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Oh the cheery, carefree wild bygone days of the beginnings of Social Media. Someday we’ll tell our children about a far away time where one could freely create multiple accounts for various interests. There was no “big brother” watchful all seeing eye. No gestapo demands for identity tracking verification. Competing social media platforms played nicely with each other and didnt cut off user bases and developers. Oh the good ole days….
Well guess what? Social Media isnt young and fresh anymore. Its having to quit freeloading and pay the bills. Investors want startups to grow up, move out the house and get a job on Wall Street. Facebook started like a college frat party, now it has to act like a “stick up your butt” adult businessman and make a buck. Soon it will be lost in the quagmire of unappreciative spouses, bratty kids and long stops at the bar on the way home. Wait, what?
Today its being reported Facebook has started taking down with or without warning cosplay fake accounts. Basically, secondary accounts of people who dress up in costume and have Pseudonym identities. Unfortunately, it appears some users had no warning and lost personal data.
This likely follows the report over the last few weeks that up to 83 million Facebook accounts are fake (Click for link). I’ve been wondering what Facebook was going to do about that, its a little hard to sell Wall Street that you have a billion users with an asterisk for fake accounts. Wall Street and investors dont want fake customers just like it would be inappropriate for any other business to “cook the books.” Facebook now has to bend to the will of being a legitimate business and that means fake accounts must die. Along with it the innocence of the youthful merriment of social media’s adolescence.
Lets look at the big picture. What does this bode for other networks that want to go public? I know Twitter users that have many accounts depending on their interests and businesses. One of the failures of MySpace was being bought out by a mega corporation and then had to start acting like one. As the fun was gone, users left MySpace. Google+ obviously from their very launch saw the truth that all of these networks to be sold properly, have to have legitimate verifiable users.
Even today Twitter added Tumblr to their list of cutoffs from their user base and continues to cut off developers. For years I’ve been telling clients that they should take advantage of Social Media before they start having to pay for it. Now they do: App.net. The flower power age of love and peace in social media is dead. Welcome Social Media 2.0: “Its not personal, its JUST business.”
At first sight this looks fair enough – but then I think to myself: what do Advertisers really want
? Is ti really the case that an existence on “real” identities is so crucial
? Do they figure that if a person has 2 accounts, then that’s wastefully 2 identities that they’re advertising to
? But then I thought – hang on – while I’m not personally interested in this “cosplay” stuff – some are ! And the owner of the account has just created some buzz of activity, a reason for people of similar interests to gather together, a collection of eyeballs ripe for … advertising ! Isn’t this what advertising really wants – yet another excuse for an audience – they don’t really care what it is – that they can advertise to. Kinda sounds like superbowl to me ! Speaking of which, surely the advertiser doesn’t care that the entertainer enters the superbowl with his “real” identity, but then changes into his “performance” identity
? Heaven forbid ! Actually, this performer has become part of the picture for the size and enthusiasm of the gathering, and advertisers capitalise on that to make MONEY ! I think this whole thing needs a re-think. The alter-ego pages can come under the banner of a special interest page, for starters. It all sounds like a wonderful advertising opportunity to me – and nothing diminishes advertising effectiveness more than being BORING.
As someone with a few company accounts for different businesses and a personal one on Twitter I would be pissed off if they suddenly cut off my other accounts. Each account has it’s own purpose and own unique identity. Especially, the business accounts that I have for different companies are really legal entities. There is nothing social about what the “teenage years” of social media have done to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These are huge growing pains.
Yes Social Media is going to have to start to develop a way to better control all the spammer and bogus accounts. But I’m not sure that multiple accounts for different purposes is really bad if they are used accounts that really have a purpose.
Most if not all of us have more than one account on at least part if not all of the big three, FB, Twitter, and Linkined. And the majority of those accounts are for good reason and are used and maintained within the guidelines of the sites involved. I would hope that cooler heads would prevail when it comes to dropping sites.
But in the end I’m sure that the growing pains have just started for social media sites as they seek root out all the spammers and snake oil salesmen. And of course the new pressures of being owned by investors out side of the venture capitalists that funded them as start-ups will most certainly be their real “test by fire”. For investors have little patience or understanding of anything but ROI.
Just ask Mark Zuckerberg how it is to be pressured on all sides by a mob angry for profits and results rather than promises.
What they are really talking about is has more than one account on Twitter Facebook or maybe Linkin which on Facebook I know some people have 4 to 5 accounts under different names. In realality it is dumb stupid and crazy. Why do you need all those accounts for because all you are doing is using the same profile photo on each account. Facebook is very easy web program to make more than account on.
Dear dumb@$$ Wall Street, real people access “fake” accounts. There is still a customer there to sell to. All you have to do is factor in that a certain % of accounts are duplicates, is that really a problem? This is ridiculous.