When social media destroys a career — The business case for being a fake
Oct 4th
A guest post by {grow} community member Leslie Lewis
Leslie Lewis is not my real name. You don’t need to know my real name, and you may never know it. Here’s why.
I’ve worked in social media since 2005, and I knew I needed a tightly controlled message and presence online. You could Google my real name and find my blog, or find me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, or Facebook.
Like you, I used my real name, shared real stories, photos, and details from my life. I was as transparent and authentic as I preached to my clients that they needed to be.
All of that ended in early 2010 when someone launched an online smear campaign against me, with allegations that were wholly baseless and untrue but were professionally damaging.
I contacted law enforcement officials, but they were helpless to stop the flow of fake accounts being created in my name due to issues of state, federal and international jurisdiction complications.
After consulting with several lawyers I was told that civil action would be a long, disruptive, and expensive process. In the end I was advised that my best option would be to directly contact Google or LinkedIn every time a new one appeared. Not very practical.
The end of my brand
My career nearly ground to a halt. After several months, I consulted with friends, family and people in the social media community, and I decided I needed to go “underground.” I locked down, and in several cases deleted, my social media presence.
Five years of community building and establishing a brand behind my name were gone. For nine months I had virtually no social media footprint, but at least the attacks finally stopped.
The transparency that we all advocate to our clients was what was used to harm me. While going underground brought an end to the attacks, it has hurt me professionally. Social media strategy is a practical discipline: We show that we are able to do for our clients by doing for ourselves.
In December of 2010 I inched back online, using Twitter with a pseudonym. As I began making and rebuilding connections the pushback I have received from social media professionals on Twitter has been unexpected.
When my email address and Twitter name don’t correspond, I am frequently met with stark skepticism of my intentions or the implication that I am “doing social media wrong.”
As social media professionals we tend to conflate the concepts of “transparency” and “authenticity.” Frequently they are used as synonyms, or, that if one is not present it invalidates the other.
Transparency is not the same as authenticity and authenticity is not dependent on transparency.
Moving forward
In the real world we meet people every day and accept them at face value, rarely stopping to question their identity. In real life we don’t demand the type of immediate transparency of each other that we do online. The neighbor with the unlisted phone number, the friend who goes by his middle name or the parent with a different last name than their child; we don’t (or at least the polite among us don’t) demand explanations of them.
We shrug our shoulders at these incongruities and don’t allow them to take away from our enjoyment of, or the credibility of these individuals. Why then, don’t we do this online? I could just as easily be an SEO mole as the neighbor with the unlisted phone number could be a bank robber. Why don’t we explain away similar incongruities in online identity that we do offline?
These are issues that are not new to online communication, yet they seem to linger. We have all seen social media go wrong and unfortunately we have all seen it used as a weapon of destruction. My situation is, sadly, not all that uncommon. As a profession we need to move towards a framework wherein privacy and security concerns are not trumped by demands for transparency and authenticity.
Don’t we?
Leslie Lewis is a digital media strategist working in public health, social marketing and behavior change at a Washington, DC based
NGO. She’s still trying to get this pseudonym thing worked out and is accepting suggestions
Illustration: citypeoplefashion.com
The blogger’s electronic arsenal
Sep 29th
I am in the middle of a heavy travel schedule and I seem to be carrying around more and more electonics to support my office on the road. I laid everything out on the hotel room bed and … it is getting to be a little ridiculous.
But for your amusement, here are the electronics in my briefcase on nearly every business trip:
A- Power cord for computer.
B- iPad 2. This is sometimes optional, but it is required for the classes I teach at Rutgers. The iPad comes standard issue for all students, so when I’m teaching, I pack it. It is also handy for reading while working out or hanging out at the hotel bar.
C – Toshiba Portege R835. Please … no lectures about Macs! For my work, this computer is perfect. It is extremely light, durable, boots up quickly, and has a nine-hour battery life. I love this laptop. This is my rock. All of my writing is done on this computer.
