Posted on October 8, 2007 | Category: BUSINESS, MARS BLOG
About two years ago I signed up for Newsvine to see if it really was the future of social news. After a couple of months the place felt empty, so I left. A few days ago, I went back to join the fold and start submitting news again, but when I submitted news from MARS Magazine, I was met with a stern message telling me that Newsvine doesn’t allow users to post “material deemed to be advertising or of a promotional nature.” By “promotional” I guess they meant posting news links from your own blog. I found this odd. I thought the big story in social media was that YOU were now an important part of the media conversation.
In fact, in today’s New York Times story detailing Newsvine’s acquisition by MSNBC.com, Newsvine CEO Mike Davidson (pictured above) said, “We set out to create an environment where big and little media could live in one place and make each other better.“ Apparently, that’s not the case.
When I responded to the original form letter email from Newsvine, I made a point of how I also seed links from sites like GigaOM, Chris Pirillo, and other sites on my Twitter/Facebook/Digg accounts. Then I got a response back from Newsvine co-founder Mark Budos saying, “Twitter and Facebook do not leverage the links you post for users other than users consuming your content. We aggregate all content that users submit.” Translation: You aren’t using the site in a way that fits into our business model, so stop using your own definition of social media. Budos went on to say, “We have locations on your column (your site, your recommendations) where you are welcome to put whatever you’d like. But seeds that are submitted to Newsvine must not be self-promotional in nature.” Translation: If you just found out that Company A has acquired Company B for $10 billion and you posted it on your blog, we don’t want to hear about it unless A)the mainstream media covers your tiny blog story first (not likely), or B)someone in the vast space of the Internet happens to be a Newsvine member and happens to seed your story link. Genius.
Amazingly, Budos’ odd social media logic didn’t stop there, he then said, “I think if you think about it, you’ll realize that if users are allowed to submit content from their own site, they are ceasing to increase the value of our community, but rather attempting to promote their own interests.“ So wait, if you participate in Newsvine and write stories on the site (thus, promoting Newsvine), you improve the site’s value, but if you have news and opinion on your own site and you seed that on Newsvine, you’re devaluing Newsvine? While this pretty much sounds like the antithesis of what we’ve come to understand social media to be, it’s actually a rather candid statement regarding what value Newsvine places on the opinions/blogs of its own users.
Because of this I have tagged what Newsvine is doing as Pseudo Social Media: Social media where the people have control–until it conflicts with the company’s business model. It’s this kind of thinking that will ultimately kill the social media model unless someone with the resources and interest decides to launch a social media site unencumbered by the dictates of investors and revenue targets. Needless to say, when I found out MSNBC.com acquired Newsvine for an undisclosed amount just days after my conversation with the co-founder, everything suddenly made sense and I closed my Newsvine account.
Photo by adactio
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