Most people apparently think social media services based on User Generated Content (UGC) like YouTube, Blogger, Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr or StumbleUpon are outright idealistic endeavors built for the benefit of humanity and not Social Media Optimization. Yet they are not. They are about business and making money.
The question is just who makes the money and who does not.
It’s about exploitation or worse slavery.
Over at our group blog Collective Thoughts Marty of aimClear has written an intriguing article about the notion that you are not allowed to perform certain practices on social media unless you are well respected power user who spent numerous hours in selflessly filling such a site with content and interaction.
The consensus seems to be that the entrepreneurs or companies behind social media services are allowed to earn billions while the users have to add strictly not-for-profit content out of love for mankind. As you already may sense it, there’s an inherent flaw in this dogma.
- Who would agree to work for free in real life?
- Who would create wealth for profit oriented companies without getting paid?
- Who would attack anybody demanding being paid for all the work?
Slaves!
The Wikipedia definition of slave says among other things
Slaves are held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase, or birth, and are deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to receive compensation in return for their labour.
(my emphasis).
So basically although we are not forced to work and we can stop anytime, at least we are not compensated just like slaves. Popular Web 2.0 companies are basically saying
Hey we give you all the tools, machines and a seat in our factory, you can socialize with your coworkers, what else do you want? Money? Are you joking?
Not all slaves fought slavery in the USA along with the abolitionist movement. Malcolm X used the term “house nigger” for all those slaves who supported slavery out of selfish motives. The term stems from the time of slavery itself, it describes those slaves who had some privileges like sleeping in the masters house or indeed working there instead of the plantation.
Most of the social media users are the plain slaves working at the plantation while the power users are house niggers who have some personal gain out of the being a slave. Of course the money goes into the pockets of the plantation and slave owners.
- How much time do you spend on Web 2.0 and social media? How much time do you spend daily while on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Pownce?
- How much do you earn for this work?
It’s not work you might ague, it’s fun. But you sit at the computer in front of the screen.
- Does it feel like spending time with your family,
- going for walk
- or playing basketball with your peers?
Moreover: It’s so called social capital. The relationships you build are social capital. Your social capital but predominantly the social capital of the plantation owner, Google, Yahoo, eBay.
It gets more ridiculous:
Once you give up your relations for free to a company they sell them back to you.
It’s like paying for the tools to work without compensation. XING, a LinkedIn competitor just announced a sharp rise in profits. What do they earn their money with? By selling full accounts where you can send messages to your friends online. So in fact they let you pay for contacting your friends or business partners!
SEO 2.0 and thus also Social Media Optimization (SMO) and even Marketing (SMM) is about using social media for your own ends, whatever they might be.
So SEO 2.0 has a really subversive role in the social media environment. It empowers you to get compensated for all the toil you do not get compensated for. Of course some social media users turn slave drivers and they will offend you for doing that as they want to “protect” the sanctity of the service which is based on exploitation.
Be subversive, work for yourself not for corporations who do not pay you, practice SEO 2.0. Use Web 2.0 inasmuch as it uses you. Strike back. SEO 2.0 is the abolitionism of the 21st century. We even go a step further freeing you of the chains of wage slavery.
Related posts:
- Hey Freelancer: Are You a Worker or an Entrepreneur?
- Top 10 Most Awesomely Amazing Creative & Funny Reasons Why Blogging for Social Media Sucks
- 10 Habits of Highly Efficient Social Media Power Users
- 20 Ways to Survive as a Freelancer Working on the Web
- Can You Keep Up with the Joneses?
Need help? Consider a world class blog & SEO consultation by the author of SEO 2.0, Tad Chef. For full fledged SEO services like ongoing link building, contact my partners from SEO.com or look up my directory of SEO service providers and checkout reputable companies like Datadial or Redfly.
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This thing has 8 Comments
A good article, although I disagree on some points. It gives some new perspective on the whole web 2.0 business.
Anyway, we are free to use it and if it did not provide ‘some’ benefit, I guess we would not use it. ‘Some’ could be the ‘idea’ that it makes our lives more complete.
Also, if you substitute we 2.0 for video games, you will see that it fits a lot of your descriptions.
Olivier
Thank you for developing this further…sweet post.
Olivier: Does it make our lives more complete? Instead of meeting real friends you “socialize” with “friends” on the other half of the globe without ever or rarely meeting them. Do you feel better that way?
Marty: Thanks for the inspiration!
The biggest problem that I have with this article is that the big evil empires do provide a service – distribution. Sure, I don’t like the fact that they may be making money of me and my content, but they are providing a service that generally speaking I don’t have to pay for.
However, if I sign up for a paid service with one of these corporations, who is really responsible for doing that? I think it’s me, so I’d better do my homework before I sign up. Otherwise, I’ll be the fool who will be parting with some of his money.
Having said all of that, I do like the opportunities to make some of my own cash doing my own thing. But, I’m not going to diss someone or something down because they put up a wall or a barrier first; them’s the breaks.
So what Mark? If I have no personal gain out of the distribution channels and the faceless multimillion dollar corporations own my content and my relations (if you get deleted at XING you loose your social capital) I shall accept it?
The revenue should at least be shared. Google does that with custom search for instance. I’m fine with that. My search for this site uses Google Custom Search btw. but I don’t earn anything as I was too lazy to do it myself…
Revver does that for video…
@ onreact – all I am saying is that you ultimately have the choice to use those channels or forge your own path, which you are recommending in terms of Web 2.0 usage. I would probably choose the latter path as well. If I use “YouTube, Blogger, Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr or StumbleUpon”, all essentially for free unless you choose to pay extra, you just need to understand the tradeoff involved. I’m not saying that it’s right, but it’s a decision that the creator needs to make with their eyes wide open.
I’m not sure I feel like much of a slave here. Those services have value…
Also, I’m still waiting for you to suggest an alternative. Develop my own web 2.0 app? Monitize on the current apps? Beat them at their own game? If we all profit from it then who is paying? Can I interest you in some Amway?
-M
Way to pound that nail, Tad. The one thing that really irks me about social media is that it’s basically a full-time job, when I already have one of those.
My biggest social media tool is still email. Nothing beats a personal message. I only use a few other SM tools sparingly, like StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
I’m with Wolfy — I’d love to see what you think are possible solutions.
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