Recap: What is the biggest ethical issue we face in Social Media today

July 31, 2008

I recently posted this ethical issue question that was brought up during the kick off meeting of SMC Los Angeles and received some interesting feedback. This responses below have been shortened, to read the responses in their entirety, please check out the original post for the top half, the others came via Twitter responses.

What is the biggest ethical question we face in Social Media today?:

  • Vijay Goel, M.D. - Impact anonymity has to impact the digital reputation of others, especially where they have not opted in to that discussion.
  • SeLiNa - Firms who misrepresent themselves online and try to deceive people by not being up front about their campaign activity, and pretending to be “user” and not a marketer.
  • Kari Rippetoe - Do people who post information about themselves online have any expectation of privacy? Should social media sites play a larger role in ensuring the privacy of their users?
  • Gfox - I think information sharing vs. keeping. We’re all about ’sharing’ except when it comes to our monetization secrets.
  • Albert Maruggi - (1) Gaming the SEO system to gain rank, (2) underhanded manipulation of product reviews and comments, (3) the accumulation of friends with the intention of monetizing them.
  • wayzgoose - (1) Exposure and (2) using social groups for promotion of ideology, business, or personal exploitation.
  • Shawn Scott - Protecting free speech as it relates to transparency.
  • Roxanne Darling - Competition for mind share.
  • krash63 - Widening the net to listen to more voices.
  • Chris Heuer - How do we give bad actors in the ecosystem (exploitative, manipulative, dishonest, rude, etc…) a bad reputation that is more visible for others to know who to take seriously and who to ignore?
  • Steve Nimmons - Use of Social Media as a propaganda machine for some rather nefarious groups.
  • Tom At The Home Business Archive - People tend to add people as friends to monetize them and also submit their own content to the all the sites, and every single blog post they write.
  • tmarklein - Blurring of lines between “edit” and “advertising” — seems antiquated and important at same time.
  • jamieortiz  - Transparency –educating CEOs to be honest in posts and comments.
  • ShannonRenee - Purposeful misrepresentation of one’s self.
  • gylonj - Honesty
  • CandyLynn - Truth & honesty
  • GILL_Media - What’re the limits of marketing as community participation? What’s the divide between spam and promotion to receptive ears?
  • jljohansen - Inconsistant definitions of ethics. We aren’t on the same page, or even in the same book.
  • NancyMarmolejo - Spammers!
  • LewisG - Identity theft (privacy).
  • leadingzero - When and how to get paid.
  • runnerkik - Protecting children who widely use social media in ways many parents don’t know how to protect. 

Thank you to everyone who offered a response!

Have any thoughts on ethical issues that weren’t covered? Add them in the comments and I will update the post.

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Social Communications?

July 29, 2008

Fellow Board Member Jackie Peters makes the case for a new term, and I like it.

heavyBlog » Making the Case for Social Communications

I would like to posit the idea that rather than trying to fit a round peg into a square hole, we need to carve out a new hole. The term I am proposing we use for this is Social Communications. Social Communications as a category touches branding, PR, marketing, WOM, customer service, product development, mobile marketing, SEO and many other aspects of a brand’s communications strategy. It is the art of “socializing” these processes.

What do you think? Discuss.

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And the 42nd Interim SMC Board Member…

July 17, 2008

… is also being joined by the 43rd and 44th. I am very proud to report that Aaron Strout, Coach Deb (Deb Micek) and Chris Hambly were the top vote getters with 383 for Aaron, 340 for Deb and 179 for Chris (who barely edged out Maddie Grant who had 166).

Why did we decide to expand to 44 from 42? It is simple. No one wanted to do a run off and have to go shill for votes all weekend - and that certainly wasn’t what I intended it to be. So, this morning I asked the interim board what we should do. By a narrow margin, we determined we should simply ask the top three vote getters if they were ok with bringing them all into the interim board and they agreed. In fact, seeing Deb and Aaron joke about it in the comments is what persuaded me this morning.

Unfortunately, there were some technology troubles: the corporate proxy servers prevented some of the candidate’s supporters from voting at work (so sorry); there were intermittment failures to accept votes in the last hours and probably four or five more problems with using Democracy Poll for an attempt at democracy. More importantly, we learned an important requirement of our member community software, which we will be designing collaboratively. We really need a good community system with one member, one vote software and special discussion pages for discussing the merits of the candidates of our formal organization and for the local groups.

