Valleywag has inadvertently brought home a point about “social media” that I have recently been thinking about. Earlier today, they put out a rumor that Robert Scoble was being fired from PodTech, the vlogging company that he has become the unofficial spokesmodel for.

This rumor was sourced from the twitter account of someone who is known to be close to PodTech’s top staff members. Of course, it turns out the entire thing was patently false but it does raise the question of how the increased reliance on social media will affect how news is gathered and reported.

The Network Problem

Now that Facebook is a household name and Twitter is the geek tool de jour, a lot of powerful, connected and well respected people have migrated portions of their lives to public record. It seems, however, that they don’t recognize that the Internet is a scary place to live.

While it could be argued that blogging is an equally good way to get yourself put in tabloid hell, there are shades of difference that make micro-blogging a much more dangerous mode of communication for anyone who knows things that would best be left unsaid.

Blogging requires time. Time enough to fire up your WordPress account, find a funny picture, decide on a title that is sure to drive eyeballs to the article and then click publish. Micro-blogs and social networks take out much of this work, and more importantly much of the thought that usually keeps us from posting things that we’ll later regret.

If someone is angry, joking or drunk you could find yourself “tweeting” something that is later picked up as absolute truth. Truth not because it seems probable or is even logical, it becomes true because the statement can be sourced back to a name with credibility. Not that this is any different than how the real world functions, where a celebrity slip can put him on the front page of the Enquirer in about as much time as it takes to post this, but luckily for terrestrial celebrities most of their slips aren’t archived and searchable immediately after they are made.

Context

Precluding a backlash against micro-blogging our lives for all to see, the problem will only become worse. I am sure most any publisher worth his Federated Media ads spends at least some time searching their social network for interesting news. If not to use directly, at the very least to use as a springboard. It’s something that anyone who wants to play on social networks is going to have to realize.

If you say something in what you believe is a semi-private forum, don’t be surprised if it comes back to bite you in the tail. In a world where everyone is looking for a scoop, your little slip might be all the proof that someone needs to run a story that spreads through the blogosphere like fire. Unfortunately, once you get quoted — very few people are going to check back to see the context. Without context, mole-hills become mountains pretty quickly.

Web 2.0 Roundup

What can we do about it? Not all that much. As always, as we migrate through the development of the web, we find that it is becoming a lot more like the real world. The difference is that in the real world, our social networks are closely knit. On the net, our words ring out to the entire connected world, many of whom do not have our best interest in mind.

For anyone who has any sort of clout on the web, here is a piece of advice. It’s time to stop thinking of yourself as a grain of sand in a desert, and to start thinking of yourself as a minor celebrity. Like all good minor celebrities, you will be mostly ignored until you write something that makes people stand up and notice.

So be careful out there, everyone is watching.

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