Robert Peek, a PR professional and Director of Corporate Communications at Jacksonville Port Authority, criticized me for using the word “bullshit” in a recent column I wrote for Talent Zoo on social media ethics. In a post titled On Obscenity in Social Media, Robert suggested I was violating the very same tenets I “espoused,” and I was making “gratuitous” use of the word, which was indicative of an alarming trend in social media.

My use of the word was not gratuitous, nor was it indicative of laziness or contempt for my readers. It was a show of respect. I try to write naturally, and authentically. The word was my gut reaction to what I was writing about, communicators who claim ignorance of ethical, legal and professional guidelines. (I do not claim any such ignorance.)

Corporatized business speak can be evasive. I could have written, “Communicators who continue to explore new strategies in social media run put themselves and their companies at great risk. Perhaps they are well intentioned but ill-informed.” But that would be disingenuous. (I would have used another word for it, in fact.)

The use by fine writers (I am not putting myself in this class) of such words for emphasis and brevity is not without precedent. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare wrote “out out damn spot,” often quoted, as it is here on The Accidental Scientist, a food blog.

I would point Robert and others to Harry G. Frankfurt’s book, On Bullshit, a very small but interesting treatise on the topic, which incidentally, won a 2005 Bestseller Award in the philosophy category. Frankfurt is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Princeton University and also ought to know better about the gratuitous use of obscenity. Frankfurt quotes Max Black’s earlier work, The Prevalence of Humbug, when trying to define the word “bullshit:”

“Humbug: deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.”

Thus, it was the perfect word for what I was writing about. (Sorry, but I could not have used “humbug.” Dickens was the last one to use the word in literary discourse.) And whether my use of the word was appropriate or not, my use of such language in my public writing is so rare and so judicious, I am insulted that Robert would single me out as the lead example for his post. I believe this is indicative of another social media faux pas, inadequately researched writing.

Last night I was twittering with some friends about JetBlue’s use of Twitter, and while we were chatting, two of us received email notifications that @JetBlue (the company’s “handle” on Twitter) was following us. (”Follow” is Twitter speak for being able to read our “updates,” or posts.)

As consumer advocacy radicals, the two of us immediately reacted that we found this a little “spooky.” Someone else commented that JetBlue was using a bot to do its updates. A few minutes later, I received a comment on my blog from Morgan Johnston from JetBlue corporate communications:

Hi Joel,

Sorry if we weirded you or your friend out by following you on twitter. @JetBlue isn’t a bot, it’s merely me and my team keeping our ears to the ground and listening to our customers talk in open forums so we can improve our service to them. It’s not marketing, it’s trying to engage on a level other than mass broadcast, something I personally believe more companies should try to do.

Because corporate involvement in social media is a new and evolving discipline, I also take a specific interest on conversations revolving around our role here. I’d have DMd you and Lisa directly if you allowed DMs, so please also forgive me for following the link on your twitter page here to send you this note.

You and Lisa are no longer being ‘followed’ as you seem to indicate.

Again, my apologies

Morgan Johnston
Corporate Communications
JetBlue Airways

Morgan and I exchanged a few emails and I learned that Morgan is behind JetBlue’s tweets, and not a bot, and that Morgan is very well informed on social media ethics and aware that corporate use of Twitter can be tricky. I am impressed that Morgan was watching Twitter closely enough to sense an issue, responded quickly, apologized, and removed the two of us from @JetBlue’s list. This served as a demonstration of the company’s active participation in the Twitter conversation, its willingness to course-correct, and of the new speed of social media with which corporations have to contend.

Morgan also assured me that only a handful of JetBlue’s 700+ followers were JetBlue employees and the company was surprised to have so many followers.

I have written often on social media ethics, but don’t want to be perceived as a hardliner. I think it’s better that a company, like JetBlue, dip a toe in the water and give something new and creative a try, rather than being scared away by the threat of protests from social media purists.

Not every corporate social media initiative will be satisfied with engagement alone. JetBlue is in uncharted skies. Morgan and JetBlue have shown a true willingness to engage in a real conversation alongside the company’s promotional tweets, and I think that’s how successful corporate social media has to play out.

If you’re interested, you can follow JetBlue on Twitter.

Tags: jetblue, twitter, social media ethics, corporate communications, @jetblue

Gloria Goodale quoted me in Who’s that selling at your (online) door?, a piece in today’s Christian Science Monitor that looks at social media ethics and consumer manipulation:

“The Internet functions on trust,” says Joel Postman, a corporate communications specialist and founder of Socialized PR, in Boulder Creek, Calif. “As more and more people do business in the digital world, more consumers than ever need to know who they can rely on to tell the truth.”

The piece also includes a nice audio clip Gloria did on astroturfing, regulatory and other efforts, and consumer awareness, concluding “The best protection against being fooled is being an alert and savvy consumer. Trust, but verify.”

Tags: christian science monitor, gloria goodale, astroturfing, social media ethics, trust, joel postman, socialized pr

I had an interesting Twitter conversation on this topic with Greg Turner. Someone had asked “What are you doing to bring the movement forward?” I thought this was a pompous, fatuous, ridiculous question. Movement. Please.

I said somewhat cynically that social media experts spend their time theorizing and pontificating because it’s easier than quantifying the business benefits of social media. Greg said, “Pontification now helps, three years down the road.”

My response: Is one of us the Marshall McLuhan of 2012?

As a journalism student in the 19X0s (decade deleted, but note previous century implied), I idolized McLuhan. I didn’t have the math skills to be a theoretical physicist, but a theoretical communicator, that worked for me. I remember one day driving on some country back road as my girlfriend read aloud from Understanding Media. We analyzed each sentence carefully, in scholarly fashion, showing due reverence for the man and his insights.

Looking back, McLuhan sounds an awful like the social media pundits of today. In Understanding Media, published in 1964, he wrote:

“Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.”

Sounds a bit like the premise of Friedman’s The World is Flat, published over 40 years later. I’m reluctant, however, to compare anyone writing or blogging today with McLuhan, because no one strikes me the same way McLuhan did. That may be because I am older and more cynical, and less willing to take such theoretical discussions seriously. Or maybe it’s still so early there’s a lot of nonsense being spewed.

Ours is a slow moving “industry,” despite the speed of communications we enjoy. I am sure PowerPoint for Dummies and the AP Stylebook currently each outsell all of McLuhan’s books combined. But I have to allow for the possibility that there are at least a couple of people among us who might be the next McLuhans.

Tags: marshall mcluhan, understanding media, social media pundits

I posted yesterday about new U.S. legislation that would ban anonymous online commenting. As I think about Twitter, I realize that in its simplicity, it is somewhat opaque, and is one of the few places that actually permits anonymous posting.

It’s difficult and sometimes impossible to tell the affiliations of those posting, and therefore their biases, without clicking on their profiles. And even then, some profiles are incomplete.

This is easy to solve with a couple of non-invasive feature updates as follows:

• Add to Twitter Terms of Service: “If your use of Twitter is in any way associated with your profession, and/or you post on topics related to your work, you most fully disclose your professional affiliations in your profile, and comply with all state, federal, and international laws prohibiting anonymous posting.”
• Add feature to Twitter interface to display profile text of all parties with mouseover on tweet

Providers have an obligation to get ahead of emerging legal and ethical trends in social media, instead of waiting for a user revolt or a lawsuit.

Tags: Social Media Law, transparency, twitter, ethics, astroturfing