Armano: You Are The Media. Do You Trust You? Me: Trust Is Topical
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010David Armano a Twitter friend (we’ve never met, but I value his perspective and suspect I’d like him in person) has a must-read piece about trust in the media. And since we are all media now, who do we trust? His whole piece is worth reading, so please go look at the research, and then come back here for my thoughts.
It’s simple, really. We trust those who we respect, but we respect different people depending on the circumstances.
So, when I ask an opinion about guns on Twitter, I listen to the recommendations given by former military, current CHL instructors who are police chiefs. I could listen to my brother, and I do, he has some valuable insight, but I more heavily weight the expert.
The same is true for nearly every topic. I have a friend who I call when I have a economics questions. I have a friend who knows everything about Texas tax policy. Then there’s the local blogger who knows every dirty nook and cranny of Houston politics.
My brain doesn’t have enough room for all this information. It doesn’t need to have it. I have trusted advisers everywhere who can help me.
When it comes to social media growth, development and research, I trust David Armano. His advice and information over the time I’ve been on Twitter has been solid. Had he flaked out at some point, I’d discard his advice. So far, he’s still reliable.
There are an infinite number of “experts” who are regular people just like me but who have expertise in a slice of information. They become my friends. I value their perspective even more.
Or not. There are some people I don’t particularly like, but they have extraordinary insight in an area and I respect that.
With social media, who qualifies as an expert is fluid. People can observe another’s intellectual implosion online and a once-valued expert becomes a former expert in short order.
Where my opinion conflicts with David’s perspective is this: I may have a couple thousand friends on Facebook and Twitter (which I do) but I won’t trust them just because they give me an opinion. Human interaction is far more nuanced than that.
Just one example: I asked my followers on Twitter to recommend a cake company in Washington, D.C. Five people recommended the same place. But one of my friends recommended that place plus a place that was even better that was near her home. In addition, she said she’d help me pick up the cake. So I Googled both cake shops, called both cake shops, got stellar service from the out-of-the-way place and called in assistance from my friend.
Did I trust all the recommendations? Yes. Absolutely. But I also made my purchase decision based on intangibles and finally, the old business stand-by–customer service.
Social media is a tricky thing to study. It’s not like Google, where every metric can be broken down. It’s more human, more fickle, but the data a user gathers can be infinitely more helpful and accurate. I choose Twitter and Facebook over Google every day. Or rather, I get their recommendations and then Google the filtered information.
I trust my friends. I also verify. And an “expert” is all in the eye of the beholder.
Productivity & Social Media
Monday, October 26th, 2009Another stupid study about wasted work time and spilling company secrets from the Telegraph:
More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.
One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.
Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.
Oh bah. Twitter and Facebook are social. Like the coffee station at work is social. Like the water cooler is social. Like the printer is social. They are gathering places for where people already talk. And everyone talks at work.
The concern with social media isn’t the time, it’s the ability to spread a message. Where office conversations can be like the game Telephone–one message to one person, one by one, and by the end, it’s distorted–social media can multiply a message exponentially. I tell my 10,000 “friends” on Twitter and they tell thousands more of their friends.
Even with this, though, there is a feedback loop. Often, when a message is spread via Social Media, a link goes with the “gossip”. A person who lies, distorts and spreads disinformation can achieve social pariah status pretty quickly. [Exception: Andrew Sullivan] Not so, in an office. The office gossip can be annoying, but most people deal with him or her because the information can be useful and powerful. And even still, these dynamics play out online and offline.
People are people. Work gets mental interruptions almost all of the time. That people take a few minutes for Twitter or Facebook is just another version of the same. Listen, the day that social media loving workers take as much time as those who take smoking breaks, there can be a conversation. In the meantime, bashing social media is just the latest way for bosses to obsess about their worker production.
P.S. There’s a recession. Most people are working very hard to keep their job. The bigger concern these days, I’m guessing, is burnout, not lost productivity. If anything, there isn’t enough play and too much work at work.
H/T TechCrunch
It’s A Dangerous World In Here
Friday, August 28th, 2009The internet ain’t no place for the innocent. It’s the wild west around these parts, with infrastructure still being built and social feedback loops yet to fully developed. There is little policing, few laws. At times, it can feel like an ominous town, with bad guys sizing you up from under their ten-gallon hat–just waiting for a moment of weakness.
Bad guys don’t have to be quick on the draw on the internet. They can be stupid, unemployed ner-do-wells with nothing better to do than sit around and hassle people. In fact, a big part of the discourse online is just that. People with too much time on their hands hassling people who actually work and produce something.
I have written before that the internet is a place to share information, not hide it, and I wanted to illustrate that with some examples:
First, the not-so-anonymous blogger. There are many bloggers out there who don a nom de plume to hide their identity. America has a very long history regarding pseudonyms. And many people use them online for professional reasons–they have a job or profession where it wouldn’t do to have their opinion known. But online anonymity is an illusion. A determined person or P.I. can find a persons true identity fairly easily.
Example 1: Congressional staffer boinking Congressmen and writing about it.
Example 2: Hacker terrorizing others. (He’s a professional, mind you, and STILL got caught.)
Example 3: All the anonymous asshats cyber stalking Governor Palin.
In all cases, the bloggers were smart. They knew the internet and they were exposed. Word to the wise. If you’re going to be anonymous, know that a controversial topic will likely uncover you.