D – Kodak Zi8 HD video camera. I always carry this with me in case I have an opportunity for a great interview. This device packs a wallop in a small package and it was less tham $150. Fantastic picture quality and it has a very handy built-in USB jack that pops out of the bottom for easy uploads. Sometimes I also carry a small tripod but left it home this trip.
E- Remote for video camera. With this, I can switch the thing on and off remotely so I can set it up and go. This saves editing. Every video I have published on {grow} has been done with one take and no editing. Just don’t have time for it! The remote did not come standard. I got it off Amazon.
F- iPod. I know I could use my iPhone, or even my iPad for music, but I just like the idea of carrying 10,000 songs with me at all times. Sometimes I have trouble falling asleep in hotels and the iPod is what I need to settle my mind. I know I can leave it behind, but I won’t.
G – Shure noise reduction headphones. These cost more than the iPod. Why? Because life’s too short for grainy music. And when you’re in the airport, those crying babies, annoying beep-beep-beep golf carts, and ridiculously loud gate announcements all fade away so you can concentrate on writing. Good headphones are a little luxury I allow myself!
H – External Flash Drive. I carry two with me actually because I’m paranoid about losing data.
I – Energizer brand external battery for iPhone. I am a heavy data user and the battery life on the iPhone does not last the whole day so I always carry some reserve power.
J – Charger for reserve battery.
K – External mouse. I don’t use this very much but it comes along for the ride.
L – iPad/iPhone charger.
M – Targus “clicker.” I don’t know what the offical name for this is, but this is what moves the Powerpoint slides along. Very well-crafted device. Has internal compartment for an extra battery and the USB thingy. I have to figure out a way to stop losing these things. This is the third one I bought this year and they’re not cheap.
N- Sony external microphone. If you buy a video camera, make sure it has an external microphone jack. This mic works well but I didn’t buy a long enough cord. This is only like four feet long. I need one about 10 feet long!
Missing from photo – iPhone 4. It was missing because I was taking this photo with it! The iPhone4 is the greatest productivity device known to mankind. It does everything except take quality videos.
So now I would like to hear from you. What does your blogging arsenal look like? Any key tools I’m missing? Any you would take away to make my bag lighter!! : )
Disclosure: I have no official ties to any of these products or brands, and have received no compensation for this article.
A broken heart for the social media community
Sep 4th
My friend Trey Pennington, one of the most popular figures on the social web, committed suicide today.
I have been trying to figure out how to deal with this tragedy. I’ve been pushing it down, pushing it down. I want it to go away. But I decided that not writing something would be cowardly and a disservice to a man who has helped me and so many people around the world.
Trey was one of my first mentors on the social web and I tell part of our story in my book The Tao Of Twitter … I also use his story of generous networking support as a best-practice case study in many of my college classes.
I had the pleasure of meeting him in real life several times over the years and we had some really great times together. I began to get closer to him as he planned to be a keynote speaker at Social Slam, an event I curated and hosted earlier this year. I didn’t know Trey as well many of his long-time friends, but he felt comfortable enough with our relationship that he visited me again this summer and confided in me some of the deep troubles that I can only assume led to this tragedy. I promised him that I would be available to him, whenever he needed me. Based on the outpouring of emotion on his Facebook page, there were a ton of people who had made the same offer. And you know, we meant it. In the ensuing months, I called him and sent him emails, letting him know I was still there, I was there, I was there.
A few weeks after we met, Trey tried to commit suicide and was hospitalized. He seemed to come out of it OK and he approached his work with an air of confidence, at least through his public persona. I tried to stay connected with him and when I heard back from him, he assured me that he was on his way back, although he still had some serious, and growing, problems to overcome.
To view his Facebook and Twitter updates, you would think he was fine. He was proud of his speaking career, appreciative of his friends, seemingly excited about an upcoming trip to Europe.
In recent months, I thought it was a little strange he posted photos of himself so often. In a car. In a bus. At a coffee shop. Hauntingly, in front of the bridge that was the site of his first suicide attempt. He said he was losing weight. But these photos were sending another message. In reality, he was telling us that he was literally fading away before our eyes.
