feminist blogs in english

"Devastated but Don't Ask Me Why." That's a status message I saw on a social network, and it once again made me think about the nature of privacy.

Despite obviously being willing to share information over the Net which we may not have been willing to share over coffee, we still demand privacy. We exhibit facets of our lives, and then inform people that our privacy should be respected. And while that's entirely understandable: privacy should be respected, what often seems to happen is that people volunteer more information than they ever should if they want to keep something private, and then demand that others delve no further.

Take the case of the status message -- if you choose to inform the world that you're devastated, perhaps you should not also require people not to ask you questions in the same breath. Yes, you do have the right to privacy, and you have the right to refuse to answer questions, but if those two rights are important to you, why on Earth would you leave a message up for all of your "Friends" on a social network to see saying that you're devastated? Unless of course you do want them to ask (? themselves) why you're devastated.

Although that's perhaps got something to do with the changing nature of the way in which we view privacy. There was a time when certain subjects were private. Nowadays, it is not certain subjects which are "private" -- what defines whether or not a matter is private in our eyes is not its content but our willingness to share the infomation, to control whether or not that information is made public. If we choose to make it public, it certainly isn't private even if it involves the most intimate details of our lives, but if we choose not to share it, it is private even if the "it" involves mundane details of what we ate for dinner.

Feminism makes it way all across the internet–in universities all over the world, news articles posted online, in forums, on Facebook, and (as the title suggests), Twitter. I’ve talked about the impact of social media and feminism in a video interview I did awhile back. But for this post, I want to stress the impact [...]

I’m not sure whether Naomi, Linda, Tatiana, Christy, or Cindy are really on Twitter, but if they are, their strategy probably involves one of five “supermodels” of Twitter participation.

[Yes, that's what we call a bait 'n switch, but since you're more interested in Twitter than in Supermodels, you don't really mind, right?]

If you know anything about supermodels — and let’s face it, you probably do — you know that everybody from Andre Leon Talley to Cindy Leive to Mark Morris has his or her own idea of what constitutes a ’supermodel’.

In the real world, it actually doesn’t matter what criteria you use, as long as you get the right types for your own personal catwalk.

The same is true on Twitter. Just like everybody has his or her pantheon of “Supermodels” (Claudia, in or out?), folks have different ways of parsing the roles people create for themselves on Twitter. You can choose from among these typologies the roles that work for you.

(”But don’t Social Media and Fashion clash?” you ask. Only for those who lack a sense of adventure. I am going to “make it work”. Tim Gunn told me to.)

Here are my personal favorite 5 Supermodels of Twitter.

These five models organize what’s fashionable, and show you how to work it.

1. Tamsen McMahon at ‘Round the Square shows how Trust Agents can rock twitter.

Chris Brogan and Julian Smith defined Trust Agents, and McMahon sorted Trust Agents into 5 different models explaining how Trust Agents add value. It turns out that, with Tamsen’s models, Trust Agents translate to Twitter much better than fashion models translate into actors.  The 5 models include:

• The creator. The person who creates new ideas. The generator.
  
  
• The connector. The person who connects ideas, and /or people, together.
  
  
• The filter. The person who analyzes and prioritizes ideas for redistribution. Their value comes in their ability to pick out the “good stuff.”
  
  
• The interpreter. The person who translates ideas between groups, including from current groups to ones that don’t yet exist. The teacher.
  
  
• The collector: The person who aggregates information, sorts it for reference of the others, and often help provide backup (in the form of data) for others’ work. These are librarians, of sorts, whose value comes in their ability to provide both comprehensive and easy-to-use high-quality information.
  
  

2. Deirdre Breakenridge organizes her Twitter models into a “relationship stairway”,

considering not the content activity of her Tweeple but rather the level of engagement and relationship she’s creating with them.

• The Casual Friend: “Casual conversations can also equate to bigger opportunities including interviews, great blog posts and overall really good information that could only come from a simple “Good Morning” on Twitter.”

