"The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools" John Dewey (American Philosopher, Psychologist and Educator, 1859-1952)

I've been with Base One for a few weeks now and was told that my settling in period had come to an end, the kid gloves were off and I was "asked" to produce my first post for the company.

I was racking my brains about what to post about when, over 200 miles from my home an incident occurred. A single action; followed by a difficult decision, leading to an outcome that has seen a man's reputation destroyed and talk of economic consequences to the countries involved.

I speak of Thierry Henry and what is now being dubbed "La main de Dieu" (Hand of God). For those that don't know what happened, France progressed to the World Cup at the expense of the Republic of Ireland. The decisive goal, scored by William Gallas was set up by Thierry Henry who handled the ball before crossing to his team mate.

Now I won't be discussing the incident itself, instead I am looking at the part played by Social Media in the syndication and resulting emotional outpouring from large numbers of individuals across the globe.

The power of the press is Waning, yielding to the Power of the People. Nowadays anyone with a link to the Internet and an opinion can affect the views of the masses, and generally steal a march on the larger press by publishing instantly. This news is swiftly syndicated through the various bookmarking and newswire websites and then Social Networking is utilised to provide a platform to discuss, debate and in some cases "vent;" like a child wielding his dads' rifle.

It was through this medium that I watched Thierry Henry's fall from grace. People from different countries and different walks of life fuelled a relentless wave of different opinions and different emotions, the overwhelming emotion being anger.

Taking Twitter as my first example, within minutes of the incident, whilst the match was still playing in fact, the torrent had begun. By the full-time whistle Tweets appeared to be coming in at around 195 every 30 seconds. Within the hour after the final whistle "Thierry Henry" and "Henry" had become trending topics. At 10am, on the 20th of November (Over 36 Hours after the event) the tweets continue although flow has calmed to a handful a minute.

Where Twitter quickly built to a deafening crescendo and dissipated in much the same way, Facebook built quickly and seemed to maintain some momentum. Immediately after the incident my "Live News" was full of related comments which continued into the night and the following morning,

I also came across the Facebook Page - "We Irish hate Thierry Henry (The Cheat)" which was created after the match. By Midday on 19th November, the page had 30,000 fans then by 10am on 20th November the number of fans had swelled to over 80,000 and was then removed Facebook due to the nature of the group and the offensive nature of the comments being posted.

YouTube was also pounced upon with multiple videos posted, commanding views numbering in the tens of thousands. Replaying, berating, and making fun of Thierry Henry including a depiction of Adolf Hitler's reaction to the goal.

A man made a choice; that choice was instantly scrutinized worldwide, and brought to the attention of millions by angered voices without hesitation, or thought to the possible fallout. This led to threats of violence, unchecked widespread racism and other ugly human traits in true "Angry Mob" style.

The beauty of Social Media is that it provides total freedom of expression, but that total freedom can also show its dark side; when it is used to personally attack someone or something.

Social Media can be an extremely effective weapon, with the power to change lives.

Is it too easy to wield?

Is there anything we can do about it?

If there is, do we want to?

I've been playing around with a Digg account lately, trying to figure out how to best incorporate our clients content into this fun social networking site.  Digg is unique because it doesn't

1.An Ace Nickname: The Username.  I'm a big fan of creating plausible usernames - in this case I used my real name.  As a newbie, using a normal name like "Scott Osman" or "Miranda Mocco" helps sets the precedent that you're not a bot out to spam.

2.It's all About Looks: Your Avatar.  This needs to be unique from other users and if possible, consistent across social networking sites.  I threw a relatively ugly yellow border around my image, as an easy way for people to indicate it's me.  Check out some successful avatars and get a little feedback on what people think of yours. http://avatarwall.com/toprated.  Again, I found that as a newbie, people like seeing a face, it makes communicating more friendly, but as always different people like different things.

3.Hang Out in the Cool Places: Share Your Profiles!  Digg permits members to share tons of profile links, be sure to take advantage of this so your future friends can easily contact you.  Be sure to include your: Twitter, AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, Gchat, last.fm, facebook, linked in, reddit, and stumble upon profiles. 

4.Make friends with the popular crowd.  Long ago Digg had a top users list (sometimes referred to as the "holy grail"), but it was deleted.  I used an alternative list set up by SocialBlade to friend top active diggers.
By friending them, you will become their "fan" whereby you receive updates on their Digg activities; it is only when they accept you as a friend that your status is certified as "mutual friends" and your activity will be received by them.

