As one of the founding members of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, I contribute to the greater collective of intellectual activity dedicated to advancing media and communication.
Fellow members, Chris Saad and Stowe Boyd have been discussing the ethics and best practices around social media and social tools specifically with Eric Blantz and Khris Loux with specific regard to JS-Kit. Independently, I have also discussed and supported a more people-focused approach to connecting with courtesy of those companies that continually force the discussion by upsetting the balance between brand and community.
Facebook’s introduction of its new Terms of Service (ToS) was the most recent example of what not to do. Facebook also learned from this occurrence and created a new paradigm for user generated governance (UGG) empowering its community of users with the ability to contribute to the process of policy making.
The work of Eric Blantz, Khris Loux, Chris Saad and Stowe Boyd was presented to the Media 2.0 Workgroup for evaluation, sculpting, and ultimately introduction to the greater community to serve as inspiration for any business that seeks guidance when engaging users, customers, and peers.
Version 1.0 is currently hosted at www.mediabestpractices.com for interaction and collaboration.
The initial group includes the following: Chris Saad, Khris Loux (On Behalf of JS-Kit), Eric Blantz, Stowe Boyd, Micah Baldwin (On behalf of Lijit), Ben Metcalfe, Marianne Richmond, Jeremiah Owyang, Daniela Barbosa, Peter Kim, Loïc Le Meur (on behalf of Seesmic/Twhirl), Deborah Schultz and me.
Related Posts on PR 2.0:
– Barack Obama and User Generated Governance
– Facebook and the Reality of Your Online Content
– The Socialization of Your Personal Brand
– In the Social Web, We Are All Brand Managers
– Facebook is the Hub for Your Personal Brand
– Facebook is a Beacon for Bad PR
– Mark Zuckerberg Listens and Responds to Beacon Crisis
– Beware the Things You Share in the World of Social Media
– The Essential Guide to Social Media
– The Art and Science of Social Media and Community Relations
Yet another session where no users are presented, and without any meaningful method to even poll or get users represented, so it’s the monarchs — the geek devs or the corporate funders — who are deciding…”user generated governance”.
You cannot have UGC when you have no users present in the deliberations of what constitutes “ethics” and “best practices”.
Yes, Mark Zuckerberg got it very wrong, and his current democracy exercise is still a fraud because *he* is packing a “users’ council,” *he* and his staff frame all the documents, a ridiculously short timeframe is imposed and so on. If you have UGC, users really have to really do it, not you posing in the users’ interests.
There needs to be a new kind of paradigm of socialware that consciously codes in user participation at the outset and doesn’t reward coders for insolence and insularity and exclusion and even ridicule of users.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/02/socialware-the-next-stage-of-computing-and-communications-or-here-comes-everybody-except-clay-shirky.html