• The Taker with Good Info: “Takers” can be good Tweeple. ” Casual friends often turn into those who begin to share information with me, in hope that I will discuss it further with my community.”

• The Giver: “The Giver is a special friend. This person doesn’t ask anything of you, they simply find you interesting and naturally want to share your information with their friends…Meaning and value to both parties may lie ahead.”

• The Giver and Taker Friendship: Where the relationship becomes equally balanced and both sides feel a great deal of benefit.”

• The Trusted Confidante: ‘Someone who you will trust with sacred information. …They have your best interest at heart, as you have theirs. This is your trusted advisory board on topics and information that you couldn’t find as easily or as readily available, if it didn’t stem from a Twitter conversation.”

3. Jeff Hurt’s got a developmental model,

where we become better Tweeters once we figure out what we can offer… and then settle into it. His “Big Tweet Theory”:

• Phase 1 – The Birthing Announcement: Hello Twitter. Look what I can do.
  Tweeting “seems new, odd, fearful, fun, stupid and exciting.”

• Phase 2 – Sharing The Blue Bird’s Kitchen Sink: Here’s everything that’s happening.
  “Their tweet flood overwhelms many that are following them.”

• Phase 3 – Restraint And Insight: Communicating the good stuff
  “(T)weets contain links to more detailed (info), additional resources and provocative thoughts. Followers begin to realize that their missing out on great education and networking.”

4. From the world of Journalism, via Jay Rosen, Mike Masnick at TechDirt

considers how journalists might take different roles-- and these too look like models for Twitter:

• Reporters – who go out and do first person reporting — creating original stories, not just reposting rewritten wire copy.

• Columnists – who “start conversations and give stories another perspective.”

• Curators — who “‘cover’ the news by sorting, verifying and editing live everything good existing on the web and in the media. They make link journalism, they make the news more accessible.”

5.  And advised by Rohit Bhargava,

You can have an ‘attitude’ about your own place on Twitter. Even if you are a neophyte, you can consider yourself to be (or to be-coming) one of 9 Types of Social Media Experts

1. The Pretender
2. The Trainer/Teacher
3. The Professional Speaker
4. The Content Curator
5. The Event Organizer
6. The Community Manager
7. The Content Creator
8. The Marketing Strategist
9. The Designer/Builder

What do you do with all these different styles, models, fashions?

Think about what’s up for you this ’season’.  Take a look at some of these different collections. Try on some of these other ways of thinking about what we’re all doing on Twitter (and elsewhere on social media).

See if  there might be a few more Twitter styles to add to your wardrobe. Make it work, even better, for you.

See you on the runway Twitter.

@cvharquail

4.1.10

Ronak Ghorbani video-interviewed me this past weekend about feminism and social media. Check out the original article here: How do you think has social media shaped the feminist movement? Filed under: Activism, Media Tagged: feminism, social media

The challenge of being authentic on social media can be scary.

Many organizations are afraid of being ‘on’ social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, where they (or their representatives) are accessible and active in real time. They worry that participating in real time on social media platforms will expose them as unthinking, out of touch or inauthentic.

Organizations worry how to find and translate their ‘corporate voice’ into an interactive human presence.

When organizations take their first steps onto these social media platforms, they consider their various strategies, and how they could be represented by Brandividuals, celebrity CEOs, tweeting teams, or even their corporate brand mascots.

Brand Mascots on Twitter

Compared to the human alternatives, corporate mascots can look quite appealing. Many organizations already have brand mascots that represent their important products and/or their organization. These characters already have name recognition, brand equity, and the ability to trigger an emotional connection with their customer community.

Moreover, these corporate mascots can ’speak’ in a way that reflects the desired image of the brand, since there is no actual person or thing that it (also) needs to represent. As fake as we know they are, corporate mascots can create a very authentic organizational voice.

