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I would never join a club that would have me as a member. –Groucho Marx
I’m being sold.
My name. My picture. My birthdate. My interests. My links. All of it.
I don’t like it one bit.
I quit.
I Joined a Club With Rules I Agreed To…
I joined a social media “community.” I did it because someone I know and have met in real life was one of the founders of the club. I entered all the information it requested, including my birthdate and a whole set of profile questions.
I never participated much in the club, but every once in a while I’d stop by and take a peek at what people who sorta kinda do what I do were saying. But I paid a lot more attention when I read that the club was being sold to the highest bidder on eBay.
…but I Didn’t Agree To Have My Name Sold to the Highest Bidder
Seriously, the social media “community” is being sold on eBay. That means all that information I put on there, including some things that I probably should have had the good sense to hold back in the first place, is now on the auction block. Who do you think would buy something like that? Not someone who I agreed to, or know.
I Quit
I don’t like being sold. I joined that club because I understood a certain set of rules. I knew the founder. I spent days brooding about it. Then I quit. (NB: I still like the founder, but I cannot express how strongly I feel that it’s a wrong decision to sell names. I don’t want selling social media communities to become the norm.)
I removed my name from that club. Scrubbed it out. I don’t know the bidders or the future buyer from Adam’s off ox. They won’t know me either.
HR Implications
I didn’t like my name being sold. Now it’s not. Imagine how employees feel during reorganizations. Or an acquisition. Multiply how I felt times a thousand. When you’re part of a community, you understand the rules. When those rules get changed, you have to let people know what the new rules are.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey, Frank. I totally respect how you feel. I wish you would have shared this with me (or Lance) so we could have addressed this in a more constructive and visible way. I think this would be a great topic for a video blog, a conference call, or a HR Happy Hour segment. (I love that show. There’s one on August 14th so maybe I’ll ask if we can talk about this.)
Here are my thoughts: Yahoo sells your data to Microsoft. Microsoft sells your data to Yahoo. Yahoo & Google block access to the internet in China. Google collects your data and sells it to the highest bidder. Facebook sells your information to anyone & everyone. MySpace is gross.
I brood about those things. HRM Today is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
We had a couple of options with HRM Today:
1. Kill it.
2. Give it away.
3. Try an experiment.
Lots of experts out there feel that giving something away for free devalues the content — so Lance and I tried an experiment and offered the network on eBay. It’s not about money (as I’ll never recapture the time and cash spent in building the community). It’s about trying something for the first time.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to find a way to recapture this conversation on HRM Today so that others can see it and join in. This is exactly the kind of conversation that Lance and I love to have… on the phone, in person, and on HRM Today.
Best,
Laurie
PS – The beauty of NING, and of the internet as a whole, is that you can opt out of our HRM Today network at any point. Sorry to see you go. I hope you rejoin once a new owner is established. I’m not going anywhere.
I have to say I did not really share Frank’s concerns about the sale of the HRM Network as for me most of the information that I had there (which frankly was not that much) is mostly ‘findable’ in many other places and forums anyway. I sort of expected the site would be purchased by someone else that most of us are likely to know anyway, but of course as Frank suggests, who knows for sure. To me the issue (if I could even say I had an issue) was that at least partially people join these communities based on the personality and leadership of the community founders and leaders. So perhaps in the light, the attractiveness and utility of the HRM would be diminished once Laurie and Lance transfer ownership.
At any rate, I am more than happy (no pun intended) to talk about this on the HR Happy Hour show. We are on live this Friday 8/14, or I could set up a special show dedicated to this topic. Laurie and Frank, you know how to reach me, just let me know.
I can understand why you might be concerned about the new owners but the group is not just about the owners, it’s about the people as well. And please feel free to use the HR Happy Hour as the forum to discuss this! Thanks for the shout out Laurie!
Hey Frank – You won’t know who the new owner is until after the sale is complete. Maybe you already know them, and they know you! Just sayin’…
@Mike http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/10/facebook-acquires-friendfeed/ I wonder what the impact on the Friendfeed community will be? I wonder if the valuation for friendfeed is in the community or the technology?
@Laurie @Frank @Steve
From Friendfeed:
FriendFeed has just posted a note to their blog confirming the announcement. FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor writes that the site will continue operating for the time being, but that the company is still “figuring out its longer-term plans for the product”. Likewise, the API will continue to function for the time being.
From Facebook:
FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.
Answer: Friendfeed technology will get swept up into the Facebook template. Facebook will gain in talent and to an extent in search.
I don’t really think that this sale of business to business is directtly on point to Frank’s post, but it does relate.
I don’t fully agree with your expressed positioon Frank, although I can understand how you feel. You took the course I would have suggested if I was mediating your conflict, which was to opt out. The bigger question is what are you gonna do when someone buys LinkedIn or Facebook?
Not sure where to draw the lines on this one, buddy. But you raise a thoughtful question as usual.
Laurie: next time you sell a community, maybe you should put out an advanced notice to everyone letting them opt out BEFORE the sale so the purchaser and users know the full picture of what they are getting into?
@Mike That’s a totally good point. Lesson learned on the privacy/opt out issue. I’m working on a spreadsheet of lessons learned from this experience. I don’t know anyone else who’s sold a social network on eBay, so I want to capture this experience and share some ideas when this is all over.
@All. I didn’t mention the site or link to it. This is a much more fundamental issue for me than a single site.
I do think there should be an “opt out” option on the front end. That would have made a big difference.
Conflating B2B situations with this isn’t quite correct. There might be a very nice buyer; and there may be a very bad buyer. I don’t want anyone to buy my information that I didn’t agree to.
Thanks for the invitations from Steve and Minion — but we’re far too busy with major client work to do that. I appreciate the offer.
@Frank You’re not alone. Sumser has a good post here: http://www.johnsumser.com/2009/08/090810-4-sale/
I think B2B and communities are so interrelated, and the reaction of community users who love Friendfeed and hate Facebook is really astonishing to me. We’ll see how that merger goes… because the lines between technology, IP, and community are getting blurry.
Thanks to all for a good discussion.
(Thanks, Frank, for letting me hijack your post.)
Frank,
I hear you. The more I learn about social media, the queasier I get. Big Brother is alive and well.
Ron
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