4 Missions, 4 Projects: Social Media Club Gets to Work

With the creation of the interim advisory board/group, it was my hope to gain some new momentum and secure a real commitment from industry leaders to collaborate for our collective benefit. From the coverage and feedback we received, it seems that we did that part well.

Now we need to turn that energy and attention into some collaborative action. So a few people in the interim advisory group have agreed to step up and help lead some initial projects. In looking at what is most important to us, it would seem most appropriate to focus our efforts on the four areas of our core mission:

1. Expand Media Literacy
2. Share Lessons Learned Among Practitioners
3. Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards
4. Promote Ethical Practices through Discussion and Actions

From here, it is important to note that anyone in the advisory group (and any member of the community) may propose projects for the club to support. Over the next few weeks we will need to formalize the governance on how we choose which projects get our formal support, but for now we are going to keep it simple and ask for your help in making these first 4 projects, that support our 4 missions a success. You can stay up to date on them here on the blog or over on the Social Media Club Special Projects page on the wiki.

Media Literacy

Michael Brito is leading an effort to find and organize all the best Introduction to Social Media presentations, classes, discussions, cartoons, videos, blog posts etc… There are a lot of ‘here is what you need to know about social media‘ lists out there as well - where are they, which ones are the best. If you have some materials to submit, or if you run across some good material, can you please join this project by submitting your introduction to Social Media materials on the Social Media Club wiki.

Sharing Lessons Learned

This one is a bit self serving as well, but important, and open. As part of The Social Media Playbook, we are building a section on Social Media Champions - the people inside of organizations who fought for engaging customers, employees and the broader market through Social Media. We are looking for champions to fill out an online interview form and will be publishing the findings on the Social Media Club blog and some of them in the book. In short, we want to discover how you overcame the objections of management, what worked for you and what didn’t. Or more simply, how did you go from weird outsider to welcomed champion? Go to the Champions project page on the wiki for more information.

Encourage Adoption of Industry Standards

John Gatrell is leading our efforts to leverage our collective expertise to further promote key industry standards such as Creative Commons, Open ID, Data Portability, the Open Web Foundation and others. He will be posting more on this project in the weeks ahead. In principle it would be great if we could do work along the lines of what Chris Messina et al did with Spread Firefox - find ways to expand awareness and explain these key standards to more everyday folks, business decision makers and others.

The first project will be in support of Creative Commons. We would like to propose a Creative Commons Awareness Day, where everyone participating writes a quick blog post about what CC means to them, how to explain it to others, what are some examples of things they have been able to do more easily because of having access to creative commons content and the challenges they have faced by people not honoring their requests for attribution etc… (there is some bad with the good, lets be honest). We have also put together a fundraising widget to help raise money for their efforts from Social Media Club Members - if you want to help us spread the campaign and start other efforts, please go to the wiki page for this project to stay up to date and contribute.

Promote Ethical Behaviour

This is tougher to get a project going in this area since it is more of a matter of discussion, but from that principle, comes the idea for our first project. We are starting a discussion about how membership in Social Media Club can serve as a ‘trusted mark’ for people to know that someone is ethical, understands social media and is committed to the advancement of the industry. There are more and more people claiming to be ’social media experts’ while more and more of us are shunning such titles, realizing we are merely practitioners who are learning more each day.

Everyone I know is concerned with what we do about the schemers and con-artists who are getting into social media with a ‘get rich quick’ mentality. How do we help people avoid those who are selling the snake oil and find those businesses, service providers and people who are really doing good work? Go to the Project Page on our Wiki and join the discussion. You should also check out this recent blog post by Kristie Wells aggregating some of the biggest ethical issues in Social Media today.

Other Projects

We are open to supporting other projects, collaborating with other groups and taking ideas for new projects related to our mission. If you are a member, we especially want to hear from you. What can we do to better serve your needs. But even if you are only an occasional reader of this blog, we want to hear from you too so we can address your needs and serve the community of social media professionals and enthusiasts.

Besides visiting the special projects pages on the wiki to get more involved, please help us get more people involved by sharing your perspective on these first projects on your own blog and helping get others involved. What it is, is up to us…

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Cheating on YouTube

This YouTube video documents Time Warner putting up “Superman Returns, The Movie” as a YouTube user, then having >7000 fans in a week. The “fans” are all accounts created the week beforehand. They’re stuffing the ballot box, as it were, to get more visibility for the Superman Returns movie.

