Weekly social media wrapup: Mob Mentality edition.
Another week over, another installment of The Social Pathology Report from Luckie's intrepid Whitney Mitchell:
While trying to stay on top of news this week, I kept getting distracted by all the people being "up in arms" about certain topics. Some were lobbying for change, while some were just "mad as hell" and "not gonna take it anymore". Either way, I hope those guys found a nice place under a shade tree and a cold, refreshing glass of Riesling because it was drama week with a capital D in Internet land.
- "THE REPLIES KERFUFFLE": Twitter sparked a random riot by eliminating a little-used feature that let you see all your friends' posts that were in reply to people you don't know. (I know, it's hard to even explain, but some people thought it helped them find new friends.) This vocal minority flooded the Web with demands that Twitter bring back the old system, but to no avail. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone put it thusly: "For the 3% who wanted to see replies to people they don't follow, we cannot turn this setting back on in its original form for technical reasons and we won't rebuild it exactly the same for product design reasons." OH SNAP! [blog.twitter.com]
- Google FAIL!: 14% of Google users worldwide couldn't access parts of Google-affiliated sites this past Thursday morning. Based on the noise in my personal Twitter feed, however, the outage actually affected 117% of the Web-browsing community. Here's what ABC News dug up about the problem, and as usual, Asia was to blame. [ABC NEWS]
- SORE SUBJECT CITY: Facebook WILL allow thousand of users who were members of disbanded Holocaust-denial groups to remain on the popular social network. Thousands? Wow... painful to believe. [SFGate.com]
- TWIBES: As if my aunt bogarting the computer to update her "Tweetster" weren't enough, you can now join a "Twibe" (Yes, they're serious) for other folks on Twitter with common interests. [Twibes.com}
- PO-HATE-TOES: Green bloggers came after Lay's with torches and pitchforks for its new "local potatoes" marketing initiative. [GreenBiz]
- FREE THE HOPS: Alabama-based grassroots movement Free The Hops lobbied on behalf of craft brewers (and beer lovers alike) to pass a bill that would allow for the purchase of beer with a higher than 6% alcohol ratio. SUCCESS! Now Free the Hops is using Twitter and its blog to drive e-mails to Alabama Governer Bob Riley, who must decide whether to sign the bill into law. [Free The Hops]
As always, if you have any tips or links worth mentioning, send me some social aggregation fodder via the e-mail or on the Twitters.
Whitney Sides Mitchell is an intern social media planner for Luckie & Co., founder of the local-music blog BHAM.FM and a music blogger for AL.com. Her Social Pathology Report appears here each Friday.
We had a good Twitter campaign to break a Senate filibuster on Free the Hops, too.
Details: http://www.examiner.com/x-9094-Birmingham-Libertarian-Examiner~y2009m5d4-Its-time-to-tweet-the-hops-free
Posted by: Stephen Gordon | May 15, 2009 at 06:54 PM
Yup. Lots of people up in arms. Loved Biz Stone's response too. Here's hoping a backlash at the Up In Arms crew quickly develops.
Posted by: Alan Wolk | May 15, 2009 at 09:04 PM
Heh. Great post. According to my personal Twitter feed, not only did the "Replies Kerfluffle" affect 147% of the global internet population, it was a boldfaced attempt by the powers-that-be to revoke our constitutional and g-d given right to free speech. As for everything else going on in the world, Google fail hardly registered. And then... Relative silence.
It's amazing how much calmer my Twitter stream has become since Biz & Co. laid down the law. It's not even overwhelming anymore, in comparison, and I follow over 1,000 Tweeple. If I was one of the 3% affected by the change, then I must be part of the 0.00001% who felt it had a positive impact on the world. I mean, Twitterverse. (The real world still exists somewhere out there, right?)
Enjoyed your writing, and look forward to future posts. Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Jessica Rohloff | May 15, 2009 at 09:41 PM
"...and as usual, asia was to blame." hey thanks for that antagonistic sneer. at first i was kinda pissed, but then i did some research.
although your ABC article link has no mention of asia, one more click is all it takes to reveal that "[Google] blamed the trouble on a glitch that routed too much of its traffic through computers in Asia, overwhelming its system".
anyone with half a brain can ascertain that clearly Asia as a whole was the root cause of the problem, not some software glitch.
...
seriously, what's your beef with asia anyways
Posted by: Ming | May 18, 2009 at 06:25 PM