Social media gurus nailed in Onion parody

"Social media eliminates the need to provide value to your clients."

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http://avarana.blogspot.com MarlboroTestMonkey7

I like this!
- Metostopholes
  
  I like your comment!
groovyeyal

Truth!
http://www.fagerland.org tofagerl

See, what you have to do is leverage the talent already invested by the company itself, synergize their output with the social model and harvest the customers interest graphs so that you can put together a mashup that will truly generate buzz around the social media product.

In other words, put some shit on a facebook page.
giantasterisk

Reminds me of an episode of “The Pitch,” a competition reality show about ad agencies, where the client, PopChips, wanted an agency to create “the greatest, longest, most watched viral video of all time.” But the agencies only had a couple of days. Nothing even resembling and idea came out of the “creative” process. In the end, the winning agency created a shiny, colorful Flash video ad, to be posted on YouTube, that literally said, “In 2012, PopChips will create the greatest, longest, most watched viral video of all time, and you can be a part of it!” The client was thrilled — those guys really understood their brand!

Question is, how the hell can anyone be so stupid?
- Aram Jahn
  
  I have never seen “The Pitch,” but your description of the episode reminds me of the part of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise, where everyone wants to go take a picture of some barn somewhere, because it’s widely known that it’s the most photographed barn in the world. Why? Who cares? It’s the most-photographed!
  - http://twitter.com/bradbelltv Brad Bell
    
    White Noise is a masterpiece.
    
    THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA
    http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/541239-we-drove-22-miles-into-the-country-around-farmington-there
sqyntz

Wait, i just hired this guy to expand my twitter footprint! WTF?
mdot

I am reading a book called “Social Media is Bullshit” by B.J Mendelson right now. It is a worthy read. Here is an interview where he talks about it. http://bjmendelson.com/
James Kimbell

This looks like a Fox News attempt at comedy. Oh, those kids with their new ideas that aren’t real and don’t involve work.
- http://bbc.co.uk/chinese cycle23
  
  You sound like a social media guru.
- novium
  
  I don’t know man. I’m right in the prime demographic for setting yourself up as a “social media guru” (several of my friends have done it, and have made bank, and they don’t know anything about social media that I don’t), and to me it’s all bullshit (more power to them), just exploiting the fact that traditional marketers were convinced that social media was some strange new world that they needed a guide to get through. rather, than, you know, just someone setting up a basic twitter/facebook account and then getting the company to use it.
  - bklynchris
    
    Yes, exactly the point of the sketch. Your friends are who they are poking fun at.
- http://twitter.com/sirkowski Sirkowski
  
  You’re a TED fan, are you?
- Christopher Carr
  
  Hit a little close to home, does it?
- Thomas Baxter
  
  Ideas?! Whoa! Keep those dirty words to yourself or you will find yourself out of a job soon enough. Unless your idea is: “OK, so we’ll incentivize page views with some product giveaways!” That’ll shoot you right to the top! That ones gratis…
Jem Sweeney

Finally, an echo chamber I want to live in.
miasm

Enable user-centred feeds by integrating podcasting ecologies in order to reinvent Cluetrain platforms whilst creating social life-hacks with tag embedded ecologies.

http://emptybottle.org/bullshit/index.php
- bklynchris
  
  I see your:
  “Enable user-centred feeds by integrating podcasting ecologies in order to reinvent Cluetrain platforms whilst creating social life-hacks with tag embedded ecologies.”
  
  and raise you one:
  “engage long-tailed blogospheres”
Matisse Enzer

“Using your brains to think of an idea, and your skills to implement it: That’s the old model.”
Aram Jahn

Somewhere, Douglas Rushkoff is actually giggling at this. And who has seen Doug bust up, ever? I haven’t. He’s so damned earnest, brilliant…but I bet he laffs his ass off at this. I know I did.

And tofagerl and miasm: did you guys use some sorta “social media gobbledygook generator” or did have you read so much of the social media BS that it spewed perfectly out of your fingers? Because your posts made me laff, too. Thanks!
taras

I’ve been to conferences like this.

“Let me let you in on a little secret – QR codes. They’re going to be big.”
“If you don’t have a Twitter account, you’re dead in the water!”
etc.

Fortunately, a lot of people are sick of this shit – I think (at least in techier conferences) it’s finally dying a death.
Ping Kee

The big PR firms are cleaning up on this. They’ve hitched stakeholder engagement and crisis management services to the social media bandwagon and charge a fortune for new “tools”. Here’s a true example of how it works.

PR firm X has a client that wants to know what stakeholders it should engage with in China. PR firm X sells a “proprietary tool” to the client, which they imply uses complex algorithms to identify and weight “key” stakeholders. In reality, they ring me and ask for a list of NGOs, government officials, journalists and academics who know something about the “issues”. They want me to do it for free. I tell them to go to hell. Who knows what load of alogrithmic dross the client gets. Who cares… PR firms and their clients deserve each other.
paulj

As usual, XKCD has this nailed: http://xkcd.com/1138/
bklynchris

This is how I felt when razorfish (‘memba them?) went public. Office in Helsinki my ass.