My Secret Fear About Social Media

So, at my other site, I’m writing about social media and doing some posts about the ethical use of social media sites. I’m petrified that something I’ll say will be inspire an idea for some loser spammer to start devolving Facebook or something.

Then I realized what is so different about social media that can virtually insulate it from spam. The user community.

Sometimes this is actually a curse though, because sometimes a segment of the community rises up and becomes a mob, bullying other legitimate people out of the circle. Poor Rudolfs in this situation sometimes don’t even realize that they have done something wrong, that exckudes them from the reindeer games.

I could take a million examples from Digg about this, but I won’t.

Instead I’ll give you three examples of communities that were smart enough to build around a sane userbase that was marginalized at Digg and other sites, simply from being misunderstood.

(The Search Engine Optimizers come to mind as one example. And though there are some serious scammers who are not fit to be called SEOs, it is the taint of this minority taint rhat colors the entire industry for people who aren’t in the know. Good SEOs are some of the most ethical people I know. Just want to say that before any Diggites decide to tell me how wrong I am.)

BUMPzee
Great community, very giving. You get best results by participating in the discussions, which is what I feel social media should be all about. BUMPzee is smart, social news sites, take note.

Instead of alienating your users or letting them be bullied out of your site, build special communities around them– especially if you have monetization plans in the future, you WANT business people on your side. Especially self interested, self promoting ones, because they buy ads.

PlugIM
Just posted an interview with the founder, Ryan. The concentration is on Internet Marketing news, and you’ll meet great people there. Not as much commenting on the site as there should be, but their explosive growth should take care of that.

Sphinn
Like Digg, but for the Search crowd, specifically. There are a bunch of these, and I dig them, but Sphinn is most interactive with their audience, constantly asking us what we think.

And here are some of the posts from my Social Media discussion:

1. It Rubs the Lotion on Its Skin or It Gets the Hose Again - Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0
2. What’s this Week All About and Why I Haven’t Written You a Book About Social Media
3. Four Ways to Use Google to Be More Social with Your Visitors
4. PlugIM Weekend : Five Ways to Get More Out of Your PlugLife
5. More PlugIM Weekend - The PlugIM Tool Belt
   …Includes the interview.

[tags]facebook, social media, social media optimization, smo, lockergnome, lockergnome.com, digg, plugim,plugim.com,bumpzee,sphinn,sphinn.com,bumpzee.com, social bookmarking, social news sites[/tags]