William Cruse What You Should Know About Facebook in Only Seven Words

So whose Twitter are they playing with?
Yours? Theirs? Both?
Both at the same time?
That's just not right.

TWITTER DEE. TWITTER DUMB. THE ROBOTS ARE COMING.

As a marketer, people have to trust that it is actually you delivering your message. They don't have to actually like your message. They don't have to care about your message. They don't even have to believe what you have to say. But they must have no doubt that the message actually comes from you. In other words, you must control the delivery your message. That used to be easy, taken for granted. Not any more.

Control has become a dirty word in advertising, especially among those who would sell you the social networks. Twitter, for instance. They would say, "It's the new reality." "That's the way the game is played." "Just jump in there and see what happens." "Trust the wisdom of the crowds, that's the essence of social marketing."

But phony Tweets are the next new thing. According to Tim Hwang, director emeritus of the Web Ecology Project (once again, from the Atlantic article, linked below), "The data coming off social networks allows for more-targeted social 'hacks' than ever before. And those hacks use not just your interests, but your behavior."

Multiple fake identities. The United States Air Force has solicited bids for 'Persona Management Software' which "would allow the government to create multiple fake identities that trawl social-networking sites to collect data on real people and then use that data to gain credibility and to circulate propaganda." Sounds like an ad for a happy meal to me.

If the spooks and crooks and geeks are playing with it, can Madison Avenue be far behind? What's the answer? There is no answer, only help. Know thyself. Know thy competition. Know thy market. And don't confuse playing the game with being taken for a ride. Because in the nexus where advertising meets social marketing, a little skepticism, a little control, can be the difference between whether you are perceived as credible, or just another tweeting bird.

* Are You Following a Bot? How to manipulate social movements by hacking twitter. Andy Isaacson, The Atlantic, May 2011 and The Hack Behind Today's Twitter Meltdown, Max Fisher, Atlantic Wire, Sept. 21, 2010 — Also, Are Social Networks Gonna Blow? Ashlee Vance, Bloomberg Businessweek, April 18, 2011