Social media rears its ugly head

Recently, there has been some blow out about the flip side of social media; the side that isn’t all roses and champagne and friendly communication. And it isn’t the usual case of a big brand company pulling a fast one and exploiting or duping consumers, quite the opposite in fact, it’s about consumers exploiting the power of social media for personal gain.

And as Lisa Barone, points out, recent events not only demonstrate the depths to which people will sink for a freebie, but also demonstrates the public’s tolerance of such behaviour. For Lisa, the stand out event was David Carroll and his YouTube tirade against United Airlines. I’m not entirely sure of the details, I didn’t follow the saga, but as far as I can gather, Carroll took his guitar with him on a flight and was worried about its safety. When he got home he discovered it was cracked and, consequently, wasn’t happy with United’s handling of his claim.

At the time, and to great ridicule and mockery, Lisa stepped up and said that she didn’t believe Carroll’s case was genuine, she thought it premeditated and staged and that he played a part in the shoddy handling of the affair by not checking his guitar at the airport and by delaying submitting his claim. But her ire was really raised by the reception Carroll’s videos received online. The encouragement he got for outing such an obviously inconsiderate and despicable company, his bravery for taking on a money-making machine and standing up for downtrodden consumers everywhere. It was a whole consumer empowerment thing and while Lisa was criticised for not researching the episode properly before adding her two cents to the mix. I wonder how many others troubled themselves with the facts.

Because that’s the thing with being online, isn’t it? Facts are impermanent and discretionary. An allegation today is damned as bald-faced buggery the next by someone with the real facts, who is in turn discredited the day after that by newer, more scientifically proven research. The truth is difficult to determine at the best of times, but online it’s slipperier than an oil-coated slime eel in jelly. When we’re online we don’t care about the facts, not really, what we do care about is entertainment and what could be more entertaining than a struggling musician taking on a giant American Corporation and, if not quite bringing it to its knees, at least making it shrivel its nose in distaste?

Which brings me to the second stand out event, this time highlighted by Patricio Robles (but also mentioned by Lisa Barone): the BlogHer conference 2009. Since its inception in 2005, the BlogHer conference is designed to “to create the space where … women who blog can create … opportunities–for education, exposure, community, economic empowerment, or all of the above”. It’s all very noble and serves a good cause, except this year it was somewhat corrupted by the presence of the ubiquitous ‘swag bag’.

We know swag bags as those fantastic bags of goodies that celebrities get for hosting big events like the Oscars or the Emmys. They tend not to contain packets of chocolate coated peanuts and fruit pastilles, but have things like diamond encrusted iPhones and $3 million dollar gift vouchers to Dolce and Gabana Italy (flight included). The swag bags available at the BlogHer conference were somewhat more humble but there were an awful lot of them, apparently, and the ladies put their worst feet forward demonstrating unmitigated greed in their quest to be the first to get every single one.

Robles provides a few quotes by some of those who attended the conference:

“When I arrived at the party a few hours later, I noticed a herd of women squeezing together so tight it looked like they were in an imaginary corral. Jill and I were standing at the outskirts when we noticed the bags of swag on a table in front of corralled women. It was hot and smelly. Women were pushing and I immediately lost Jill in the madness. I left the debauchery.”

He also quotes CV Harquail’s blog that questions whether the presence of swag circumvents the purpose of these conferences:

“Online conversation leading up to the conference was full of references on what swag would be available, where to get it, how to get it home”.

While conference sponsors had their own stories to tell:

“A few weeks before the BlogHer ‘09 Conference I was approached by an attendee looking for free swag to hand out at the conference to promote her blog. In exchange she offered to spread the word about my business to other bloggers – an interesting offer, which I declined… it didn’t really feel right to me and her blog is written for stay-at-home moms, which is about as far from our target market as one can get.”

And then there is the now infamous Crocs incident, when a BlogHer attendee tried to blackmail the Social Media Specialist for Crocs, George Smith, into giving her a free pair of shoes. The charming lady apparently threatened to write something bad about the company unless Smith gave her some shoes. Apparently, she reckoned that it would be easier for the company to give her the shoes than ‘deal with the negative press’ she could create. At this point Lisa Barone mentions that Crocs didn’t cover themselves in high road glory but stooped to threaten the woman’s continued blogging success, but Robles makes no mention of this.

In this instance the brands only have themselves to blame for pandering to the vanity of some bloggers, providing them with fantastic incentives in the first place and creating the impression that bloggers have more weight to throw around than perhaps they think they do. Free stuff is now expected, it’s the norm and without it positive reviews are hard to come by.

Which brings me to a study by Razorfish that looks at the true influence of social media, and discovered that word of mouth marketing is not as well received as people (marketers) think. Apparently, only one third (33%) of people online trust the opinions and recommendations of their friends. They are more likely to trust television ads and stranger reviews; probably because they know that their friends can be swayed, or at least suspect this to be the case. So, it seems as though brands are coughing up to keep bloggers happy when happy bloggers have no actual effect on the bottom line.

Which brings me to the huge debate about the value of free, which is currently raging between various online marketers. But that is a topic for another time.

The point here, and I know it is a laboured one, is that this isn’t news. We act shocked when people reveal themselves to be the money-grabbing publicity whores we know they are, but we shouldn’t be at all surprised. Since social media began we’ve been saying that it’s a double-edged sword, it can be used for good or evil, it needs to be used responsibly, blah blah, etc etc. What I want to know is whether we’ll ever learn that, given enough rope, human beings have a nasty habit of hanging themselves, and tend to show their darker sides in the process, or will we continue to pander to and revel in the dodgier aspects of human character? I rather suspect the latter, and you?

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