Rant: The Challenges of Social Media

Social Media pessimist, Andrew Keen, has gotten to me.

I first heard him speak at Vancouver’s vid fest, he was snarling at a public debate, and was able to tear into at least one of the panelists pretty well. I then started to watch his videos on TechOne with Steve Gilmor (language and obnoxious attitudes), be sure to watch the debate series. Apparently, he’s producing shows on PodTech, where I just left my full time role. Shhh don’t tell, but when no one’s looking, I read his blog.

After you develop your callous from his abrasiveness you can hear some very valid points, he often writes about the problems of social media, and authored the hell raising “Cult of the Amateur”.

In his latest post he writes:

“Why am I the only critic of Web 2.0, people want to know? Why aren’t there other voices being raised against the utopians of Silicon Valley?”

I hear you Andrew. In an effort to be objective, it’s important that we take a look at both the ceiling and the floor of our industry to best balance and make sound decisions. My new friend Jennifer Doctor doesn’t prefer the term “360 View”, but until I have a better term, I’ll use it.

I’ve sung the praises of these tools after using them myself, I want to make sure we look at things in a fair and unbiased way, so here’s a 360 view:

Mainstream Media:
Andrew suggests that mainstream media has improved it’s quality of reporting in the last few years, primarily since the internet and citizen journalists have provided some competition. In many ways he’s right, as most of the savvy journalists I know are reading techmeme, my blog, and others. Sadly, I was recently references in an article, yet they don’t link to my post where there’s supplemental information, providing more value to the readers.

Blogging:
Well there’s tons of problems with blogging, the amount of splogs is quite amazing, I see clippets of my blog posts being used in copy cat blogs that are laced with ads. The sheer amount of content being created has also left it very difficult for consumers to sort and filter out what is signal to them. I hesitate to bring up astro-turfing and fake blogging but that’s a big problem, blogs are only as authentic as the humans behind them

Video:
The online video industry is just getting started, as more content is being created, the platforms are still dealing with issues with copyrights, trade infringements, and other concerns when it comes to intellectual property. Uploaders don’t seem to mind using content for other artists. Likely, this won’t go away.

Social Networks:
What’s wrong with social networks? There’s concerns about identity, profile information and how that can be shared. While we want to be able to transport our identity and contacts from one system to another, we also yell and scream when the platforms use our own identity to market against us. Let alone the concerns that Steve Ballmer has about different social networks being a fad. To some extent, he’s right, the younger generation in North America has chewed through Friendster, is still in MySpace, and the college grads are migrating towards Facebook, one has to ask, what’s next?

Marketers:
I’m perceived as a Marketer (although I consider myself a “web professional”, as I’ve been in IT, and worked on extranets and intranets) but whenever webtools, search, or concepts become popular, marketers quickly arrive, and often bombard the scene. The ‘cool kids’ may move on, furthering the cat and mouse chase. Done correctly, this shouldn’t be a problem, as the savvy marketer should be adding value. I was trailing Robert Scoble at PodTech, watching what he does right, and ignoring the tools he threw away, and then my community would follow me, so I’m certainly perpetuating the issue.

Wikis:
To me, public wikis are one of the most problematic of all the social tools. I’ve created, managed, or been part of several public wikis, and as soon as they get popular, they get vandalized. The challenge is that turning over that much control over to the crowd gives one person nearly 90% control of the content. Sure, you can revert it but it becomes a cat and mouse game. I deployed the industry wiki for the Data Storage Industry, and we had to lock it, and hand out keys to trusted members of the community due to vandalism, same with the ScobleShow wiki, which is permanently disabled. Wikipedia? Same thing. In my frustration, I wrote this piece on the problem with wikis is people.

I’d like your participation, either in comments or your own blog:

1) There’s weaknesses with all of the other tools, roles, and processes, go ahead, belt it out, get some frustration out.

2) In addition to labeling the challenge, suggest ways we can improve them, go ahead, even the wildest ideas should be heard.

3) Can these problems ever be fixed? Or is it an inherent issue when dealing with humans?

Why am I encouraging this negativity around what I’ve made a career? Now that we can identity some of the problems, let’s go fix them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 2:56 am and is filed under Feedback, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.