be dissected, invalidated, disclaimed, mocked, etc. by an entity with no (responsibility) to provide a full story, or even to guarantee the validity of the information they present.

But in fact, if you look at the official Twitter account for Liberty Mutual, you will see  that they are aware of social media, and using it as a tool to respond to their customers (as well as providing other ways to interact with the company).

 

 

 

While this is not likely to satisfy the "complaint" sites, simply by being there it does provide a counterbalance, that can make customers realize that there is possibly more than one side to any story.

 

Author's note:

When googling for information about the Tylenol case, I found this link is to a nicely written, concise set of case studies by Jennifer Hogue. This appears to be a class assignment she completed in 2001 on crisis managent/PR. No other information was provided on her site.




 

 

 

Put it on Plastic!

Monitoring Square Card Payment Systems (Part 1)

 

I am following Square mobile payment system. With the app and mini-reader on your smart phone, you can accept credit card payments without a merchant account. While Square has other uses as well, there are some segments that are prime targets for the card swiping capability. These include artisans and retailers of merchandise at non-fixed locations such as craft and art fairs, farmer's markets, antique shows. In the past, obtaining a merchant account without a fixed retail location was difficult, the paperwork too cumbersome for sporadic usage, and for small volume sellers, the swipe fees too high. Square provides a swipe pad that attaches to a smart phone or tablet, and the transaction is completed by the customer and a receipt emailed to them. This would seem to be a neat and elegant solution, but in my experience, I am not seeing a lot of implementation.

 

There seem to be so many ways to take money from our bank accounts and wallets that we may not have noticed much about Square so far.

 

My analysis will look at the penetration of this company on social media, and to see if they are missing opportunities to engage the groundswell and make this card swiping service more well known and used.

 

Jack Dorsey, the founder of Square, is already well known in the tech world. Jack Dorsey has developed other applications that use data to manage transactions efficiently, beginning with a program for dispatching taxis. His is probably most famous for his role as a founder of twitter.

"His three guiding principles, which are shared by the whole company and through its culture, are simplicity, constraint and craftsmanship" - wikipedia

 

From a Slate.com article by Farhad Manjoo posted Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012: Silicon Valley’s Next Great Company:

 

"I believe the tech industry’s next great company is Square..... But calling Square a mere payments company minimizes its potential, and it misses Dorsey’s world-changing mission. Dorsey is bent on creating frictionless commerce. His long-term goal is to make accepting payments a breeze for businesses, and he wants to make paying for stuff invisible—for everyone, across the entire economy, for all types of goods and services"

Square in the mainstream news:

Recently Square began a new payment system with Starbucks, allowing customers to make purchases with minimal interaction, and this announcement has created a great deal of buzz for the company:

Though smartphone payments have a long way to go before they replace wallets altogether, Starbucks’s adoption of Square will catapult the start-up’s technology onto street corners nationwide, and is the clearest sign yet that mobile payments could become mainstream. - New York Times, August 8, 2012.

And in a New York Post article by Sara Ashley O'Brien Oct. 14, 2012: Square deals have Dorsey all aTwitter

"(Square)...will now have access to the masses at more than 7,000 participating company-owned Starbucks locations.

The stores will utilize Square for its credit- and debit-card transactions, as well as make themselves available on Square’s Pay With Square app. And last week an analyst reported that the company was expanding its deal with New York City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission to outfit 1,200 additional cabs with its mobile-payment system. "

 

 

The questions:  

• How is Square currently engaged in social media, both proactively from the company, and from the groundswell? 
• Are the target group merchants and customers a demographic likely to follow social media? 
• How does the prime competitor, PayPal, look on social media? 
• Will the Starbucks alliance buzz for Square cross over to the card-swipe division?

First Steps:
 Getting started seemed straightforward enough, but I encountered one difficulty: the ubiquity of the word "square" on the internet can make it hard to gather concise data, and while using the term "square payment system" improved things, it means I will need to be consistent when making comparisons.




Data from socialmention.com, October 14, 2012

My first step was to see if anyone was actually talking about Square on social media. A quick look at socialmention.com did not seem that promising, when I saw "strength" at 1%, however, the "sentiment" is a ratio of positive to negative mentions is good, as are the passion and reach numbers.

You can find a desciption of these caluculations on the socialmention FAQ.

I then took a look at PayPal. I expected the strength to be higher, as PayPal seems to have far more market penetration than Square. But I was still not sure what this was telling me, if anything.



PayPal data from socialmention.com, October 24, 2012

So, my next step was to try searching for both Square and PayPal complaints.

Comparison of "complaint" between Square (left) and Paypal (right)
 

 

 Again, puzzling, when you consider the results given when performing a google search for "paypal complaints". Looking at the excerpts from the posts referenced through the tool, it became apparent that many of them were not specific to the product, but were about something else, which used one of these products as the payment mechanism.

So, on to another source, Addictomatic. A search there found a lot of mention of Square, however, most, if not all of these were mentions on tech blogs. Fine for the company and analysts, but not likely sources of information for potential merchant customers.

One obvious next step: A google search for "how to accept credit card payments at craft shows" seemed like a gold mine of opportunity for one specific market:

 

I went to alexa.com to get another overall picture of Square; this gives us some more clues about users, but only in terms of website query and acess.