5.Identify stylish trends: Pin Pointing Submissions with Front Page Potential.  How do you find the high potential articles when the majority of submissions are spam with one or two Diggs?  First and foremost, digg your friends submissions as they appear, especially if the friend sends a "shout" (like a facebook wall post) promoting a certain submission.  You're allowed 200 diggs a day - depending on how much of a life you have, try to use all 200.
I'm a huge fan of the Digg Noise Filter, which pulls up articles with your requested number of diggs in it.  Or try the Flash based Digg Watcher.

6. Back Stabbing: Talk about your Friends.  I cannot stress this one enough.  You must comment on submissions, and the more people who vote up your comment, the more recognition you get.  

I've certainly struggled to figure out what makes a popular comment; supporting Obama, comic book heroes, and protests all seem to be green lights.  Whitty banter, sarcasm, and jokes are usually popular, and comments like "interesting submission" often get a thumbs down for being too obvious. 
Being one of the first people to comment on an article that goes to the front page is a great way to build up your recognition.  People who view the article will see your comment as it appears at the top of the page, hence more are likely to vote it a thumbs up, and hopefully friend you.  
Check out where your popular friends are commenting and be sure to "reply" to their comments.  This will call attention to yourself and hopefully be enough to convince them to friend you back.

Spend about 1 month following the above rules.  In part II (which will also take me about 1 month to write!) I'll go over great strategies for submitting content that gets notable traffic.  In the mean time, get commenting!

I went to SES London last week, and during the Social Media Optimisation seminar Krista Neher, CEO of the marketing solutions company Marketess, told this cute social media parable. 

You walk into a bar and start talking to your friend.  Suddenly, this jerk jumps in between you two and says "TRY MY NEW BEER! IT'S AMAZING!".  You probably look at your friend with those "what the heck is this looser doing?" eyes and bee line for the door. 


Rewind:  You walk into a bar and start talking to your friend.  When you need a new drink the cute bartender asks "Would you like to try this new beer?  It's quite good."  You probably look at your friend and say "sure, why not?" and viola!  You've been introduced to a new product.  This is how social media should work.
 
The key in example #2 is it wasn't forced on you.  Social media campaigns cannot work if the material is forced, the entire point is that users support the content because it's actually of interest to them.  By offering a new beer when you were ready for a new drink, the beer company is providing a solution to your need when you (the consumer) wanted it. 

Making friends isn't easy in real life, so you wouldn't think that finding friends or "followers" on Twitter could be an easy task either.  But it can be!  I used the following method with a client's twitter account and got fantastic results!

Like with real friends, I found the key is to identify common interests.  So first things first, what is your twitter account's interest?  For example, let's say I'm starting a new website about cooking beef burgers.

Provide a backlog of information.  I would want to get a bunch of burger related content up in my history, to prove that I'm serious about my burgers.  I can find online content about burgers and tweet it, with a tiny URL (check out tiny.cc ) for optimum space usage in those 140 characters!



Now for the edge - I will tweet my own content (a blogpost? A video?) about a great broiling technique.  When twitter users see my account, this will be the most recent update and most likely click.

Now it's time to search for friends, soon to be followers.  Scroll to the bottom of your twitter homepage and click on the search link or enter summize.com into your URL bar.  Next, type in "Hamburger".  As you can see, all of the results will be people who have tweeted about the subject of hamburger.



Now I want to follow all of these people who have mentioned burgers in their recent tweets.  In exchange, my hope is that people will follow me, as I continue to share my burger knowledge.  Also utilize synonyms, for instance I should also search for "cheese burgers" and "beef burgers", maybe if I'm feeling daring search for "hot dogs" too!

I also found it helpful to find a relevant twitter account (or potential competitor?), and follow all your competiror's follwers.  For instance, I may follow all of this guy's followers:



Note - it's really important that I continue to share my burger knowledge.  No one wants to follow an account that is inactive; they'll drop me from their followers like a fly.
 
Important Numbers: On average, I have found that about 25% of the people I follow follow me.  And Twitter only permits you to follow 2,000 people in a given day.

In short: provide relevant content on your twitter account and then search for people talking about that content matter.