Second, social media as a weapon. The above folks were using blogs rather destructively, but some anonymous bloggers are constructive and deserve anonymity. Still, it doesn’t take much to uncover someone. People can also use social media to destroy.
Danny Glover recounts how a not-so-sweet mommy blogger stomped her cyber feet:
Extortion has found its way into the blogosphere — and all for a pair of Crocs. A greedy “mommy blogger” at the recent BlogHer conference threatened to write something bad about the maker of Crocs if its representative didn’t find her a free pair of the comfy sandals.
No doubt about it, that’s low. As I see it, there would have been nothing wrong with said mommy blogger bemoaning her missed opportunity to get good swag at the conference. But threatening to go negative as a way to get a gift she clearly didn’t deserve is completely unethical.
The same is true for anyone who uses social media as a weapon. The blogosphere is an effective check against bad customer service, but customers who abuse it are as bad, or worse, than the companies who mistreat them.
It is as easy as a couple clicks to ruin a person’s reputation–or try to. While the vile creatures who spread false rumors and invective about Sarah Palin are now outed and exposed for frauds, Andrew Sullivan continues on his merry way after being as salacious and evil as his online equivalent Perez Hilton. Cruel language can be devastatingly effective as both of these rumor mongers have proven.
Finally, the internet world connects directly to the real world. It is the real world. The notion that there is a separation is an illusion. People assume that those online are somehow more trustworthy–or, that they’re so far away that even if they are kinda bad, they’re harmless. That is not true. Consider this:
U.K. insurance company, Legal & General, took a survey of 2,092 users of social networking Web sites. Almost four out of ten (38 percent) of those who use social media at places like Twitter or Facebook post their vacation plans. Potential burglars could find this information valuable in seeking targets of crime.
The report titled “The Digital Criminal,” said that criminals could obtain vital, personal information from online users of social media.
It is nigh to impossible to hide my own activities. Someone in my family inevitably gives it away. You’re in Michigan?! Where? Or, in the case of my Australia trip, my family didn’t have to write, tweet, Facebook or say anything. I live-tweeted the whole trip. Still, I try to not give away my activities–exact location. I try to have a house sitter. Those sorts of things to mitigate against the dangers.
The internet should be interacted with rationally. It isn’t a magical place. There are people on the ends of the intertubes. They can be bad, good and as mixed as a real life person can be. They are real live people. Even anonymously. Even remotely.
Twitter, Blog Commenting & Doc Weasel: Thy Name Is Parody
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009I got this comment from my post on Twitter from famed blogger Doc Weasel [language and link warning: he likes using bad words and images might not be safe for work]:
ugh. twitter is for twits, but only because of the fortuitous syllable synchronicity. In reality, it’s for self-absorbed douchebags. There have always been people who think they need to say every stupid thing that comes into their heads: now we have a means to broadcast it immediately to a group of other smug douchebags.
No one is that witty. No one has that many intelligent, important things to say. And I refuse to believe anyone is bettered by reading any of this useless tripe.
Thankfully, it’s a trope so stupid and useless it’s become risible and passe even as it’s booming. I give it another half a year before the sheer idiocy of “tweeting” your own deep thoughts incessantly is reduced to that circle of people who are oblivious to their own pathetic boobery and the well-deserved ridicule of the rest of us.
Blogging and commenting (not excluding this one) brought writing to it’s least well-thought out, unimportant and retarded level. Well, tweeting has managed to reduce writing to the cyber-equivalent of instantaneously disseminating your brain farts far and wee.
Anyone who sends out twitters is a pathetic douche. Anyone who willingly subjects themselves to twitters is a f*cking idiot.
Who is the bigger douche? The writer of the “retarded” post or the douche who comments on the douche-baggy post? One would think a non-douche bag would have more valuable time than to waste it on an unimportant and retarded blog post.
As to the substance, I recommend watching this video:
Like it or not, blogs and social media are here to stay–well, as long as there is electricity, anyway. And last I checked, there are douche bags in real life too, spewing all sorts of nonsense. They’re called co-workers, guys at the bar, and family members. At least on social media, you can filter and block them.
Pajamas Media’s Charlie Martin
Thursday, February 19th, 2009About Face-Book
What legal agreements have you signed today?
Social Media: Mostly (Intelligent) Conversation–UPDATED
Friday, January 16th, 2009Louis Gray notes this [Update: Actually, this article was written by Michael Fruchter. Check him out, too!]:
1) Conversation: Social media is all about word of mouth. The message you are trying to convey might vary for personal or professional gain. This is the social in social media. Without this, it’s just plain old media. Traditional marketing methods are one-way, one-sided. Social media and social marketing is all about two-way communication, never forget this. Marketing in the social web means you must participate, lead and when necessary react to conversation.
Sometimes the conversation is intelligent. Often, it’s funny. Want to succeed in at least one area of your social life? Follow the rules Perry Belcher shares in the video. I would like to note that some of the biggest names on Twitter are incredibly intelligent and funny and would still have a hard time getting a date in the real world. After reading their streams for a while, you realize that their online skillz probably don’t translate on the terra firma. This makes some of them rather nasty and cutting at times. I won’t name names, but I could. Just because you’re an online “star” doesn’t mean you’re Brad Pitt, unless you are Brad Pitt.
The Rise and Fall Of A Twitterer
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009The Rise And Fall Of A Twitterer
What happens when a lack of control meets social media.
