I’m somewhat reluctant to write this post as I’m not much of a fan of calling people out in blog posts. However this is something which seems stuck in my craw and so I have to get it off my chest. Last Friday SimplyZesty published a post exhorting us (Twitter folk, that is) to stop the #FollowFriday convention:
I mean am I really going to look through 10 different @names and see if they are interesting or not? The campaign to ban #followfriday should start immediately as nobody gives a toss what people you follow and we are never going to follow them in return anyway.
I really don’t want to see any more tweets like the one below so please just stop this pathetic waste of time people will you
It’s the obnoxious tone that particularly irked me. Considering SimplyZesty pitch themselves as an ‘Online PR & Social Media’ outfit, the notion that such an agency should dictate to the people they derive their business from the way in which they should use the medium struck me as hypocritical. This was only reinforced by the campaign they’ve launched for their client Ruby Card ; Ruby Tuesday which is a competition:
We’re pleased to announce the launch of our weekly Ruby Tuesday competition, starting today. We’re giving away a Ruby prepaid card loaded with €100 cash on Facebook, Bebo and Twitter. All you have to do to enter is become our friend or follow us, then include the words ‘Ruby Card’ on your status update on Facebook or Bebo and tweet the message on Twitter with the hashtag #rubycard.
Hang on a second, it’s a weekly hashtag posting event by a mass of Twitter users? Oh but that’s different of course? This makes me wonder, are we putting ‘game-changers’ on a pedestal and not questioning them once they reach a certain height? Niall’s certainly a smart and successful bloke with a lost of online visibility. Though this seems a misadventure, I’m not seeing anyone question him up on it. In a way it reminds me of the response to Techludd when it first kicked off and how some of the social-celebs responded in the form of condescending and dismissive diatribes of how Techludd should stop before it starts. When change start to overtake those we label the game-changers what then?