We've all done it. So have our institutions.

"This call may be recorded for accuracy...." and, I dunno, for 100 other practical/tactical reasons.

Once upon a time I sold corporate media and was an ad agency creative director. One effective maxim we told business customers was that positive word of mouth is the gold standard for sales generation.

So turn that concept on its head, as militant Twitteristas have, and you've struck a nerve so jarring that corporate executives sprint for the Blackberry to personally make nice to mere retail mortals and send them stuff...gasp...for free.

Huge Corporate Secret: Customers are unspoken gods in the capitalist equation. That's right. Ya got 'em by the balls. The mere possibility that all their artful investment in advertising, marketing and image building can be undone by a few angry keystrokes is a corporate stunner-er.

Yes your power is real and it scares the shit out of them.

The current crop of tactical thinkers, rogue marketers and behavioral scientists will seek to repair this security breech and attempt to manipulate, emulate or astro turf Twitter-like group behaviors on behalf of their clients; or they might deploy faux group behavior ops against the perceived competition of their clients. Call this aspect contra-marketing. Roberta Combs of the Christian Coalition is already on to this idea.

How they will penetrate your personal social perimeter is beyond my personal technical understanding. But the attempt will almost certainly be made. Twitter, in my estimation is a crude precursor to global telepathy. This unmanageable frequency of People Power is unwelcome in certain quarters.

Your response to remain empowered. ? By adopting an "intentional stance" on a newly confirmed but unknown force, and assigning to it the status of a biological entity with motives and goals, a successful hunt for digital spoor may be peformed to prepare social media users for future attempts at outside manipulation.

I'd guess Farhad Manjoo knows something about these matters.

So stay tuned to this channel!

muzza:

Once upon a time I sold corporate media and was an ad agency creative director.

...was that anything like what they show on Mad Men?

Heh. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist.

Actually yes, based on the few first season episodes I watched. They portrayed the swaggering dominance aspect very accurately, IMO. In my time, their were many more woman in the game and they were not the least bit victimized. In fact they brought a whole new frequency of estrogen rich vitriol to the industry and turned a figurative jungle into a literal one...a woman's touch, as it were.