Trey was simply one of the nicest and most generous people on the planet. Even when the chemicals in his brain were relentlessly pushing him into overwhelming depression he was thinking of others. They say that suicide is a selfish decision. It doesn’t make sense. It’s totally confusing. Trey? Selfish? No.
Some of his last Facebook posts and tweets didn’t make sense either. They were not messages from a man about to kill himself, were they? An hour before he died, he “liked” Jay Baer’s Facebook update about going to a rock concert. Why wasn’t he asking somebody for help???
Trey is the second person I have known to end his own life. In both cases, they were literally the most unlikely people ever to do this. You just shake your head and think … No way. No freaking way.
So many questions that will never be answered. So much pain. I’m angry that the chemicals won. That they wouldn’t let him alone long enough to get one moment of clarity … to be able to see clearly enough to consider the implications for his six children. For his baby grandson. He was so proud of that baby. For the hundreds of people he touched in his community and the thousands of people around who are in shock and are in mourning today. These are people who sincerely loved him and would have been on his doorstep in a heartbeat. All he had to do was ask.
Oh Trey. Why? You are so loved.
From the Suicide Survivors Support Group:
I don’t know why.
I’ll never know why.
I don’t have to know why.
Google’s plan for world domination — REVEALED!
Aug 22nd
I’ve figured out Google’s grand plan for world domination. More or less.
See if this makes sense to you. It sure did last night when I was sipping whiskey on my back porch.
Google’s business is built on collecting data about people and then selling those people highly targeted ads. The more data they collect, the more ads they can sell.
That’s why they introduced Google +. Facebook was getting too doggone much of the information collection market. Even Twitter was honing in. Every tweet was one little snippet that was out of reach of Google. So Plus was a bold grab at world info marketshare.
if you don’t think this is the name of the game, look at what happened this week with pharmaceutical companies. Facebook reversed their decision that had allowed pharma companies to not have comments on their pages. This provides potential costs, complications and legal ramifications for these folks that I won’t get into here, but you can read about it more thoroughly in this scintillating coverage from the Pharma Times.
Nobody seems to know why Facebook did this. Except me of course. It’s all clear. Or a wild guess. You decide. The way I see it, if Facebook pages don’t have comments, Facebook can’t collect information. If they can’t collect information, they can’t sell targeted ads. And they HATE that.
But I digress. In the whole big global pie of digital information, there is one gold mine that has yet to be tapped. In fact, it might be the motherlode of personal information and it lies tantalizingly out of reach of Google, of Facebook, of everyone.
Text messages.
The world sends billions of text messages every year. Or is it every day? I can never be sure of these numbers. I usually make my facts up anyway. 57.8 percent of all statistics are made up. You can take that to the bank.
But I digress again. Now, how in the world would Google ever get access to text messages? Hmmm … perhaps they should buy a mobile phone company like Motorola! Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit. They just did that.
Android Shmandroid. Google wants the text messages!
Now there is this sticky little issue of privacy to overcome. To really get access to text messages, you would have to obtain people’s permission to actually give up their most intimate thoughts and dreams to the Internet.
Who would be stupid enough to do that? Wait, wait … I know this one! TEENAGERS. Hell, they already spill their lives all over Facebook every day anyway.
What would it take for a high schooler to give up the nano-particle of privacy they have left and let Google listen to their text stream? How about a free smartphone, complete with all the latest Google Goodies? How many teenagers would give up their text privacy for a new smartphone every year? All of them. That is a scientific fact. I saw it on The View.
Let’s look at how the economics would play out. Let’s say the manufacturing cost of a smartphone is $25. Do you think Google could sell the equivalent of $25 worth of new ads over the course of a year to reach a break-even? You betcha. I’d buy stock in that.
So that is the plan. While Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune is climbing by a billion dollars a year (or is it a day?) Google is going to data-mine text messages all day long and kick his Silicon Valley ass to the curb. That really is the plan. I read it on Twitter. Or maybe it was Harvard Business Review. Oh well, same thing.
Does any of this make sense or do I have to cut out caffeine?
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