Still, I think the overall effort was a success in demonstrating we really are going to be an open organization that will remain unwavering in our commitment to fairness and serving the greater needs of the Social Media community / industry. There was some good discussion about whether we should sustain the process we originally outlined so as to show that we keep our word. I think it is more important to respect the people inside the process and to admit mistakes, make corrections and move on to whats important.

To that end, it was never our intention to use this election process as a link building exercise. The original 41 were selected upon three critiera - merit, willingness to contribute a few hours each month and trust. I chose people I know who really understand what is happening in social media, would commit to contributing (more then just attention) and share some of the key values we hold (despite disagreeing with some of them on other topics). Some were members, others woud have been if I asked (or could have gone through the formality of signing up for a free Open Membership).

To be clear, my intention here is to get Social Media Club organized and heading in the right direction for the benefit of the community. It is to ensure the values of openness, honesty and willingness to engage in the conversation remain at the core of what we do and what we promote. It is to get other people than myself engaged, activated and working on behalf of our common cause. It is to get Social Media Club running as a self-sustaining community organization, being lead by other self-directed people who want to do good and are willing to work with others in the community to do more good together.

So the bottom line here is that we really want this to be an organization, of, by and for the people who share an interest in social media and its “greater significance.” The election was an attempt at an open democratic process. By agreeing to expand the size and skip the run off is just one other such example of listen, consider, converse and act, then repeat.

I for one, am very glad we did this process as I got to meet a bunch of new people who are doing good work in Social Media. We also accomplished some goals, we learned a lot, we picked up some momentum and we are getting a chance to grow. We also ended up with what seems to be three really great social media professionals, which is ultimately a wealth of riches more then we could have hoped for.

We have a lot of work to do from here, which we will begin blogging about on Monday. Though several interim board members are already underway on projects.

In the mean time join me in welcoming Aaron Strout, Coach Deb and Chris Hambly. I am looking forward to working with each of you.

PS - We will be doing something more with the other 35 folks nominated as well as those who paid for CoFounder memberships. One of the first tasks of the interim board is to consider how it is being structured, the language we are using and dividing up the work on the things we want to get done.

Update: corrected spelling of Chris Hambly’s last name

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Vote for the 42nd Interim Board Member

July 14, 2008

Wow! The response to our mistake has been overwhelming.  While we have much work to do, our first task is to figure out how to best harness this outpouring of energy.  We have enough work to do and projects that need help to get everyone involved who wants to be involved - particularly when it comes to educational initiatives and organizing collaborative projects.

Due to the size of the response, (38 34 potential candidates to choose from) we are altering the previously stated procedures slightly, but the integrity of the process I outlined the other day is intact, and the rules we laid out there are incorporated herein by reference (yay, a little legalese!).  Several people emailed me directly to throw their hat in the ring, but did not submit their names to the comments of the blog post as I requested and are therefore not on the list - sorry folks, gotta follow the rules intentions. We will be following up with everyone on this list shortly.

Procedure Notes:

We will be holding this vote open until Thursday July 17, 2008 at 11am PST - essentially 72 hours. At that time, the top 3 will be put to a runoff vote that will stay open from Thursday afternoon until Monday July 21 at noon PST.

The Candidates:

The group is diverse, smart and very active in the broader community.  It includes those that are well known and relatively unknown.  There are international candidates, people we know well and people we have just met.  I won’t say anything here about any of them individually, but I will say that we are quite pleased and grateful that so many people are willing to help us build Social Media Club into the pre-eminent force for good in the area of social media.

So without further ado, please vote for the person you think is most qualified to contribute and make a meaningful difference in our efforts.

{democracy:2}

Update:  Ann Handley, Gavin Heaton, Gennefer Snowfield and Siobhan O’Neil have withdrawn from the election process (they are not suprisingly going to be spending more time with their family ;) just kidding, each has their own reasons and we are going to find other ways to work together in the near future for our common community goals

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Have you registered for Social Media Camp yet?