To me, this is spamming a Social Media community.

As an organization that is supposed to be discussing the Ethics, among other things, around Social Media, I thought I’d throw this out. Watch the 4 minute video, then Discuss.

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Social Media Club - Phoenix

Social Media Club is officially launching in the lovely state of Arizona this month.

Francine Hardaway has offered to lead the group and will be digging into topics covering disclosure/ethics, the new media press release and what is needed to grow the local community. NOTE: If there is a specific topic you would like to put on the table, please let a comment here and we will make sure Francine is aware of it.

Details are as follows:

Where: La Madeleine - in the wine room, 3102 East Camelback Road (Camelback & 32nd), Phoenix
When: Thursday, November 16th from 5:30pm - 8:00pm
Cost: FREE to attend (all we ask is that you pre-register so we may know you are coming)

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Social Media Club - London Meeting #2

Our good friends over at Fleishman Hillard have opened up their offices again and are hosting the second meeting in London. Come one, come all.

Suggestions have been to discuss the latest in tools, technologies and success stories. However, if there is something specific you would like to throw out onto the table, please place it in the comments below.

Our hope is for each local group to set goals, meet regularly and share opinions on the role of Social Media in the present and future of PR, marketing and journalism. Help us reach that goal in London.

Where: Fleishman Hillard London, 40 Long Acre, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9LG
When: November 15th, from 6pm to 8:30pm
Costs: FREE (we do need you to pre-register so we may prepare for your arrival)

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Talking About Disclosure: A Social Media Club Podcast

This is the audio from the Talking About Disclosure Round Table that we held at CNet’s Headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday October 25, 2006. In attendance were about 19 leading thinkers on social media including Rafe Needleman, Mike Arrington, Tantek Celik, Martin Mckeay and Social Media Club’s SF Trio of Chris Heuer, Brian Sollis and Kristie Wells. Some excellent points were made and some good proposals for moving forward. Please tag everything related with ‘blogger+ethics’ and contribute to the Wiki at http://wiki.socialmediaclub.org/

You can subscribe to the podcast here or just download the 28MB audio file of the 1 hour and 49 minute conversation.

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Consequences for abusing the public trust?

For me the biggest challenge I see in our efforts for dealing with the ethics of disclosure coming out of our Social Media Club Round Table on Wednesday was the matter of consequences for those individuals and organizations who betray our trust so egregiously. Edelman and Wal-Mart both abused the public’s trust in the Web’s ability to be a source for honesty with the Walmarting Across America episode, and we all suffered as a result (we being Bloggers and producers of media - journalists and communications pros alike). I was speaking with Cathy Brooks last night at the VOX Launch Party about this, and she felt that there are indeed consequences in the system of law that governs us that may offer a recourse - but I truly dislike the litigation culture we live in and don’t see that as being the fair route. She had many other important things to say on this, and I for one, am sorry she was not able to make it to our discussion.

In the Edelman matter, we know that Edelman is a leader in the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), and this episode was a clear violation of their own ethics, but Shel Holtz pointed out what does that really mean? In reviewing it closely after reading Shel’s and Stowe Boyd’s post on this WOMMA’s creation of the 20 Questions, I really like a lot of what they have to say on this subject. There are clearly some smart people there that get it. In doing the research, I think that WOMMA’s original Code of Ethics were pretty good to start, and the clarity that these questions bring takes them even further. But “marketer restrain thyself” needs to have consequences when the marketer breaks the rules. So given that that a member of WOMMA has failed to answer so many of those questions in the way we would hope, now what? I suppose it is not retroactive as a community standard though it should be, but seriously, what happens when people show questionable ethical judgment? What are the consequences for abusing the public trust? Obviously the reputation of the individual and the organization is tarnished and there is conceivably a real financial loss of some form, but what consequences are faced by those who break the rules?

I am not out for blood here, far from it, I am ready to move forward. Clearly Edelman has apologized and wants to make good to ensure it never happens again (as much if not more for their own interests of course), but what compensation is due the public? In looking at this the other night in our Round Table on disclosure, that is the point at which I think we are in real need of good solutions. We are trying to figure out the right course of action for Social Media Club members around such ethics violations, but we are not the Senate, so censure seems a bit odd as a consequence. I know from my friend Todd Tweedy’s experience that WOMMA does expel/suspend members for violations of its code of ethics - in that case the entire story was false and was the subject of a correction/retraction of the charge by the reporter. Todd adds an excellent perspective with his blog post today entitled Prediction: Edelman Will Make Us Stronger in Terms of Blogging and Corporate Ethics. It would seem that WOMMA’s course of action should be clear, but there are seemingly some gray areas we don’t know about but, deserve to know clearly.

