Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Three Things About Social Media That Just Don't Make Sense...And Piss Me Off

Without any fanfare, here are three things about social media that are perplexing me today:
  1. Posterous comes to Ning's rescue. Except, um, last time I checked Posterous was a lazy-person's blog platform and Ning was a fully-functioning social network. It's like saying that Disney World is closing but have no fear--a movie theater chain is willing to step up and take their old traffic. In other words: does nothing for forlorn Disney customers but would be a goldmine for movie theaters. Nice going with this one, Posterous--way to take one for the team...and ride the coat-tails of all the coverage Ning is getting.
  2. Facebook replacing "fan" with "like." It made sense: you wanted to show to show support for a company, brand or public figure on Facebook, you became a fan. But Facebook, in its eternal quest to totally and completely exploit the information provided by its more than 400 millions users by monetizing every last bit of it, decided that people were more likely to merely "like" something rather than make the full commitment required of declaring themselves "fans", so they replaced "become a fan" with "like" because, in their words, ""We hope this action will feel much more lightweight." WTF? Oh, and not only will it ease the burden that fanning entails, it conveniently makes a bunch of our formerly-private information public.
  3. Facebook Community Pages. I defy you to read that and explain to me, in plain English, what the f*ck they are talking about. Seriously--I could not explain this feature to someone if my life depended on it.

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