Reputation and Blame On The Web
This post was made Jul 29, 2008 by Carlos del Rio
: peasap
Last week there was a rather large dispute created by a post contributed to SEOmoz by Marty Weintraub (aimclear). The fallout is an interesting observation of reputation management:
Tiers of Transparency: The Ethical Brand Ambassador — This post started it all, the current version has been edited to be less sarcastic/critical. Marty takes a biting and sarcastic look at the use of social media identities and transparency in brand ambassadors. You should read 3 Types of Social Media for some context on identity in social media – it is short.. Marty is discussing whether it is ethical for someone to participate in a community both as a brand ambassador (alias media) and as their self (identity media). In the process Marty used some unfortunate turns of phrase:
Referring to Matt Cutts:
Whilst the always-affable Mr. Cutts politely indicated that he did not consider the technique “spam,” he categorized it as “social engineering,” a phrase that harkens back to Hitler by some interpretations. Ok then… when I was subtly embellishing my Yahoo! Personals profile to get a date, I didn’t realize I was going down the road towards becoming a next-gen social media Nazi.
Referring to Rahaf Harfoush:
Tree hugger social media aficionados preach that all social media participation should be fully transparent with complete personal disclosure. In many cases I agree and recommend that clients create press secretary avatars. However, social media mirrors physical life, and in the real world people bring all combinations of transparency, intent, and participatory models to the table. The same holds true online, and to expect anything different is somewhere between negligent and Pollyanna.
Referring to Li Evans:
As candy ass social media goody 2 shoes Twittered in righteous indignation, I offered the following: “The problem is not fake social media avatars. The problem is fake social media avatars who are not authentic.”
Definitely Marty called Li a Candy-Ass Social Media Goody2Shoes and Rahaf a Tree-hugger (whatever that means on the Internet); but he didn’t call Matt a Nazi. Regardless, Marty made many people angry.
Some of the responses to Tiers of Transparency:
“Candy Ass Social Media Goody 2 Shoes”?
I was gobsmacked to find Marty Weintraub prefacing his disagreement with Li Evans on social media tactics by (playfully?) calling her a “candy ass social media goody 2 shoes.”
Obviously for me it affects how I view the seomoz brand, calling what I do “outright fraud” is a little rich from a blog advocating sock puppet marketing.
It is important to note that Lyndoman blames SEOmoz for Marty’s writing.
Unsubscribing to seomoz for a bit
The above link was posted by Matt Cutts, and then publicized.
Is this the end for Matt Cutts
Sorry Rand I know it’s no great loss, I think personally you have a great Team and I like you a lot but I don’t want that crap in my RSS.
Rand is held responsible for the content. And SEOmoz loses a subscriber.
First – to issue an apology to Lisa Barone, Li Evans, Matt Cutts and Marty…
Second – to explain the course of events that lead to this happening…
Third – We are taking steps to prevent this from happening in the future.
Rand officially apologizes to all involved and those who found the post offensive.
What does this all mean?
What you can learn from this string of events is how things play out when you have a reputation stumble. Where does the blame lay for offensive content? Should authors bear the blame for their ill-phrased works; or do publishers take the blame for distribution and censorship choices?
In this case a lightening rod approach occurred. SEOmoz was largely blamed for presenting the content. They took several tiers of mea culpa in editing, redistributing, moving, and openly apologizing about the content.
Why was Rand blamed? Some people directed their criticism at Rand, he is the CEO and the most visible identity from the organization. But, he is not the one that makes the day to day decisions about the blog, Rand clearly states that the choices made for YouMoz belongs to Rebecca — and that he backs her decisions. As the vision-keeper/lightening-rod/etc. that is his task.
What about Marty? Marty offered a much less comprehensive several shorter apologies in different places. The damage done to Marty Wientraub — and his avatar (AimClear) — are likely more insidious. While he has suffered less direct attack/attention he will likely find that his future comments are taken as more critical or hostile.
Open reputation issues, the ones that SEOmoz and Rand have suffered over this (and a few other dust ups recently), are easy to react to. Covert reputation souring is more difficult to address. When your “personality” from the web is based on your most recent, or most visible, content you lose control of your tone. People will begin to see your content tainted by the tone of previous statements, for both positive and negative.
