The ugly face of social media

“I think I will fly AirAsia X next. At the low cost airline conference in Singapore last week, Azran Osman Rani, CEO of the low cost, long haul airline, said that leaving the IFE out of their new 330s saved them 1.8 tonnes in weight.”

Yeoh Siew Hoon

Blog Author

Posts

The ugly face of social media

Yeoh Siew Hoon wonders if we could end up with unsocial media with the way things are going.

I wonder if social media reached the point of diminishing returns last week with the death of Michael Jackson and the subsequent fall of the mighty Perez Hilton?

I ask that question because I think the celebrity blogger’s fall from grace in just a matter of days could well herald the swinging of the pendulum back to some level of sanity, quality and credibility to the blogging and whole social media space.

Well, at least, I hope so.

Perez Hilton’s original post calling Jackson being rushed to the hospital a publicity stunt raised anger around the world and sparked a “unfollow” Hilton campaign on Twitter – #unfollowperez. Within hours, he went from 1.8 million followers to 800,000.

Granted, he is a celebrity blogger who thrives on rumour and gossip and thus should not be taken seriously but as they say, one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch and he is one of the most high profile bloggers there is.

What his post did was to show up the ugly side of blogging – mean, inaccurate, untrustworthy, an abuse of power.

On top of that, there’s the whole issue of fraud reviews on Trip Advisor written by PR and marketing people. Fraud reviews are on the rise and while Trip Advisor says it is trying to manage the situation, it is clear that the hijacking of social media by commercial interests could also create a backlash in this space.

Ditto with social networks. One reason we liked social networks was because they started out as our personal space. Then came the blurring of lines as groups began. First it was social interest groups, then special interest entities. Now commercial interests have also entered the space.

Ditto with Twitter which is now being increasingly used by PR and marketing folks.

Trust is slowly being chipped away.

Almost everyone wants to jump onto the social media bandwagon – it’s the latest fad. Should you or shouldn’t you? I don’t have the answers, nor does anyone I know.

What I do know is if we are not careful, we could end up making it unsocial media. And remember, just as Perez has found out, just as you can have instant fame, you can also have instant disgrace.

As swift as the rise is the fall …

4 comments so far ...

If anything, social media needs to become even more social rather than allowing the creation of celebrity bloggers like PH. I think what happened on Twitter is a wake-up call to all bloggers and commenters that the wisdom of the crowds is alive and well. Social media is all good, but step over the line and you will be reprimanded. Just illustrates that Mom's old saying "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all" still holds true (to some degree).

Social media is definitely here to stay and will continue to evolve. There will be new players coming online all the time. What we have to do is to be involved, play with it and learn as much as we can about this new media. Yes there will be commercialisation and aberrations, what's important is we do not ignore this new media and speaking as a X-genration person, we have to "evolve" in tandem or we get left behind and become ignorant and irrelevant when dealing with the Y and Z generations.

While it's true that twitter is in danger of being hijacked by marketing/spammy types, the coverage of Michael Jackson by social media was impressive, and has put a lot of traditional media noses out of joint. The Perez Hilton thing actually shows that social media is quick to correct aberrations and inaccuracy, perhaps more so than conventional media.

The Jackson saga actually tells us something else: that social media is much more sophisticated and advanced than outsiders realised. Now is the time for industries like travel to take it seriously and try to understand it, not merely milk it or dismiss it as a fad.

loosewireblog.com

Isn't it ironic that the more we are consumed by the on-line social media world, the more we keep our hands on the keyboard instead of either picking up the phone to talk or meeting each other in person. Thus we become anti-social by the very fact of not spending time talking and listening to one another and inter-acting socially.
Where are the relationship sales people going to come from in this next generation? Or don't we need them anymore?

Add your comment

Name
Email (will not be published)
Comments

	We welcome your comments on this blog. Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they maybe be edited. Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive or offensive.

yvComment v.1.18.3