Sounds like Commercial Competition rearing its ugly head in a space that is less about competition and more about community. Don’t they get it? Didn’t Ragan learn anything from O’Reilly and that whole “Web 2.0″ ownership thing? No one (stupid) company can OWN social media, and if one group of folks gets a name first (SMC), then it would behoove others to respect that rather than land-grabbing.

You’ve got my support, Chris.

Wow, reading the press release….wow.
“The site has been the talk of the industry since launching two weeks ago.” hmmmm.

I have spoken — voice to voice — with Mark and with Chris. I have read the emails that transpired between them. I’m convinced that voice-to-voice communication instead of blog and email would have prevented all this.

Yes, Ragan made a mistake deleting the group as quickly as they did. They have admitted that the terms of service should have been updated to reflect a requirement that commercial logos not be included.

No, MyRagan is not the first PR social network. It is, however, pretty cool, with some dynamic content and conversations going on.

And no, absolutely no way was the group deleted because of its popularity. In fact, Chris, you are still welcome to return and moderate the group — Mark was explicit about that in his comment to your blog — a comment that has not appeared, for some reason. I know for a fact that Mark and Ragan at large would be delighted if your group were the largest — if ANY group got large.

I know the whole flare-up is upsetting, but it has led both sides to claim speculation as fact, which is sad, particulalry since, from my point of view, you’re both smart and good people with plenty to offer one another. Somehow or other, I’m bound and determined to remain friends with both of you through this nonsense.

But sometimes what someone says is what they mean. The group was deleted (and I’m not agreeing that it should have been) because the logo wasn’t removed per request. That’s it. No hidden motives.

If you didn’t get Mark’s comment to this blog, let me know; I have a copy and I’ll send it to you.

Shel, maybe you can help to eradicate some inconsistencies in this case:
- if Ragan did make a mistake by deleting the group, why doesn’t he admit that in the ongoing Huge flap …” thread in the General Discussion Forum? Instead he keeps adding fuel to the flames?
- why totally closing down the SMC group when the removal of the “offending” logo could have served the purpose (btw. this whole “taking offense” reeks a bit of astroturfing)?
- you think it is okay to close a group and delete all contributions that had been made sofar by lots of people? No concerns regarding intellectual property rights?
- why did they not only close the group but delete Chris Heuer’s profile and account as well? (I didn’t find a “delete button” on my profile)
- Mark Ragan has invited Chris Heuer to “moderate the group”? Which group? The Social Media Tools and Strategies? But that’s not the group Chris had set up - having been encouraged to do so explicitly by Mark Ragan. To invite him back in looks like a cheap manouvre
- do you think the facat that Chris Heuer didn’t responde for 2 days (or 3 or 4) justified the relentless measures? What if he hadn’t had internet access for that time (for whatever reason).
Social media is about conversations, trust, credibility - right?

Chris,

I’m sure the folks at the new myRagan are loving the traffic you have sent their way resulting from the online riff, your posts and links to their press announcements. Whatever communicators didn’t know about myRagan before surely do now!

Best,

Alison Minaglia, TechnologyPR.com
aminaglia@technologypr.com
http://www.technologypr.blogspot.com

While I love you Shel, you are wrong to try to help Mark save face here, but I appreciate you are working to serve the interests of the community, as we both have done for a long time.

Now, I won\’t bother reading the messages over on his group, which I am sure are more of the sorts of the upsetting things he wrote to me personally, but you want us all to get along and sing Kum-by-ya (sp?) How about having Mark admit:

1 - he realized he was wrong in his initial comment spam flap with me, and he does not want me, or anyone else, to speak about the things they are doing on his site that compete with Ragan

2 - that he over reacted emotionally and wrote some pretty silly (and nasty) things to me via email

3 - that he was wrong for deleting the group and should have instead reached out to me via email or phone to discuss this matter instead of via a message board from one of his \’trial\’ accounts

Saying that the TOS should have been updated just points out they could not cover their tracks fast enough and that they did not know what they were doing in the first place. Everyone can make a mistake and be forgiven, but when the intentions behind the mistake are this clouded in vitriole and rash behaviour, it is hard to think of it as simply a mistake.

As for his comment not appearing, the comments are unmoderated, they go up unless Akismet thinks it is Spam, I just went through all the Akismet spam comments and his is not there, nor is it in queue. Could it be that he is saying he made a comment, but did not?

Did he remove his claim to have the first social network for PR people yet? or the first social media conference for PR professionals? or are those lies continuing to propagate despite people close to him telling him it is not true.

Shel you know me very well and you know I am one of the most transparent people out here - there is no hidden motives or intentions here, so any claims to this by others are just false. This is the advantage of having built up trust over time in the conversation - people know they can trust me because I am willing to admit my mistakes and apologize if I am wrong.

As for his statement of making a request to simply change the logo, that is also untrue. He said he was going to rename the group (not delete it) because the logo was creating confusion for some of his employees. There was no request to simply change the logo, because I would have done it in 5 minutes - that does not seem like what he wanted or why he wanted it - to say this is his rationale and what he said then is simply realizing what he should have done, what you would have advised him to do. The original story about why he wanted to rename the group just doesn\’t ring true, which is now trying to be justified after the fact - it sounded odd when I read the request and more so now. But of course, since all my messages and my account was deleted, I can\’t prove that, nor can I trust him to recover his sent mail from the FRANK123 account and present what he really said.

Even if the message did say that, and I misread it, I had asked for a clarification of his request and did not receive it before his posting the message about renaming the group to the list. Why the rush to get it done? Perhaps it was the press release going out the next day which did not allow time for a real conversation or a more reasonable resolution…

[...] Social Media Club - » Why did Ragan Really Delete the SMC Group? This would be funny, if it were not true, but it probably is. I would love to hear from someone inside the organization to find out what really happened behind the scenes on this… (tags: ragan myragan ragancommunications socialmediaclub socialmedia socialnetworks kerfuffle wildstories hardtobelieve flipflopper) [...]

This is all so very sad and so very antithetical to social media. Call me cynical but I suspect that Ragan is keeping all this going instead of being clear about Chris’ role in the community because controversy generates more buzzzzzz.

On a related note, I was one of the first to visit the community 2 weeks ago and thought it to be difficult to navigate and somewhat cluttered.

You know, I agree with Alison’s comment. A MyRagan member, I’ve marginally followed the fallout from Mark deleting the Social Media Group — and it seems you’re just bitching.

A little lesson in PR. Bitching actually hypes the competition. People are curious creatures. I’d be curious to see how many people joined MyRagan because of your bitching.

Look, man! I don’t have anything against competition — and it looks like you’ve got something good right here. Cultivate it a bit more.

In the meantime, suck it up!

Hi Roger, thanks for stopping by and sharing your perspective… I have not heard anyone tell me to ’suck it up’ since my high school football coach during 2 a day practices in the 105 degree heat - ah that brings back fond memories….

I responded to your comment privately via email.

There is a definite need for a group that isn’t for profit to speak out on social media and issues surrounding it. It appears to me that SMC is the obvious choice and this will make it less likely that Ragan will be a trusted member or leader in the group as we move forward.