And, an added benefit is that these corporate characters and brand mascots never do anything embarrassing (like insider trading, or infidelity, or sock puppetry) that might besmirch the corporate brand. Thus, we have the Andrex Puppy, Travelocity’s RoamingGnome, and comparethemarket.com’s meerkat Alexsandr Orlove (pictured at left).

And then we have @Shamu.

You know @Shamu. He’s “the killer whale” who represents SeaWorld on Twitter.

Up until the tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld, @Shamu was the beguiling voice of SeaWorld on Twitter. Charming, funny, and popular, @Shamu voiced the fun side of SeaWorld, the promise of entertainment, wonder, and awe.

Who anticipated that any of SeaWorld’s orcas (all called Shamu) might actually kill a human being? And who had a plan for how to respond? Nobody.

So, it’s instructive to watch how SeaWorld is using social media to respond to a tragedy that they did not predict.

1. First (as you might expect) SeaWorld suspended @Shamu’s twitter account.

2. SeaWorld explained why they suspended the account.

SeaWorld didn’t just quiet @Shamu; they shared their reasoning and offered alternative information options. From Sea World’s blog:

About a year ago SeaWorld launched a Twitter account giving voice to Shamu. In part because of his worldwide celebrity and in part because of his ability to find humor in the world around him, @Shamu has gained a significant following on Twitter. Many of his most loyal followers have noted his absence from Twitter since the tragic events of Wednesday, February 24 at SeaWorld Orlando.

At this difficult time, @Shamu will not be active on Twitter, as users who follow@Shamu have come to expect posts that are light-hearted and perhaps a bit quirky. SeaWorld’s other accounts, including @SeaWorld_Parks, will remain active and regular updates will be communicated through Twitter and other social networking platforms.

We will continue to provide information in this space on our review of this incident and the changes to our procedures that may progress from it. We thank you for the thousands of messages of support during this extraordinarily difficult time.

In their explanation, SeaWorld acknowledged (however subtly) the disparity between @Shamu ‘the character’ and the reality of how a live orca at Sea World actually behaved.

In this blog post (above) as well as on Facebook, you can hear an authentic human voice from Sea World.

3. While they temporarily closed the @Shamu account, SeaWorld is keeping their Facebook page open. Stakeholders still have active access to the organization.

As Beth Kassab, Business Columnist at the Orlando Sentinal writes in her comprehensive account of the situation:

Promising to answer critics so directly may seem like a nightmare to many companies, but SeaWorld is seizing on the opportunity to try to shape the conversation about its business.

4. SeaWorld is using social media to respond to negative as well as supportive comments about the tragedy. And, they are continuing to discuss issues related to the orcas and the employees of SeaWorld.

To SeaWorld’s advantage, they have already been engaged with customers and critics in ongoing conversations about issues where SeaWorld and other stakeholders are at odds. You can see from their conversations on Facebook as well as from their digital profile, SeaWorld has been participating actively in conversations about whether whales should be kept in captivity and used for entertainment.

Agree or disagree with SeaWorld’s perspective or on their next steps, you can engage them about it.

What can we learn from @Shamu?

What we know about effective crisis management is that organizations that keep responding instead of going silent sustain– and can even increase– their stakeholders’ trust in them. Even though the @Shamu account went silent, SeaWorld has stayed in the conversation.

We also know that effective crisis management is not defensive, but instead takes a learning posture. As long as SeaWorld stays in an authentic conversation with stakeholders, they make it possible to sustain or rebuild the good relationships they already with their stakeholders.

What can we learn about authenticity and social media in a crisis?

It will be interesting to see what SeaWorld learns. Certainly, SeaWorld (and everyone else watching them) will learn something about how to use social media to address a crisis. Since the organization has already been actively engaged in conversations about conservation, animal rights, and so on, it’s unclear what new perspective they’ll get on these issues as they are triggered anew by this tragedy.

But while SeaWorld as an organization may not learn, say or do anything more on these issues than it already has, all of those engaging online with SeaWorld will themselves be learning… about SeaWorld’s position on these issues and on SeaWorld’s commitment to its community.

