Social Media is Great for Rumors
Posted by Nick O'Neill on February 29th, 2008 2:43 PMI made a mistake. Honestly, I make mistakes all the time but when you make the mistake in your blog it is public and occasionally can be pretty devastating. Luckily this one wasn’t devastating but I definitely got to see the beginning of a potential disaster. On Wednesday evening I received an email from another blogger/journalist notifying me of a post they wrote. Apparently they had found a Facebook page pertaining to film. I checked out the page and also noticed a link for music.
The pages appeared as though Facebook was preparing to launch both a music and film service. Being the overly-eager blogger that I am, I posted an article proclaiming that “Facebook Music and Movies Goes Live!” Aside from the questionable grammar of the headline, I had jumped the gun and suddenly both my article and the other article were posted on Techmeme.
The reality was that Facebook was simply encouraging musicians and filmmakers to use their pages service. While I honestly think this was a cop-out on their end, it was a necessary political move. They want to ensure that this isn’t viewed as an attack against iLike, one of the most popular applications currently on Facebook. Soon enough Mashable jumped on the bandwagon and the rumor snowball had begun.
I learned two lessons from this. First, do a little more homework prior to rewording another article. Second, social media can instantly reward anybody with a catchy headline. While the reward may be short-lived, rumors can instantly snowball and can be reposted for Google to devour within a moment’s notice. Next thing you know, somebody is searching for “Facebook Music” and some unknown blogger (or myself) has proclaimed that Facebook music is launching.
This is the fault with social media and perhaps with computers in general. While people can create content and software systems can process them there is no determination of truth by the systems and it is up to the reader to determine them. Perhaps this is the fault with news in general because even trusted sources can get a story wrong. The next day it will end up as a correction but let’s be honest, who actually reads the corrections?
Do you think there is a problem with the system? Is it the reader’s job to determine what information is right and what is wrong when they are constantly consuming content? Have you made a similar mistake?
Update
Apparently the rumor that began with us found its way into PC World.
February 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Nick,
Its admirable of you to come out and correct the rumor in your blog.
I think the beauty of social media is that its fast, interlinked and people have so little time to react which on the upside carries the passion of the bloggers on the topic.
I am a big believer of extending web products to passionate users to create an evangelical effect. So I see that facebook got market feedback on a Music service free of cost because of you. They should maybe try to market test some of their futuristic ideas by opening up and exploring it with the blog world before actually building it the way they think their users are likely to adopt it. Imagine how much hassle it would have saved facebook if you started such a snowball about Beacon before it went live
Re: Is it the reader’s job to determine what information is right
I think we all peg our loyalty to set of blogs and media sites like yours to give not just correct information, correct analysis to feed us data to think and consume what we like.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:57 pm
You make a great case for journalism. Blogging is not journalism, and we really need both media forms. Accuracy is a primary reason.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Your in good company: Carl M. Cannon has a pretty dead on article, The Real Computer Virus, on how even the most trustworthy news sources crack under the misinformation of the Web.
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Nick, I’ve been keeping up with SocialTimes for a few weeks, and I have to say it is wonderful reading. Very timely and relevant to those who, like me, are incorporating social media into broader marketing strategies and programs. Keep up the great work and the fine writing.
March 4th, 2008 at 10:37 am
I think that with social media, as with all other media, the responsibility is shared.
“You” (i.e. not you in particular, but all of us) as author have a responsibility to make the effort to ensure that the information you’re providing is accurate, though what that means varies from case to case: sometimes “I trust the person from whom I got this information” may feel good enough, and other times “I need direct confirmation from someone involved before I believe this” may be the line.
“You” as reader have a responsibility to exercise the same sort of judgment when reading: authors make mistakes, authors have their own perspectives, and authors may even provide incorrect information for their own purposes, nefarious or otherwise.
I don’t feel it’s reasonable to entirely abdicate this responsibility in either role, but if I had to choose I would that one has greater responsibility as an author. You are implicitly vouching for the accuracy of information by choosing to share it; if you’re talking about a rumor, make it very clear that it’s a rumor — provide your readers with enough information about how you got your information that they can fulfill their part of the bargain and judge for themselves.