Recently I've been hearing and seeing a lot of examples of people taking power into their own hands and using social media to create change - whether it's Clay Shirkey's example of the airline bill of rights or Dell's support of Linux based on customer demand through their IdeaStorm site.
I think this trend is wondrous and amazing - we finally have a way to listen to more voices and get input from a much wider collection of people than ever before. However, this week I was disturbed by the Twitter revolt of the Sarah Lacy interview of Mark Zuckerberg. I'm not disturbed that there was a great deal of criticism of the interview - that is completely fair. What I am very disturbed by is that the audience aggressively heckled Sarah during her interview....based on the social validation they got through Twitter to do so. Ironically in this case, social media is enabling people to be extremely disrespectful and anti-social. If people didn't like the interview, why didn't they quietly leave?
Sometimes revolutions are called for...over the lack of civil liberties, economic freedoms, fair wages. But not over a poor interview. We all need to remember that what makes for good social experiences is a little respect - for everyone.
I once wrote a post comparing the Web 2.0 world to high school, except that all the guys who were freaks and geeks during their actual high school years were now the prom queens.
Sadly, while we often think we'll behave better than the bullies who made our lives miserable, the truth is another matter.
Posted by: Chris Yeh | March 13, 2008 at 03:43 AM