Mike Arrington suggested the other night that we simply do not link to those who have a verified ethics violation. Indeed all of this attention on the issue is actually driving up the perceived popularity and awareness of those who made the mistake. There is a great discussion going on over on the WOMMA site about disclosure, and I am curiously watching for the outcome. In that one of the big issues coming out of our discussion was a need for a well educated public in regards to media literacy (that is one of the core elements of Social Media Club), perhaps they could fund some 3rd party programs to promote media literacy and use the Walmarting Across America case as an example of things that people should not do (after all, it was not the entire Edelman organization who did this, but rather some actual people inside the company). I am not to say that the company is not ultimately to blame, but seriously - it was some human beings bad judgment that is the point of fault.

Maybe even some public service work and some genuine apologies from the people who screwed this up. As Rafe Needleman said at the Round Table the other night, (paraphrasing) “if you have a car accident, most people are unable to apologize because of the fear of litigation that may result, but if more people did apologize and show remorse, there would be a lot less litigation around accidents.” Not surprisingly, I agree with Todd Defren and am reminded of the book “All I Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten“. Or the more advanced version that I believe is the core of The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz which starts off with the most important principle of all:

“Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.”

Technorati Chairman Peter Hirshberg assured me that this was his philosophy on this matter last night and everyone else I spoke with seems to feel the same thing, so should be near universal consensus here, but what do we do when people aren’t impeccable with their word? What about those gray areas that we talked about the other night?

[The audio from the Round Table will be up shortly]

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NMRCast #9

Chris Heuer, Brian Solis and Shel Holtz* discuss Edelman’s woes and the notion of disclosure; they also catch up on the working group progress and chat a bit more about tags (can you ever get enough?).

Shel Holtz provides a list of links supporting this podcast on his website, For Immediate Release.

You can download the file here (MP3, 12.7MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon). Also, the Apple iTunes subscription is now available here or by searching for NMRCast at the Apple iTunes store under “podcasts.” If you subscribe to the FIR “everything” feed, however, this podcast will not be included.

* Tom Foremski is currently in India and was not able to attend.

UPDATE: I had orignally titled this post ‘NMRCast #9: Disclose. Disclose. Disclose.’.  I realized this did not truly cover the content of this podcast, so I have changed the title to simply NMRCast #9.

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Talking About Disclosure Round Table Recap

Wow! What a great conversation tonight over at CNet’s Headquarters here in San Francisco - thanks again to Joel Sacks and Rafe Needleman for hosting us there. Unfortunately my M-Audio died again in a new and interesting way - thankfully Martin Mckeay had his trusty iRiver and we will be posting audio of the nearly two hour conversation soon. You can subscribe to the Social Media Club podcast via iTunes by searching for Social Media Club in their podcast directory.

As for the meat of the matter, it was quickly clear that the issue of disclosure is one that impacts everyone and everyone understands its importance in the broader context. When one person makes a bad decision, everyone is impacted so it is an issue that everyone wants to work on together. The mix of people was pretty good with 19 people showing up including Rafe Needleman, Mike Arrington, Tantek Celik, Joel Sacks, Greg Narain, Brian Solis, Sean Savage, Shannon Clark, Vic Podcaster, Sanford Barr, Jeremy, Daniel Riveong, Pete Kazanjy, Glenda Bautista, Matt Levine, James Yu with nearly everyone contributing some great points. (too many links to research and create this late tonight - my apologies everyone)
There were a few key points that emerged from my perspective:

• I started off the conversation talking about this era needing to embrace the 3 T’s (as opposed to the old focus on the 3 C’s) which are Transparency, Truth and Trust
• There are a lot of grey areas so absolute rules are hard to come by here, we should strive for greater understanding of best practices (which is the purpose of Social Media Club)
• Disclosure is somewhat situational in nature and will vary by geography and culture
• The biggest issue is seemingly one of media literacy amongst media consumers as much as it is an issue for those producing media
• Everyone is biased in some way, journalists are not immune as we are all human - bloggers need more appreciation of how they can be influenced
• We all get free drinks from time to time (including everyone who attended tonight) but that usually is not enough to be bought
• We need to find a great and easy to understand metaphor/story about what is ok and what is not ok
• We have more to figure out and map than one discussion could allow