Alexa Statistics Summary for squareup.com

Squareup.com is ranked #8,704 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and the time spent in a typical visit to it is roughly five minutes, with 54 seconds spent on each pageview. Compared with internet averages, the site's users are disproportionately Caucasian, and they tend to be moderately educated, childless users earning over $30,000 who browse from work. It has a bounce rate of roughly 30% (i.e., 30% of visits consist of only one pageview). Squareup.com is particularly popular among users in the cities of Miami (where it is ranked #1,512), San Francisco (#1,538), and Los Angeles (#2,052).Squareup.com is ranked #8,704 in the world according to the three-month Alexa traffic rankings, and the time spent in a typical visit to it is roughly five minutes, with 54 seconds spent on each...

 

Note that users spend almost 5 minutes on site (although hard to quantify whether visiting for info or managing account).

Next steps:
For the purposes of marketing the swipe application to small/itinerant businesses, participants in forums may be a place to start. As this project continues, I will investigate more of these in detail, and attempt to devise more complex searches to measure what may be happening in this area.

An addictomatic search on "accepting credit cards at craft shows" still showed results that were from news/tech sources, rather than "groundswell" results.

The next step is to get more detailed analysis of any mentions of the Square system on social media.

 More to follow...

 

How Far is "Too Far"?

 And who will set the limits?

While the internet and social media have been incredible forces for building community, pursuing and disseminating information, and even helping to overthrow oppressive regimes, it seems that every week in the news there is some internet-related story that makes you wonder just how far humans have evolved from apes.

For the benefit of the younger members of this class, I am going to tell you about an earlier age, when the big communication medium was network television. We had broadcasts of scripted, weekly performances, usually sponsored (paid for) by consumer goods manufacturers and retailers. It was a wonderful world back then. Watching these shows was evidence that the world was good, and that there were no divorces, gays, minorities, or drug use (unless you count Geritol and cigarettes).

You didn't need to talk back to television shows (unless you were a crazy person), since communications experts (ok, the sponsors) knew what was best for you, and made sure nothing was offensive. Their financial power took care of this, with the helpful enforcement of the network censors and the FCC (still on nipple concealment patrol to this day).


Then things loosened up, and sponsorship of shows went away in favor of individual advertising spots. With the advent of cable, it seemed as though everything was going to hell in a hand-basket (those of a certain age still jump when they hear foul language coming out of the box in the living room). But, as they always do, advertisers found opportunities here, but could still pull back nervously if the public seemed to tack against what was shown.



Rush Limbaugh booking photo, Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, April 2006

Prominent personalities such as Don Imus, with his comments about the Rutgers' Womens' basketball team, and Rush Limbaugh, with his comments about Sandra Fluke were not immune from advertisers' ire (although, in time, after intense soul-searching - aka: looking at the ratings - they returned from purgatory. 

Now with the internet and social media, we have a lively forum for a serious exchange of social, cultural and philosophical issues. As if. There is often debate in the United States as to where freedom of speech ends and harassment, obscenity, etc. begin, and social media is the new playground for this. It was always possible, but not always feasible or practical to publish (on your own, if no one else was willing), but with the ease and lack of financial considerations for blogging, posting or commenting on web sites (or for that matter, having your own web site), the floodgates seem to have opened wide.

But things seemed to have reached a new low this past week, when Michael Brutsch, a user on Reddit.com (an open forum/aggregator type site) was outed.

"...last week when Gawker revealed the identity of user Violentacrez, who was known to start hundreds of forums, including one called “Jailbait” that featured pictures of underage girls. After the Gawker article appeared, Brutsch was quickly fired, and a debate about anonymity on Reddit ensued. " - Slate Magazine, October 19, 2012

 

When interviewed on CNN, Brutsch claimed that he was just being provocative, and said:  

"Reddit needs to step up....if I hadn't been allowed to run wild, I wouldn't have"

 

 

 

So what does this have to do with us? You may now need to consider what the relationship between those wishing to advertise/exploit social media sites and who the audience/participants on those sites will be. While engaging the groundswell, there may be pitfalls for your organization (or in some cases, perhaps opportunities).

 

As the old saying goes, "You are known by the company you keep". In the "Violentacrez" case, it is likely that while Reddit has an all-encompassing variety of material, it will be known for the more questionable sections. You may have tactics for responding to adverse information about your product or organization, but what about offensive information not related to your business, but simply appearing in proximity?

 

Will marketers (whether commercial, political -as if there's a difference), activists and interest groups pull back, and avoid sites with lack of control? Will they hold their noses and go where the clicks and eyeballs are (even while pretending to be aghast), or simply try to exert pressure as they did in the old sponsorship days?

 

Any of the "free" social media services come with the tacit agreement that, just as with the network broadcasters, we will have commercials put in front of us. This advertising revenue is the lifeblood of these sites, so I am pretty sure that while a provider may fight for free speech against government intervention, advertisers with cash on the line will have the greater say.

 

But in the meantime, when attempting to manage your "brand", pay attention to where you can be found on the internet. As my mother used to say, "Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas". In fact, I found a song about it:

 

 

 

Uh oh, I just listened to all the lyrics. Stop playing that right now! Instead,  let's leave with this one, from the Alan Parsons Project:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Late breaking addition: This group using social media to raise awareness of the need for cancer diagnosis might find an audience with "edgier" forums that traditional groups may avoid. We'll see if it goes viral.

Found on http://www.socialmeteor.com/