New Social Networks

You're Doing it Wrong - The Anti-Social MediaI get a lot of press releases about new social networks.

Apparently, PR people think a guy who writes about how much he despises social media with every fiber of his very being wants to try out new social networks for fun and then write about them.

Right.

So, I read through these press releases, and almost always, I’m curious about how bad these social networks are. And almost always, they’re appallingly bad.

We added the ability to dislike things!  You can only have 25 friends! You have a better illusion about the ability to control your data!

Yes, those are the features that people are just dying to share with all their friends. Because everyone loves it when a friend tells them they are disliked.

Social networks aren’t built on one feature alone. It takes a set of complex features tied together to a network of people who produce enough interesting content to make me stay on the site. And that’s really damn hard to build.

I’m certainly willing to try a new social network, but give me a more compelling reason than one dumb feature.

And don’t send me an entire press release. I don’t have time to read all of that BS.

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5 Responses to “New Social Networks”

  1. Camilo Olea February 22, 2012 at 10:21 am #

    Oh, I hear you. The worst part is that they pitch them like the next big thing, and once you look at the site for 5 minutes you’re like “seriously?”.

    • Jay February 22, 2012 at 12:16 pm #

      Seriously.

  2. Jamie February 22, 2012 at 2:01 pm #

    Word.

    • Jay February 22, 2012 at 10:08 pm #

      To your mother.

  3. Ashley February 22, 2012 at 11:36 pm #

    I wouldn’t paint all PR people with the same brush, but yes, definitely a lot of them need to better understand who they’re pitching to and take a lesson in humility. I actually wrote this post a little while ago and today a pitcher mentioned this post and interpreted it as real, not sarcasm based on negative experience, and she pitched accordingly! Unbelievable. You shake your head wondering why so many pitchers just don’t get it. http://loveablehomebody.blogspot.com/2012/02/pitching-to-bloggers.html

    Social networks may be worth considering even if they aren’t cutting edge. Some people prefer a smaller community, might prefer the new network’s privacy guidelines, might find it easier to use, might find its search engine to be more efficient, etc. But I’m with you: it’s not cool of pitchers to try to lead people into thinking their network is cutting edge when it doesn’t offer anything unique at all. I’m all for people pitching to bloggers, but it has to make sense and it has to be fair.

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