July 11, 2008

Just a reminder tomorrow, Saturday, is the start of the seven (7)
city Social Media Camp U.S. Tour coming to Seattle (7/12), San
Francisco (7/15), Los Angeles (7/18), Austin (7/30), Miami (8/2),
Boston (8/5) and New York (8/7).

The events are all free to attend, open to anyone interested in the tools (beginner, intermediate or advanced) and will range from 4-8 hours each (see the wiki page for the city near you for specific details).

Hope to see your smiling face at one (or more) of these events.

Listen. Learn. Teach. Repeat.

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Help a research project - Facebook Groups in Business

July 10, 2008

Social Media Club NY member and Organizational Development consultant Jenny Ambrozek asks for help on the following issue:

21st Century Organization: Facebook Groups in Business: Call for Best Cases

Should Businesses Be Friends with Facebook?

While our investigation provided insight into the dynamics of 10 Facebook Groups by tracking activity data over a 10 week period, we realize thousands of organizations are using Facebook Groups every day.

Jenny and her team are seeking best practice case studies regarding using FB “externally to build brands and market products, and ii. Internally, to bring employees together and share work, while at the same time allowing them to connect to their external networks.”

Check the site for how you can help them in their research.

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Oops! The Missing 42nd Interim Board Member

July 9, 2008

Looks like we (I) made a mistake.  I think I was looking for the number of interim board members to be 42 subconsciously, even though we only had 41 as Lloyd Davis pointed out in the comments of our interim board announcement today.  If you aren’t into sci-fi, you probably don’t know that 42 is the answer to the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything, but I digress…

The bottom line is that we accidentally listed Doug Pollei twice and I didn’t catch it when writing the final post and list of links.  So this brings up the question of how to deal with it and how to live our values transparently (which is another way of saying honestly IMHO).  As I have been explaining for some time, its usually the response that is more important then the mistake or the message.  So rather than adding in someone else to make it look like a typographical error instead of a stoopid human one, we would like to make some lemonade from these lemons.  I would also like to point out that the conversation here in the comments works - Lloyd cared enough to actually count through the number of members, pointed out the mistake and we corrected it… That is one of the ways that social media can be more powerful then broadcast media.

This afternoon in thinking about what we might do, we came up with what I think is a better idea for how to resolve this mistake - instead of just appointing someone from the vast array of people I had to leave out, we are now searching for the missing 42nd interim board member (I do love the Doug Adams reference as you may have guessed from our win a free professional SMC membership contest announced on Twitter).  If you or someone you know would like to volunteer and join the interim board with us, please reply in the comments after reading and agreeing to the general terms below.

  1. All submissions must be for/from real people, no trolls allowed
  2. You can submit yourself or suggest someone else
  3. You have to want to do it and be willing to volunteer several hours per month to communications and other activities to further the objectives announced in the post
  4. All people who are listed for consideration will be vetted via brief phone call (dont leave your #, we will contact you for it via email)
  5. Everyone will be considered who submits their name before midnight PST on Saturday July 12 2008 but not anyone after that time
  6. From Monday July 14th at 12:01am PST to Wednesday July 16th at midnight PST, all valid submissions for consideration will be presented for voting on this Web site.  The choice of the missing 42nd board member will be decided upon by open vote here
  7. All submissions and the final winner will be subject to approval by existing interim board

So, despite it taking some more energy to coordinate, we want to do this openly and we want to involve more of our members. I think this is the best route and look forward to seeing who else is interested in helping us move this organization forward.

Also today several people have raised some questions and concerns about the interim board which I will be answering later tonight with a more in depth post…

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Social Media Club Forms Interim Board To Chart Strategic Direction and Advance Its Goals

July 9, 2008

Charting a new direction!The Social Media Club (SMC), a new media and advocacy organization focused on social media, today announced that 42 well-regarded industry leaders have volunteered to form an interim Board of Directors.

The new interim board has been charted to address several key organizational and strategic deliverables, including development of membership goals, acceleration of local chapter development, increase in adoption of industry standards and implementation of a new legal structure to enhance future growth.