In general, corporations take a hyper-rational, calculative approach to managing risk. It’s all about prediction and prevention, which is fine. But, prediction and prevention are never 100% foolproof– after all, orcas might be called “killer whales” but that doesn’t mean you expect an orca in captivity to kill his human trainer. Yet, accidents happen, disasters occur, tragedy strikes.

Organizations need not only to prevent risk on social media, but also they need to use social media effectively to respond to risks they can not predict. Let’s keep listening for SeaWorld’s  authentic voice, as they continue to respond.

What do fledgling entrepreneurs need to know about creating authenticity? And what, if anything, does this have to do with cupcakes?

I had a chance to try to boil it all down to a few key ideas when I taught two classes of an undergraduate Entrepreneurship course at NYU’s Stern School of Business. My colleague, networks and entrepreneurship scholar David Obstfeld, teaches a ‘hands-on plus case study’ course in Entrepreneurship where students create business teams, launch online Amazon stores, and donate their profits to a charity. Starting and running their own real businesses, even if only briefly over a term or two, gives these students a chance to put into practice some of the concepts they are learning in their BBA program in general and as fledgling entrepreneurs in particular.

Professor Obstfeld has me come and lecture (lead a conversation, really) about “Creating Authentic Presence“. The conversation is one part marketing, one part authenticity, and one part social media. What students expect we’ll be talking about is how to market their stores using social media. What they get is (I hope) an awareness of how they can create really compelling businesses by finding the connections between their stores, their teams and themselves.

There is so much that comes out in this conversation that it’s hard to limit it to just one ‘takeaway’. But, it seems that the general ‘aha’ for students is the idea that they can — and should– link

(1) what they sell with
(2) how they organize themselves as a team, and with
(3) who they are as individuals.

What should link these three elements is some kind of shared, consonant meaning. If the meaning of one piece is embedded in the meaning of the other two, and if all three are reasonably well aligned, the entrepreneurs’ business activities will be more fun, more meaningful, and more competitive.

Embedded meaning in a trio of Brands

We talk about the concepts of personal, product and organizational meaning using the language of brands and branding. Despite my bias against focusing on brand before identity, branding language helps build on what students already know from their marketing classes and from being educated consumers more generally. So, we tak about a store/product ‘brand’, an organizational/team ‘brand’ and a personal ‘brand’.

The students all start with a solid understanding of how to develop a business idea, by identifying and selling products to fulfill a customer need. That’s marketing 101, and entrepreneurship 101. They think that entrepreneurship is largely about crafting a compelling business idea and getting that up and running.

It’s the other two pieces that seem to catch the students’ attention as something ‘new’.

First, students seem caught by the idea that who they are as a business team — as these particular 4 or 5 students, as entrepreneurs, as experts on the market niche, as fundraisers for a charity — would have anything to do with defining, significant qualities of the business that they create. Student entrepreneurs tend to underestimate how much the ways that they work together will show up (intentionally or unintentionally) in the way their storefront looks, in the products within their storefront, and in what’s communicated by their storefront to online potential customers.

And, students are often surprised when I argue that who they are as individuals — the characteristics that are distinctive, and significant, and meaningful about each one of *them* – has so much to do not only with the stuff they sell but also with the qualities of their student team as an organization.

What I try to help the student entrepreneurs wrap their minds around is the idea that product (store), organization (their team), and person (themselves as entrepreneurs) work best together when they are intentionally connected by some thread of shared meaning.

Finding meaning in cupcakes

For example, one team has created a cupcake baking supply store — everything a person needs to enjoy his or her cupcake fetish (except for the cupcake itself).

There should be reasons why their particular team chose to create a cupcake baking supply store as opposed to any other kind of potentially profitable storefront. These reasons should be linked with the reasons why each of them as an individual chose to be part of this team. These two sets of reasons should resonate with  what their store is actually selling. In this case, their store is not selling cupcake tins, or colored sugars; It is selling the d.i.y. pride, the sense of indulgence, and the sheer beauty that their cupcake baking customers are searching for.