Don’t mistake being low profile for being unscathed. Surmounting the ill-thoughts of people that are silent is much more difficult than getting past open opposition. When you are involved in a debacle you should take responsibility for your part in the issue. It is important to address future conflicts before they have time to fester.
Excellent post, Carlos.
I wasn’t familiar with Marty or his writing prior to this debacle. My own take on the matter, though, is that while SEOmoz didn’t write the content they are rightfully the “lightning rod” for the backlash because they published it. I’m sure Marty’s sentiments do not reflect those of Rebecca, Rand or anybody else at the moz, but they can’t take the position of not supporting Marty’s position if they’re going to allow him to post on their main blog.
It would have been a different story had the publication been limited to YOUmoz. Marty’s post was pushed through to the main blog – that action, in my opinion, takes the post somewhat out of the category of user-generated content and into that of editorially-endorsed content.
I agree the negative effects on Marty’s reputation will be significant. That’s how people work. A public bashing of others never has a good effect on the basher in an open community. Disrespect is ugly, no matter how well-deserved we might think it is.
The situation is somewhat similar to the last blow up I witnessed at SEOmoz – that involving Michael Martinez. Michael left a comment that, while it wasn’t a 100% positive review of the new SEOmoz Trifecta tool, was certainly not hostile. The backlash of a few key mozzers went well above and beyond what was warranted to express a disagreement with Michael’s point. Why did this happen? Because Michael has something of a reputation that preceeds him – at least in the eyes of those mozzers.
Of course, no matter how negatively we might view someone, the act of speaking out publicly about them in a rash and disrespectful way damages our own reputation. We may never achieve civility on the web as we expect it in person, but individuals will find that the expression of their negative opinions on others, especially when they get personal in their attacks, always has a negative backlash.
Sharp personal criticism cuts both ways.
Greetings,
Though I have not clarified it prior, I want you to know that the “candy ass” comment was about other Twitterers in the crowd I was monitoring from the podium in Toronto, and not Li Evans. Li is no candy ass. She takes strong well-advised positions and does not waiver. It’s unfortunate that “candy ass” comment was in the same sentence as her name.
Regarding my supposed lack of detail in my apology, respectfully I suggest you reread the threads :) Check out my first apology made at Thu (7/24/08) at 05:30 AM starting with "good morning everybody." In the same post I jumped in at least 3 other times with clarification, apologies and to validate others feelings.
I was humbled by the reaction, learned a lot and tried to set it right. Apparently in the SEO community there is little forgiveness, even in light of true apology.
After it became obvious that the late night talk show sarcasm hurt feelings, I immediately set forth to set things right. (I said nothing Letterman would not have said…I’m just not Letterman and was naive to think that I’d earned enough cred’ to behave that way.) The last thing I want to be associated with is hurting another person by having malice attributed to humor.
It is an amazing cultural study that the apologies were invisible amongst the cries for my head, even to you who obviously invested some time and heart in the case study.
I can see that you feel strongly about social media. I’d like to think that this case study touched a chord with you, as opposed to this piece being just another of Sphinn bait.
@Marty
Thanks for including the links to your apology inline on the Tiers of Transparency and the the Sphinn post.
There is no question in my mind that you showed genuine penance; this post was meant to highlight the difference between public and private aspects of public relations. I will add your links into the section where I talk about your response.
It isn’t that your apologies are invisible, it is that most people didn’t expect an apology from you — they wanted SEOmoz (the publisher) to apologize.
Blog culture in many ways has made people more accepting of personal views. In an increasing number of cases people and organizations are more damned by there endorsements than by their statements.
If the president of a college says something uncouth the college suffers more than the president. If a radio personality says something racist the station suffers more. Public perception has more to do with the distributor than the message.
I realize that you likely spent a good deal of time in e-mail and on the phone speaking with people on the topic of your statements, and in rewriting the post to expunge offense to people that you meant to tease in a friendly way. Unfortunately sarcasm is very difficult to communicate in bare text: blogs, forums, and e-mail.
I think that you made timely points about social media, unfortunately for everyone, the reactions to your statements serve as a much richer look into web-communities than your original insights.