This is true even when we deal with bad apples:  These are the copy cats and snake oil salesmen who skirt licensing and permissions and make unethical use of IP and content. We've all seen them at work and many of us have seen our work replicated and re-branded by others in a way that has been disconcerting - and even maddening.

In response to the snakes..n. I have always tried to maintain an optimistic perspective.  I generally believe what goes around, comes around... and that MOST people aren't jerks. I have held out hope that smart people will be able to recognize the copy cats and snake-oil salesmen.


In the not to distant past, I encountered a situation where one of my course attendees from a major university announced her intention to take my ideas and course materials and repackage them into a workshop, for which she was charging a premium.  Prior to taking my class, this individual couldn't recognize an ear from an elbow with regard to social media - yet the person's desire to reincarnate into a social media "guru"seemed focused and intentional.

I made the discovery two days before the class. While at first I was amused, I then considered the hefty, password protected companion website I'd created for the course.  It featured my own laboriously assembled class presentations as well as an array of fully accredited and referenced articles, how-to's, videos, research, case studies , etc. from a variety of sources (some of which I paid to license and others from respected sources and peers in the field).

Needless to say, the site took weeks to assemble - not including the months of collecting I'd done or the pre-course survey I did to make sure I had content tailored to specific types of business.  To be honest, if I'd counted those hours in my prep time, I didn't break even teaching that course.  However, in truth, I didn't put the site together for money.  I wanted to be open about sharing - promote the outstanding work of folks in my social media network -- and enable course participants (mostly SMB's) to help themselves succeed long after I was gone.  

What happened next is something people have called "Divine Intervention."  My "copy cat" was stricken by a "freak illness" the day before class and ended up hospitalized during the days of the course. As a no-show, the person never gained access to the course materials - and I was relieved.

Crisis averted...but BOY did it all make me think ...

• Has this made me more reticent to trust? Yes Peter!  Absolutely.
• Has it made me think more carefully about what and how I share? Yes - and I think I'm afraid I'm still too open for my own good ...
• Is Plagiarism changing how I will proceed with monitoring and Creative Commons attribution? Yes.
• Will the tools and monitoring and licensing be enough? No, Peter!  I don't think so - and here's why:

In my opinion -- beyond the lack of proper awareness and education in this area, I believe the plague of plagiarism is a reflection of a larger crisis of ethics.  

As we both know: You can't legislate morality.  

Consider the fact that most people do not think twice about ripping CDs and sharing music and images in a manner that is an active violation of Federal Law. The sad truth is that the illegal use of material and especially digital assets is pervasive in our cultures...often "accepted" and practiced -- in households, businesses and even churches across our nation and around globe. While there are some who won't do this because of their own moral convictions -- It is likely that a large number of our readers do this without thinking!

So, why should people view our digital content and IP any differently?

I submit that they do not.  We'll see the results outside of business service offerings, white papers and blog posts in the term papers of the future.  And with the proliferation of media, it may be more and more difficult to figure out where people are getting their material in the future.

Moving forward, what can we do?  Lots of good comments on Peter's post aboout this.  My thoughts:


1. Each one of us must take initiative to protect our investments with the resources and tools we have at our disposal.  My tool kit includes many of the ones Peter mentioned... Many of these will mature over time - and get better and helping us monitor the "snakeosphere."

2. We can leverage the law where it matters most.  Existing laws should help protect us, but I'll go out
on a limb to assert that the law may be most useful for those with a great deal of time and money to spare. For a large number of us, using the law and the courts to resolve issues is likely to be "resource prohibitive." 

3. We can find ways to empower the "Social Media Sphere" to police itself.   Community and peer pressure can often go far to change the behavior of the masses.  Many of us have asked questions about what we can do about plagiarism. The big question is how we can police ourselves without giving seedy people attention they may actually benefit from?  Stuff like mentions, site traffic, inbound links, etc.  Google doesn't penalize people for "negative" attention. ;-)

To his credit, Peter "ousted" a few offenders in the comments field of yesterday's post.  It needed to be done. However, this is slightly problematic from the standpoint that publicly ousting a snake oil salesman from a high profile, thought leader's blog immediately creates traffic and links in to the web properties of the offender that can boost things like the "T-rating" "G-rating" and site traffic and comments. On the up-side, a least we know who to look out for! The problem is, this can result in greater visibility that might work in the individual's favor...


Also to his credit, Armano didn't link to the guy who was ripping off his feed (at least I didn't see a link).  Incidentally, guy was ripping off feeds from other thought leaders, making up quotes and facts about himself,.  This guy even had the audacity to rip off his entire site design from Google, and swipe a commercial social media video created by Sprint, removing the brand name and inserting his own!   I'll admit that when I saw this guy at work, I wanted to "out" him to everyone I knew  -- "sicking the social media community" on his butt, so to speak... Perhaps we all did -- but we seemed to apply restraint so as not to give this guy any attention that might be used to his advantage. The problem with this is, we can't warn others about the snake oil peddlers this way.

Moving forward, perhaps using a hash tag on Twitter like #snakeoil  - just  as a way to index this discussion. I'n not sure that would be highly effective as a policing method, though. A few people have suggested creating a "Snake Oil Wiki"  - and I'd say it would have to require people to submit screen-grabs of an accused person's offenses AND (in the interest of fairness) offer a forum for accused individuals to defend themselves.  This way - it's fair and the evidence remains when sites are changed (as they often are post-discovery). Not sure who wants to take that on, from a legal perspective...but it'd certainly require counsel and legal backup!

In the mean time, I'll continue on...trying hard to provide value and trying to be an optimist.  I'll rely on the tools that are available -- in addition to applying prayer as needed when the jerks try to ruin my day. After all, as my story tells, it has proven to be my most effective tool, to date!   ;-)

As context, Li was talking how, beyond the contact lists, implicit data helps fill in gaps about the level of closeness or intimacy individuals have with each other. She went on to talk about how this will change in the future based on usage patterns detected by Google and other social networks... painting a picture of a future "social algorithm."