Kristie Wells took some good notes of what people had to say which are available in a MindJet MindMap format as well as a PDF and also took some good photos. Personally, I am really looking forward to listening to the audio and dissecting some of the finer points of the discussion. Perhaps someone out there will take the MindMap and re-organize it according to topics rather than speakers and that will really move it forward. (you can download a free trial from MindJet or get their free MindMap viewer if you want to play with it - yes MindJet has sponsored our events in the past, but I bought the software before we had a relationship because I loved it so much)

At the end of the conversation, Mike Arrington made a proposal that:

We begin a dialogue and process that we all agree to adhere to the outcome of in regards to what is the proper, ethical way to handle disclosure - even if it is not the one I want, I will agree to abide by the group’s decision. We also need to have a meethod of resolution for challenges to ethics where the process can begin in private first so that people can not use such challenges to create controvery and generate increased page views and notoriety through baseless accusations. (paraphrased, not quoted)

So we have opened up the Social Media Club Wiki (password is ‘media’ without the quotes) to start working on a real Social Media Code of Ethics which will be adopted as the standard for the club and all members to endorse. Rafe Needleman suggested we keep our initial efforts focused, perhaps just on Technology Bloggers so we can avoid some of those muddier grey areas and I think he is probably right about that.

The entire effort is adopting the tag “blogger+ethics” (tip of the hat to Greg Narain on the added value the plus sign has here). We would like to start by tagging all relevant codes of ethics thusly and also all opinions on these matters to be collected in Blog posts tagged similarly to help us start focusing. Also, start making use of the Wiki to begin our work on this important effort.

There is a lot more to discuss here and we came up with some more interesting ideas for the Disclosr service that Social Media Club is beginning to develop. As I suspected in my post last night, this is only the beginning of a very important and high impact conversation.

Thanks to everyone for coming out. I am looking forward to continuing this conversation in DC next Monday and Boston next Thursday at the Round Tables we are holding there. I imagine it will be a part of the conversation in New York tonight as well.

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Talking About Disclosure - A Social Media Club Roundtable

I think about disclosure or talk about it with someone almost every day. Often it is in regards to whether or not I am able to disclose something because it has to do with advice I am giving clients, which happens all the time if you write about the field in which you work. If I am able to do so, then the question becomes whether I should write about it. Rather than just thinking about it on my own, I thought it best to organize a conversation among those who care about this issue here in San Francisco and put together a last minute Social Media Club roundtable at CNet’s headquarters for Wednesday October 25, 2006 from 6:00-8:00 PM. Thanks to Joel Sacks for helping secure the space at the last minute. While it will probably be a small turnout, it looks like it will be a great bunch of people who will have a lot to say on this subject.

The issue of disclosure came to the forefront recently with the Edelman problems with the Wal-Marting Across America blog and then two other ‘flogs’ that were being written by Edelman employees. The thing is, I did not want people to think I am just calling out the utter failure of the Social Media consultants at Edelman to do the right thing because I work as an independent contractor with Fleishman Hillard, a competing PR agency who used to do Wal-Mart work (I was never involved with that account). Look how much text I had to use to disclose that one portion of my interest in it. Then consider the 20 or so minutes I have spent editing that disclosure to make sure it sounded right, addressed the important points and fit into the story. I have a lot to say on the Edelman story, but so much else has already been said. I think I will be talking about it for a long time to come, because their failure to be transparent and authentic is a huge lesson for corporations which hopefully won’t be repeated, but most likely will.

My newfound emphasis on the topic of disclosure, however, came from my friend Mike Arrington’s little dustup with traditional journalists at the Online News Association conference which Jeff Jarvis writes about here and Mike writes about here. The subsequent post by Nicholas Carr called ‘A glass house‘ really struck a deep chord with me. I know Mike and I don’t believe he is purposely trying to deceive anyone, but he does have a competitive streak and many other interests across the Web 2.0 landscape which puts him in a precarious position. From my discussions with many people, there are no truly easy ways to make disclosures and there is no standard accepted practices for how to disclose and when to disclose. As I have consulted my clients over the years, it is often the perception of impropriety that is the problem not the actions themselves.

