Posts Tagged ‘transparency’

Can we really rely on social media, Google or Facebook to drive change?

October 27th, 2011 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Media, Politics, Social media

When social media came into being it generated a significant groundswell of people that believed that it would be a positive thing for society and community.

By forcing businesses to become more transparent and distributing the means of media production it was argued that our society would change for the better.

This point of view probably peaked in 2006/7 but bubbled below the surface for a lot longer than that.

I fully subscribe to this point of view.  I still do.

But there are doubts and questions in my mind.

2011 hasn’t done anything to allay my fears.

Since 2008 we’ve seen major abuses of poor by power elites and institutions in almost every sphere of our existence. Yes, these abuses have been exposed but take the global financial crisis as an example and you can see that little has actually changed despite the exposure of the wrong doers.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen the Occupy movement spring up but I don’t believe that any Government is actually really listening.  Yes, they have a voice.  Yes, they’ve gained some media coverage for their struggle and point of view but to what end.  Will anything really change?  The strong arm tactics employed by the police in the UK, Australia and USA would suggest that the traditional institutions still have the right to operate in the way that they see fit.

Taking a slight tangent here the one thing that really concerns me is this.

The companies that are really benefiting from social media are not complying or furthering the principles of openness and transparency upon which their industry is supposedly based.  Companies like Google and Facebook are in fact operating in very shady and opaque ways when it comes to managing information and data.

What hope is there  for greater transparency in society when the companies at the forefront of social media are acting in this way?

Marx argued that religion is the opiate of the people. Will social media one day assume this moniker?

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Should bloggers be more transparent about their traffic and engagement scores?

June 1st, 2010 by Daniel Young | 8 Comments | Filed in Blogging, Media, Social media

There are encouraging signs that blogging is gaining more traction in Australia. (more…)

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Social media Compliance is another complicating factor for marketers and PR

December 1st, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Public Relations

BzzAgent is a WOM agency that manages a network of 600,000 highly engaged consumer volunteers located throughout the US, Canada and the UK.  The WOM company has just announced a series of Compliance services to ensure that its clients in PR and marketing departments do not contravene the FTC’s Guides on endorsements in social media, which come into effect today.

I wrote an article in favour of these guidelines for Mumbrella.

BzzAgent refers to its network members as volunteers.  I thought volunteers worked for not-for-profits.  I think its inevitable that the WOM agencies will have to make full disclosure and transparency core to their service offering in order to stay on the right side of the FTC and similar enforcement agencies in other countries and for the reasons that I pointed out in the article for Mumbrella.

This graphic from BzzAgent provides a neat summary of the obligations under the FTC Guides and the steps that PR professionals and marketers can take to ensure compliance.

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Sponsored conversations not legit for organic search, says Google

March 11th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Social media

Yesterday I posted on the fact that Forrester has given the thumbs up for sponsored comment i.e. paying or backing bloggers to comment on a topic, product, brand etc. The Forrester report is entitled: “Add sponsored conversations to your toolbox”.

Forrester re-visited the topic of March 6 as it has generated a lot of feedback. Google have said that sponsored content should not appear in organic search results, which make sense. This is a impossible thing for Google to police – Forrester has recommended that sponsored content should have the tag ‘no follow’, which will prevent search engines picking it up. I wonder if clients will invest in sponsored content knowing that it will not be searchable.

Forrester breaks sponspored content down into two streams:

1. Editorial Stream: allowing paid for guest writers, thank you posts, disclosed sponsorships

2. Out of the Editorial Stream: banner ads, sponsorships, text links

The danger with sponsored content is that it may marginalise or compromise the blogosphere – the value of which is based on the fact that each blog represents an authentic and independent voice.

However, the simple issue of long-term viability and economics provides the need for bloggers to seek a return – some form of compensation – for what is a very time consuming task. The purests will argue that the commercialisation of blogs denegrates this form of consumer media. The counter argument is that commercialisation will enable blogs to survive and grow for the long term.

In time, perhaps high profile bloggers will be to the leverage the fact that they don’t accept any form of sponsorship as a source of ‘competitive advantage’.

I have seen a few examples of bloggers that make it very clear that they accept sponsorship and transparency is the absolute key here on both sides (blogger and sponsor) – as it is in the print media (where advertorial or sponsored feature clearly inform the reader that this is paid for editorial).

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