It’s easy to see this connection graphically, using embedded circles, but harder to see this connection across the levels of their entrepreneurial activity.

Using Social Media to Create Presence

As it happens, the process for establishing their business’s presence online, using social media, actually invites students to start to look for the connections between themselves, their team as an organization, and their stores. Knowing your own distinctive qualities, your own core values, the meaning that you look for, all help you establish your business’s presence online.

Because they are time constrained, the entrepreneurs have to begin their online marketing efforts by piggy-backing on their personal social networks and their own online voices. These entrepreneurs become brandividuals. They discover that a little self-reflection and a little self-awareness help them communicate not what their business ‘is’, but rather what their business is really all ‘about’.

The student entrepreneurs should discover that creating a presence for their stores using social media is not about promoting their stores or finding customers. Instead, creating a presence for their stores is about clarifying and expressing what makes their stores distinctive, significant and meaningful.

Which, in my view, makes business easier, more fun, and more authentic.

Blue cupcakes by QuintanaRoo on Flickr

Exclamation Points: An Authenticity Issue

Last week, I got a bit of crap from I was chided by one of my colleagues for sending a 4-line email with three (three!!) exclamation points. This colleague also pointed out that I occasionally sprinkle my tweets with exclamation points.

This is a problem. These exclamation points, s/he explained, are simply “not professional”.

“Not professional.”

Those are fighting words, are they not?

We who write about business, critique organizations, advocate social change, etc. are supposed to be professional, whether we’re using e-mail, or Twitter, or any other medium. Otherwise, you all “they” don’t take us seriously.

[Note, in just the last week, my tweets have included the terms "Foucault", "Saussure", and "capitalism-enhancing". But apparently those words don't detract from my professionalism. ]

Do exclamation points really dilute my authority as an expert?

Tarnish my PhD? Make me seem more like a mom blogger than a business blogger?

I know that we have gendered definitions of what it means to be “professional”. Women are held to different standards than are men when it comes to demonstrating our professionalism, because people have different expectations of men and women. So, I can appreciate that there may be some behaviors that are ‘unprofessional’, and might seem even more “unprofessional” when they come from women. Or me.

But are exclamation points one of these unprofessional behaviors?

For me, it’s important to be authentic in my communication – to be as direct, as clear, and as “me” as possible. Frankly, I am occasionally bemused by my own use of exclamation points, emoticons, emotional words inside brackets, cr*&sed out cuss words, and some occasional lolspeak [ e.g., I can haz paradimz!]. But yo, that’s how I roll. For real.

[Still, despite my fondness for Hello Kitty, I am not a smiley-face kind of gal. Not really. So I do see a contradiction there.]

But what is really going on with the critique of my use of exclamation points?

Let’s look at the research on gender and exclamation points!

[Of COURSE there is research on this! I found it in November when I was researching how we create social presence online through social media! And since I bookmarked it, I can go straight back there!]

Past research has reported that females use exclamation points more frequently than do males.

Such research often characterizes exclamation points as “markers of excitability,” a term that suggests instability and emotional randomness [emphasis mine] …

The present study uses a 16-category coding frame in a content analysis of 200 exclamations posted to two electronic discussion groups… The results indicate that exclamation points rarely function as markers of excitability in these professional forums, but may function as markers of friendly interaction, a finding with implications for understanding gender styles in email and other forms of computer-mediated communication. — Waseleski, C. (2006)

Hmm… exclamation points suggest instability and emotional randomness.

And they are used more often by men than women.

I start to see the problem… Instability and emotional randomness are obviously not professional characteristics — and these characteristics are particularly damning for female professionals.

But what did this research actually find?

