If we’ve learned anything from the social media that have gone before it is that “it’s difficult to make good projects work well and it’s easy to make idealistic ones turn into hell”. I would personally be very wary of any tool built on non-exclusive participation.

I know, that sounds elitist and elitist is bad in pop culture. But most social media concepts are based upon an idealistic view that everyone will be equal and have the same amount of input. Where there are humans, this is rarely if ever the case.

Some social media are like a ponzy scheme in terms of their “added value” to each individual networking participant.

The network owner and managers gain some value from the existance and growth of the network only because they were first or “founders”. But their interests are not equal to those of the “downline” network participants who they usually do not allow to exploit the network for any real gain. In fact, there is a conflict of interest between the networking participants and the network “founder” or owner.

Networkers are attracted to the network by promises of considerable personal gain, usually through the great publicity and brand created by an ever increasing body of users.

as for the “other site”…:

Newsvine breaks the law of the Constitution of the United States: the first amendment of free speech.

They censor what they don’t like, especially when it’s the truth.

Soon there will be a class action lawsuit taking them down.

How can the profession of “link baiter for hire” even exist in this happy horseshit world of benevolent flower power espousing kitty cats?

I’m really glad I wasn’t taking a drink when I read that line.

My background is mostly in content management systems. Even in those communities, you see a lot of the same things as you described and, yes, there are plenty of Czars.

Great post Marty!

That said we DO make plenty of money, marketing with blogs, on SU, Digg, YouTube and other sites but we NEVER evangelize the religion of community participation as some sacred cow-or cut down others for trying to organize their friends earn a buck. So long as the content servers the community appropriately who cares? So long as the mob loves the show…who cares?

We talk about the WHOLE game…to serve both the community’s AND the advertisers’ need. We are gatekeepers too, never allowing crap into the communities we love…and don’t get me wrong…I LOVE SU. I LOVE Digg. I LOVE Sphinn.

Making money is cool. Social media religion is cool. Just tell both sides of the story from the same side of your mouth from the bully pulpit. I like the way Neil Patel talks about things. He is protective about being appropriate in the community…and also teaches us how to make money.

I only think it’s upsetting that they allow so much power to be concentrated in hands of the few zealots, many of whom have nothing outside of that network. Their power ego kills the progress itself

So people advocating exploitation on web 2.0 platforms are your enemies, not the marketers who try to make some sense out of all the work you do for those companies.