I don't disagree with Li's assertions at all - in fact I think she's spot on. It's the slide above that kept coming to mind. Taking that graphic at a literal level, I don't agree that the implicit data represented above really does help fill in gaps regarding people's relationships in any way other than a subjective one - nor do I think it reflects any kind of accurate indicator of an individual's level of "closeness" or "intimacy" with others (trust). Incidentally, I'm not sure Charlene actually asserted this... I believe the slide was used in a figurative manner.

But it still got me thinking about both sides of the trust equasion. How do individuals (specifically with regard to social media) think about trust with regard to other people?   How do marketers look at Trust in the networked economy?

For individuals, here's my take on what the trust spectrum might look like:



Playing off the concept of "circles of trust", we see an outward radiation of trust and intimacy.  At the "inner circle" there is high trust.  In the outer circle there is "no trust"  In further examining trust dynamics, it's fair to assert that people tend to transition back and forth between spheres, depending on events, mood, conversation, disposition and other factors.   

If you buy this concept, trust, or intimacy is therefore somewhat fluid. It's also device and technology independent (although the actions at the right of that diagram show how I might interact with individuals using social media terms).  We'll come back to this in at the end.


1. VOICE:  Understanding where an individual is trusted is an essential component of targeting. Voice examines an individual's level of engagement (posts, tweets, discussions, comments) across various topics (e.g. Frugal Living) and the overall sentiment of that engagement (positive, negative, neutral) over time.  In other words:  
For example, I might trust Beth Kanter as an authority on non-profits and social media.  However, I might not trust her as a good referral source on which flat screen TV I should buy.  As such, voice is a critical area of examination related to targeting high-trust individuals.


2. REACH: Examining the network of the individual is also an essential component of targeting. This includes an understanding of the person's online and offline influence, across traditional media channels (e.g. television, print, etc.).  In the online channels, reach examines the size and scope of the individual's active network within various sites and networks, as well as the frequency of communication that occurs. 


Furthermore, examining how the communication and dialog flows across online and offline channels may be germane to gauging the efficacy of an individual's reach. 

INFLUENCE:  There's been a lot of talk about influence today - and I don't want to rehash all that dialog. At a high level, and in simple terms, I see it as an outcome of a number of other considerations.  Primarily, I believe it is a measure of an individual's reach divided by the number of high trust relationships (see circle diagram above) times voice...something like this:


If influence directly impacted by the ebb and flow of trust within an individual's network, it it's important to note that influence is also somewhat fluid and relative. And all of this is already measured as a factor of time.

The sticky challenge is measuring the level of trust individuals have within their network. The truth is this: As outsiders, we can only gauge an individuals relationship on a trust spectrum based on a myriad of attributes, including length of relationship, messaging frequency, physical relationship, public/private discourse, "lists", discussion topic(s), sentiment, recent events, real-world connection and other complex and sometimes esoteric factors.  In the end, some of this data will be available and some will not.  As such, the outcome is somewhat likely to be somewhat subjective...depending on the time frame reviewed, quantity and amount of information analyzed (etc.).

1. The overall size and activity of the channel's network (established user base)
2. The actual or potential size, significance of the end-user's in-channel network (my network)
3. The ease of replicating a user's in-channel network within another channel ("portability")
4. The tools base level of reliability and performance (base level functionality & decent "up time")
5. The existence of other tools that help alleviate application shortcomings (e.g. Tweetdeck for Twitter)

The last few posts have outlined some thoughts on the subject of Transparency. This generated some input from a few friends on the issue of "Authenticity."

One buddy stressed how important it is to demonstrate authenticity within emerging channels - specifically within social media. I thought about this a little, and I have a slightly different take on the matter.

I think we're already seeing a ton of authenticity in emerging media. For the observant, social media makes it relatively easy to piece together a somewhat realistic view of what goes on - or the thinking of various people and brands.

The problem is, not all of it is authentically good. There are a ton of people and companies being real out there. I'm not sure people always want to see real... because sometimes, reality bites!

• Hey, Cool Thought Leader: I don't want to find out you work in your momma's attic in your boxers and eating Cheetos as you crank out amazing insight. I'd rather have the illusion of a casual professional in an internet cafe or something.
  
• Hey, "Expert": I don't want to hear you yapping constantly about how great you are - or telling me to find out for myself by buying your sensational eBook for just $29.95. If you're that great, lemme hear it from others.
  
• Hey, Big Company: It's nice that you're fighting hunger in Africa with your $20 million dollar donation ... but you just laid off 5,000 American workers. :-(
  
• Hey, Huge Brand: I don't want to know that your social media outreach is being run by interns who love Gossip Girl, reality television and clubbing.

Seriously, some of what we're seeing is authentically bad stuff ... authentically ego-centric...authentically self-serving garbage. Further, too much reality can be a bad thing. We don't need more of this.

Without a doubt, we all love authentic good: Especially when it's not misleading or a smoke screen for the bad; Especially if it involves daisies, puppies and children. Authentically good stuff makes people feel better about interacting with you or your brand. It brings them back for more, and encourages them to tell others about your greatness.

At the same time, there are probably some authentically bad aspects of each one of us that might be better left unseen... or dare I say it -- repented of and remedied! ;-)

In the end, I'm sticking to my assertion that in emerging channels, people only want a level of insight into you that makes them feel more secure and confident investing themselves as your friend. (Note: Investment = giving you their time, attention, follows, engagement, recommendations, ranking, referrals, sharing your content, purchasing, etc.)

Strike this balance and you're off to a great start.