• Females use exclamations significantly more than do males

• People use exclamation points to express thanks and friendliness (32%), and to emphasize facts (29%) more often than they do to reflect excitability (9%)

• “Thanking, whether of the friendly or effusive type, was also a predominantly female behavior (in this study). These findings are consistent with Herring’s (1994) observation that female online discourse style is characterized by “supportiveness,” which includes “expressions of appreciation, thanking, and community building activities that make other participants feel accepted and welcome” (p. 4). “

The results of this study do not support the notion that exclamation points function solely or even primarily as markers of excitability.

So apparently our generalized perception of how exclamation points are used online is different from what the data actually tell us what we think exclamation points from women are saying is different from what women who use exclamation points are actually trying to say.     Looks like we have to listen to what women are actually saying.

Thus, I conclude that while exclamation points are often seen as ‘markers of excitability’ when used by women, in fact:

Exclamation points are tools for communicating thanks, friendliness and warmth!

I refuse to equate appreciativeness, friendliness and warmth with being “unprofessional”. So there!!.

If you get a tweet from me with an exclamation point, just imagine it as this:

I can’t wait for Waseleski’s study of emoticons!

Waseleski, C. (2006). Gender and the use of exclamation points in computer-mediated communication: An analysis of exclamations posted to two electronic discussion lists. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), article 6. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue4/waseleski.html

Image from Trenton Garden of Sculpture by bobjagendorf on Flickr
A print of “Exclamation Point” by AndreaDaquino can be purchased on his site.

Just a quick rant here, triggered by and not quite in response to Rachel Happe’s post on The Social Organization & Womenomics. In her post, Rachel wonders whether a truly ’social’ organization or business might be more accommodating to the real-world, real-life pressures of managing work and family demands, not only for women but also for men.

I am glad to see someone with Rachel’s insight and influence writing about gender relationships, work & family in relation to socially-mediated organizations and business — why shouldn’t we be designing remarkably better organizations?

Why shouldn’t we be re-creating the worlds of work and commerce, as we implement and develop all these great tools for working together?

Alas, I fear that a whole lot of people talking about “Social Business”, Enterprise 2.0, Organization 2.0, Wirearchy, and the myriad of labels for “organizations facilitated internally by social media” are missing an important issue, one that Rachel only begins to untangle for us.

They may be making business and organizations more effective at getting work done, but they aren’t paying much attention to making businesses support us.

Many of these advocates of Enterprise 2.0 emphasize that new tools will bring about new work patterns, and new work patterns will bring about new social relationships.

This is both true, and not true. It is true in the sense that technology always changes behavior – whether or not these changes are intentional or desirable.

However, it is not true that these changes will be radical or that they will transform our world for the better. This is because too many people are thinking inside the box, and not even considering how we could completely rebuild organizational structures, and in so doing, remarkably change our world.

Too much technology, not enough vision.

The conversation about social media and organizations is too much about ‘business change’. This conversation should be about ’social change’.

The vision of the organizations these new media will create is not feminist enough, not inclusive enough, and not revolutionary enough. We need to talk about how to use these technologies intentionally to transform human relationships within and across organizations, and human relationships inside, outside, and in relation to work.

Otherwise, we’ll simply re-inscribe the same old oppressions, the same old tensions, and the same old disappointments we already have about work and organizations. We’ll just be able to talk about them more easily on Mixx or Pringo.

To be sure, there will be changes from ’social business’:

• Hive minding means that more people will get a chance to contribute to knowledge and participate in innovation.

• Shared decisions making and cross-functional expertise will make power more networked than individually-based, and thus more people will have influence.

• More transparent organizational boundaries will make it easier to hold organizations accountable for their words and their actions.

• Market-power dynamics that shift control over products, brand and reputation from organizations to customer communities will make stakeholder alliances more influential.

• Mobile, distance, collaborative, project-oreinted work tools will make results more important than facetime, relaxing location and timing constraints and increasing productivity.

But where is focus on values?

Where is the visioning that considers:

- What could innovation  be like if people felt invited and valued?