In speaking with Scott Rafer last week at the Dogster party, he reminded me of another important bit - sometimes there are interests that people can not disclose because they are not allowed to talk about the relationship they have for legal or other security reasons. To his point, it is indeed a very gray area which needs some more light shed on it for everyone of us to understand better. It is also, as my friend and colleague Stowe Boyd has pointed out previously, a problem in dire need of a solution.

This is why I immediately resolved to do something about it and began to organize a Social Media Club Roundtable for Wednesday October 25 called “Talking About Disclosure.” What I hope we get from the event is a great discussion about the best practices around disclosure of interests in pursuit of a common understanding of how to properly apply the principles of transparency and authenticity. The conversation has already begun, with great articles written by Jason Calcanis (older but relevant post), Shel Holtz, Matthew Ingram and Todd Defren. We want to bring that conversation into real time, with a focus on the solution. Also, we want to move from conversation to action, so we are hoping that we can produce a set of guidelines to recommend as best practices for people to use, which will ultimately be a part of the pledge we ask members to make when joining Social Media Club. We also will address WOMMA’s lack of action on the Edelman fiasco which is a point Shel Holtz makes in his post - though I don’t know what we can do differently.

Lisa Stone brought our attention to a post by a former Edelman employee on Blogher at our workshop yesterday in which Lisa points out some of the key requirements around disclosure that need to be addressed by a blogger.

What kind of commitment should bloggers make to their readers? I’m one of the people who thinks every blog owes its readers four answers, whether the blog is a corporate blog, a news blog or a personal diary:

1. Who are the bloggers?
2. What are the bloggers doing?
3. Why are the bloggers doing this?
4. Why do I — the reader — care?

The Wal-Mart blog flunks every question:

Finally, in the pursuit of full disclosure (which may come back to bite me in the ass for doing so too early), we have begun to work on a new service called Disclosr which will simplify the process of making disclosures for professionals who produce Social Media. The service will be available for free for all Professional members of Social Media Club and for a nominal subscription fee for non members. It will leverage the understanding we jointly develop of best practices for disclosure at the heart of the service. That still won’t cover all the gray areas that Scott Rafer pointed out last week, but it will get us further than not doing anything. There probably is not enough money in that business to be a really profitable standalone business, but as a public benefit that furthers the advancement of Social Media, it fits perfectly with our mission of supporting ethics.

In the end it comes down to the same thing I have been telling publishers and broadcasters for the past 12 years - don’t ever squander the trust you have with your audience by not being completely truthful. The public (aka audience) will revolt if you do and they will speak up and call you on it. Even though there are a number of assholes in the world with their personal axes to grind who may attack for the sake of being able to do so, most people won’t buy into that crap - particularly if you have continuously proven your trustworthiness over time while building a great relationship with your audience.

If Mike Arrington does have a conflict of interest, whether real or perceived, it is usually revealed by comment #5. The difference between Blogging and traditional journalism is that Mike then engages in real conversations to explain why the commenter may be wrong and admits when they are right, making a correction or clarifying the original statement. This is what often happens when having a conversation with real people - the story is much bigger than we are able to get across in the time we have to speak, so it sometimes takes a few rounds of back and forth to get to all the important points. I am not an apologist for Mike, he can handle that himself quite well, I am just trying to point out that Blogging and other forms of Social Media is conversational and there is more to it than just perceiving someone has evil intentions.

Wheww, I actually have left out many other important points that are worthy of discussion and will bring up when we get together tomorrow. I am sure you could probably add a few dozen more, particularly when we get to talking about real world situations. So please add to the conversation here in the comments and join us at CNet’s Headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday October 25, 2006 from 6-8pm. Please do RSVP on Upcoming so I know how much soda and beer we need to bring to keep the conversation flowing…

PS - I had been speaking with Mike Arrington about participating, and he agreed to do so - in addition to inviting other journalists and interested parties. After waiting for over a week for him to respond to my emails, voicemails and text messages after initially saying yes and being enthusiastic, it doesn’t look like he is coming. Or then again, perhaps one of his readers or other friends will point it out and he may write a post on Crunchnotes.

[10/25 update - Mike Arrington was sick and dealing with the financing on Edegeio which is why I did not hear back from him - he actually saw the post himself and was kind enough to write up something this afternoon on TechCrunch and will hopefully be joining us this evening.]

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