New interim Board Member and Adjunct Professor of Social Media at University of Miami Alex de Carvalho said “Social Media Club is an important industry organization that has been working to establish social media standards and ethics. The voluntary participation of such noted industry leaders to further its mission is a clear indication of the Social Media Club’s value and contributions. I look forward to collaborating with the new interim board to progress the Social Media Club from being a ‘big idea’ to serving the community as a prominent agent of change.”

According to Chris Heuer, founder of Social Media Club and Partner at The Conversation Group, “The Social Media Club is honored to have so many accomplished and well-regarded industry evangelists come forward to lead the organization. While the interim board will focus on charting the organization’s future direction, our core mission will remain the same: promotion of media literacy; support of industry standards efforts such as Creative Commons licensing, Microformats, Data Portability and OpenID; discussion and promotion of ethical behavior; and sharing our knowledge among our members and the industry community at large.”

Co-Founder and Social Media Club President Kristie Wells added, “We are grateful to have received so much support from around the world over the past two years. With nearly 200 paying members and over 500 open members - we are deeply appreciative of the volunteer efforts to make the Social Media Club a success. With leading corporate members, such as Business Wire and SHIFT Communications, as well as dedicated individual professionals, the Social Media Club will continue to gain momentum and serve the greater needs of the industry while sharing our lessons learned along the way.”

The board will also focus on increasing its research efforts and strengthening relationships with other organizations such as the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) and the International Association for Business Communicators (IABC). The interim board’s work will be completed once the club reorganizes as a new entity, and holds an election amongst its members for a formal Board of Directors.

The newly named/appointed members of the interim board are leading social media analysts, bloggers and business leaders, and are as follows:

About the Social Media Club

The Social Media Club centers on the sharing of best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy with a focus on the emerging discipline of Social Media. The Social Media Club brings together journalists, publishers, communication professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaborators who create and consume media and have an interest in seeing the industry improve and evolve. The Social Media Club provides a forum for diverse groups and individuals to discover, connect, share and learn about social media and to play a role in its future evolution.

To find out more about the opportunities in social media and connect with other practitioners, visit: http://www.socialmediaclub.org

* Photo by Fabrizio Sciami, Creative Commons  Attribution-Share Alike License

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Social Media Now 7.6.08

July 6, 2008

Here are some interesting links we’ve come across in the past week. Have you got some favorites to pass on? Share them in the comments section!

John McQuaid is thinking about hyperlocal in his post ”The Big Die-Off, And The Long Tail Of Hyperlocal”.

Josh Bernoff discusses the benefits and drawbacks when politicians delve into social media in his post Barack Obama vs. my.BarackObama.com on FISA — When Your Fans Disagree With You

Jeremiah Owyang discusses the Social CMS Dilemma and wonders if we’ll be seeing better tools for community management, and if community managers are ready for that.

Scoble points out some interesting stats about FriendFeed, and how participation can win you friends and followers.

Bright Shiny Objects
My favorite new Twitter App, TweetDeck launched in beta on the 4th of July.

I also discovered ClipMarks, which allows you to clip parts of a page and send it by email, to your blog, FriendFeed, or add a Clipmarks widget pretty much anywhere you want to.

And last but not least, check out TwitterPacks, a wiki that groups twitter users by areas of interest.

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A New Kind of Tweetup: Blood Drive

July 2, 2008

We love hearing about the various ways folks are using Social Media tools, and this special ‘Tweetup’ happening tomorrow (Thursday, July 3rd) is one we just had to share.

The Austin (Texas) Tweetup Blood Drive.

This event is the brainchild of Michelle Greer and David Neff, who are using Twitter, various blogs and other media outlets to bring attention to the blood shortages at their local blood bank and getting the local community to come together for social good.

Here’s how you can help:

  1. Register or log into the Blood Center of Central Texas’s website.
  2. Choose the location at 4300 North Lamar.
  3. Be sure to pick a time slot from 10 am-4 pm on Thursday, July 3rd.
  4. Show up at the appropriate time. Give a shoutout to David J. Neff.
  5. Give blood. Eat a piece of the sammichometer. Give thanks that you are healthy and can offer health to someone else who needs it.

Sponsored by groups such as Austin Social Media Club, the 501Tech Club, and Austin Jelly - it is an event we encourage locals in Austin to get behind and other cities to replicate. Blog, Tweet, take photos, shoot video. Get the word out to help those in need.

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