- What could organizational democracy and engagement  be like if we intentionally flattened hierarchy and opened decision-making processes?

- What could organizational openess be like if we actually valued customers, suppliers, and organization members as much as we value shareholders?

- What could flexible work processes be like if we not only designed them to increase productivity but also designed them to increase freetime, time off, family time, and recreation?

Too much work, not enough life.

Why is the conversation all about making work more efficient, without focusing on making life or the world better? When will ’social’ business become social change business?

There is a link here between social business and womenomics, and between organization and feminism:

If organizations really value what is social about us– not only about our work processes but about us as people –  they (businesses) and we (workers) would intentionally create businesses that reflected feminist values.

Social media already resonates with feminist principles of leadership and community, so why shouldn’t these principles also intentionally shape whole organizations as organizations bring social media tools and norms inside?

When will ’social’ business become social change business?

I promised a few colleagues that I would be a little more authentic, and a little bolder, about calling attention to the opportunities that feminist, inclusive, social-change oriented principles could bring to business this year…. so here’s the first step.

Rant over– discussion just beginning. Join me?

Thanks Rachel, Cali, Donna, The MamaBee, MissRogue, Beth, Lena, Vanessa & Jill for the nudge.

Related articles

• Julia Moulden: New Year, New Job, New Radical (huffingtonpost.com)
• Enterprise 2.0 Conversations (themarketingblog.wordpress.com)
• My Nose, Other People’s Business (AuthenticOrganizations.com)

I have been struggling to write a (scholarly) book chapter on Corporate Reputation, social media and authenticity. As I have been writing myself around and around the issue(s), there is one thing that I cannot get my finger on, and that is:

Why does having interacted with an organization through social media make us feel more partial towards that organization?

Why are we more likely to like and even to defend an organization, once we have interacted online with that organization’s representative?

I’ve been playing with ideas about social presence, about scripted vs. context-specific interaction, about individual connections vs. ‘corporate’ ones, but I know that I haven’t found the psychological mechanism(s) yet.

It could be that I’m looking in the wrong places (e.g., CMI (computer mediated interaction) vs. social psychology’s Contact Hypothesis), or that I don’t have the right language, or maybe that the research has not actually been conducted.

But I do know that the phenomenon is real.

For example, earlier this week Robbin Phillips wrote a lovely post, Keeping Promises, at the BrainsOnFire blog, where she describes how her connection with Scott Monty leads her to protect Ford’s reputation.

Something about “knowing” someone at Ford has made me a sincere fan. I’ve even found myself defending them on occasion, in one on one conversations and even to large groups. I have just grown – well — fond of them.

Robbin attributes her feelings about “Ford” as an organization to her feelings about @ScottMonty as a person… recognizing that Ford has managed to “humanize the brand” by using a very personable person and skilled communicator and natural Zen-PR guy) to represent them.

While I do think that Robbin’s reaction is unique to her and her connection with Scott, I also think that there is something more general and more common in the phenomenon…

Could it be that:

1. The person-to-representative connection just like the connection between touching an object and creating a preference for it? (1)
2. Ford has shown something about itself as an organization by choosing Scott as a particular/specific person? (org identity reflected in choice)
3. Ford has shown something about itself as an organization by ‘allowing’ the social media folks (like Scott and his team) the freedom to interact as they see fit? (org identity reflected in process choice)
4. People transfer to Ford the qualities of what they feel about Scott (simple attribute transfer)?
   As Colby Gergen says “I trust Ford because they are associated with Scott, not the other way around.” Is it that social media give us a person first, rather than a ‘corporation’, making it easier to transfer feelings about a person to the organization than it otherwise would be to transfer feelings about an organization to a person?

I’ve seen a lot of words bandied about that describe this phenomenon, but not any proposed ‘mechanisms’—

I’d love your thoughts on what makes us like and maybe even defend organizations once we have interacted with their representatives online… What do you think explains this?

