Marketing Bits co-host Jerod Morris was asked by Glenn Moore to attend Sports Media 360 in Cleveland, OH  to participate on a panel discussing credibility online.   The event was put together by The Dugout Sports Show (OKG Media) and Media Frenzy Communications.
The discussion on the panel was excellent so I thought I’d share with our listener base.  A special thanks to Sports Talk Cleveland for the audio feed and to Glenn Moore putting the event together.

The panel members are:

Brad Zibung – “The Heckler”, Founder/Publisher
Greg Bedard - Green Bay Packers Beat Writer, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Jerod Morris – Midwest Sports Fans

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As highlighted in National Public Radio’s story, “Facebook, MySpace Divide Along Social Lines“, Rupert Murdoch purchased MySpace in 2005 at the height of its popularity in social networking.  Today, the tides have changed as Facebook and its estimated 95M visitors clearly dominates the social networking niche of Web 2.0.  This is so much the case that early this week the Financial Times broke a story where MySpace all but concedes defeat in the social networking arena and describes its future as an entertainment hub.  Though the facts are clear, there really hasn’t been much discussion on how MySpace lost its popularity nor the lessons learned in this curious case.  Well, we stumbled upon some insight during a podcast we did with Aaron Bollinger of KickApps who we came to find out during the podcast had written a book called “The MySpace Social Guide”.  We were so excited about a hallway conversation that ensued after our podcast with him that we went back into the studio and fired up the recording equipment to capture the conversation.

Join episode host Jerod Morris as he discusses the demise of MySpace and its brand with Aaron Bollinger.

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While on a few long international flights the past few week, I got caught up on my podcast listening.  Unfortunately, I got a bit behind on blog reading.  So, when I got back to my reading, I definitely felt a bit behind when I caught the news about Google’s Sidewiki on Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategy blog.  Needless to say, the post immediately caught my attention.

Jeremiah is spot on with regards to this Google feature being a catalyst for the transition of power from corporations to consumers.  His strategy advice is also very accurate.  If you believe the statement, “Google is your new home page” then you’d probably concur that Sidewiki has just transformed your home page into an unregulated forum.  I have contrarian though, however.  I think Google will fail with this initiative long before it becomes relevant.

The following are 5 reaons why Google will fail with Sidewiki:

1. Where’s The Authority Component – Social Media is based on authority.  Whether authority is measured in followers in Twitter, friends on Facebook, or even Google’s own page rank indicator, today’s social media relies on it.  When social media concepts lack an authority component, they quickly become inundated in SPAM and irrelevant content.
2. First In First Out (FIFO) is for Accountants –  Sidewiki’s commenting system is based on a first in first out queue.  In layman’s terms, the first to comment gets the top position.  This is how comments work in most blogs and news sites.  Still, this simplistic approach significantly limits the dynamics of comment relevancy and recency.   Though this aspect of Sidewiki is very easily changed, it goes to show that Google has not thoroughly thought this one out.  (Editor’s Note – Post research has revealed that FIFO is not the case but Google is applying an algorithm to this.  I will still argue that this is far from social and we are already getting emails with tricks for beating the algorithm)
3. Name A New Idea Google Has Followed Through On – Google has a lot of ideas.  They really don’t follow through however.  Whether it be their half baked effort in the offline advertising space or their attempt to compete with Microsoft with a wordprocessor that still doesn’t support DOCX and a spreadsheet that barely rivals the functionality of DOS spreadsheet packages, Google wants to compete from operating systems to social media concepts and they’ve shown very little focus or follow through.
4. Advertisers Pay The Bills – Google makes its money from advertising.  When you open up a free for all on the very results page that corporate advertisers are pay for placement, big spenders will draw the line.  You can’t have it both ways.
5. Google’s Legal Department Can’t Keep Up – Sidewiki can only survive with the protections provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.  Still, CDA is being activity tested in the courts due to the abuses from sites such as RipOffReport.Com.  It is only a matter of time before holes are poked in this federal law.   In the meantime, Google’s legal department has gotten to the point of not even returning DMCA takedown notices nor attorney inquiries to orders from state courts regarding content in their index.  Sidewiki will open the legal flood gates to the point to where the class action law firms will begin to package individual complaints into legal maneuvering that cannot be ignored.

I wish Google were a bit more social.  I’d simply like to see a “view count” on search results similar to the way YouTube provides them.  Or maybe even an indexing of tiny URL’s that were associated with retweets in Twitter.  Sidewiki, however, lacks a true social media foundation.  Google should stick to indexing content including that produced by true social media sites before it goes on to try and make its flagship search service a social media platform.

Where small businesses strive to participate in the social media phenomenon, larger enterprises are looking to create a social media experience on their Internet real estate.  The conversations can start anywhere from the boardroom to the chief marketing officer’s office and almost always end up in the IT department.  This begs the question of whether to build or buy a social media platform.  So, we brought in Aaron Bollinger from KickApps to have that discussion.

KickApps is a early stage company that creates one of the industry’s premier social media platforms.  One way to look at it is that KickApps is to social media outside the firewall what Microsoft’s Sharepoint Server is to corporate portals inside the firewall.  Aaron Bollinger is a business development manager with KickApps based out of Austin, TX.  When he was on one of his regular visits to Dallas, Jerod and I thought we’d lock him in our studios to discuss KickApps and social media.  What we weren’t expecting to happen was a conversation that got so interesting that we had to cut a separate podcast for one of the topics—the demise of MySpace.

In this interview we learn about KickApps and discuss Aaron’s background prior to joining KickApps.  This uncovered the fact he was the author of a book on MySpace called “MySpace Social Guide“.   We also touch upon a very early career venture of Aaron and Jerod called Flash Sports Tonight.

Whether you are a professional marketer interested in learning about KickApps or have simply had a rough day and want to listen to an entertaining conversation, this is one of the best interviews we’ve done to date.

(FTC Disclaimer:  Aaron Bollinger conducted this interview as a courtesy to Orangecast Social Media; NO SPONSORSHIP has been provided by KickApps and any favorable comments we make about the platform are because WE LIKE their platform)

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