(1) Wolf, Arkes & Muhanna (2008) The power of touch: An examination of the effect of duration of physical contact on the valuation of objects. Judgment and Decision Making, 3 (6): 476-482.

Gentle Touch by cindy47452 on Flickr
Touch Me by jjjohn on Flickr

There are 3 things that really seem to validate a blogger:

1. Creating a s*&#%storm Breaking a controversial story and getting tens of thousands of new visitors and dozens of trolls to your blog,

2. Going to a blog insiders’ conference like BlogHer and having people recognize your blog, and

3. Meeting Gary Vaynerchuk.

I am pleased to say that as of last Friday, AuthenticOrganizations.com and I have accomplished the third item on the list.

Who is Gary Vaynerchuk?

If you work at all in the online space, you’ve heard of GaryVaynerchuk. It you haven’t heard of him, take a look at the NYT Business Best-seller List. GaryV has made his name through WineLibrary.com, where he has been one of the first and one of the most aggressive adopters of each social media tool that’s become important.

And, like so many of us who work online and offline, he has become an expert at using social media to build his business and his personal brand.

What distinguishes GaryV from other early adopters of social media have been his ambition, his enthusiasm, and his willingness to take risks.

I’ve been bemused by GaryV as an online presence — he’s remarkable, and unique, and also sort of loud and brash. My sense of Gary was that he was a little self-important, maybe verging on being a bit of a “jerk-in-a-nice-way”.

So far, the closest our paths have come is that GaryV and I are speakers for the same NYU Entrepreneurship-in-action class (on different days, but it still feels like being part of the in-crowd). When I heard that Vaynerchuk would be giving a talk and a book signing at our neighborhood independent book store, I thought it might be worth the walk over there to check him out. I’m so glad that I went, not only to hear him talk but to see him in action.

After hearing GaryV speak, seeing him interact with others, and meeting him myself, I’m convinced that the guy is the real deal: funny, self-deprecating, self-confident, warm, self-reflective and authentic. He’s even more fun in real life than he is in his online keynotes and webisodes.

What’s more, he really has developed some unique insights about social media, in part because he has set some high standards for himself (e.g., reply to every email) and in part because he  allows invites challenges himself to experiment and fail and experiment again.

Three observations about GaryV ‘in real life’ :

• GaryV is the most extroverted person I’ve ever met.
  Despite how weary Gary must have been from his crazy book tour, he got recharged with each and every personal interaction.

• GaryV was able to stop and dwell in his interactions with each person who came up to have a book signed.
  He was happy to pose for pictures with just about anyone, and he took his time with each of us. No one felt rushed; instead, we felt welcomed. This was the single loveliest thing about the evening, just having the chance to watch someone be authentic, maybe even to go beyond their ‘personal brand promise’.

• GaryV’s heart is bigger than his ego or his ambition.

GaryV attracts a good crowd

I wished that we’d been able to grab all 25-30 people at the book signing to take them out for a beer a glass of wine. I was so curious to hear what other people had learned and what new things they were planning to do based on GaryV’s insights. We did manage to get some friends of friends to join us for dinner, and we had 2 hours of some of the best ‘how can I make my business better?’ conversation ever.

Why is meeting GaryV a validation?

I said that meeting GaryV was a validation– and you may ask, just how does that work? Why does meeting some “web celeb” ® validate you?

It’s not so much that what GaryV has to say validates any of us who blog, but more that his insights help confirm that blogging and social media can influence people in ways that make (more of) a difference.

If only I were a better multi-tasker, or just less polite with my Flip cam. I would have saved some of GaryV’s comments to muse on later. Let me leave you with just this one:

The best thing you can do for your business online is to scale up your caring.

How might things change, if all of us did that?

Be sure to see:

Gary Vaynerchuck Is One Inspiring Man (by TK Hamilton)
Crush It! A book review (wineconversation.com)
Blogher’s Lisa Stone on the power of women bloggers (reportr.net)