I just finished the first book I’ve devoured in more than a decade.

Mark Harris’s Pictures at a Revolution details the making of the 5 Best Picture nominees at the 1968 Academy Awards, from their initial concepts through their critical and public reception.  Two of those films, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, centered on race relations during the year when Sidney Poitier became the country’s most bankable star and Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated.  Another of those films, Doctor Dolittle, was a money pit that bought its Oscar nominations through old-fashioned studio graft and bribery.  And then there were Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate, the two films no one in Hollywood wanted to make and the ones that wound up redefining Hollywood, filmmaking and America itself.

Not since Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls in 1999 have I inhaled a book so quickly.  Not coincidentally, both books detail the seismic shift between the vintage Hollywood studio system and the “new Hollywood” influenced by New York, television and theater.

The films made during this era — Chinatown, Shampoo, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Last Picture Show, Taxi Driver, etc. — relied on unconventional actors, complex narratives, location shoots, sexual freedom and moral ambiguity.  They reshaped the way films are made, judged, consumed and remembered.  And perhaps more than anything else, they expanded the world’s expectations of what an American film could be.

In short, an entire generation got excited about movies.

All of which makes me wonder…

What Could Web Content Be?

Whenever I think about our evolving media forms, I’m reminded of something John Herman told me (and everyone else in the room) in 2006.

At the very first PodCamp in 2006, John — who is a many of many titles, including “video instructor” and “Pac-Man” — intended to lead a session about the do’s and don’ts of web video.  But after sitting through numerous sessions prior to his own, and hearing how everyone else does what they do, John scrapped his original idea and spoke instead about something even more useful:

Not following the rules.

John had recently bought a DVD set of vintage films made during the early days of cinema, and he’d been amazed at how many of the “rules” we take for granted in modern cinema — shooting establishing shots, filming two people in conversation at opposing angles, etc. — were completely absent from these films.

John realized he’d stumbled across media that had been created before we all agreed on how that media should be created, and he was worried that web media was about to enter a period of “rule-making” that might rob us of our creativity.

That Was Four Years Ago.

Since then, we’ve had precious few “breakout” web creations, and what does succeed online remains mostly confined to the web itself.  Those of us who can’t understand why web content hasn’t been embraced by the mainstream should first admit a harsh truth:

In our rush to monetize social media, we forgot to create experiences people want.

If you want to see a movie or a stage play, you buy a ticket.  If you want to read a story, you buy a book.  And if you want to listen to the radio or watch TV, you need to buy the device in question.

But the Internet just comes with your computer.

Yes, you have to subscribe to the web.  And yes, the web costs money to access.  But you’d do that whether people were creating original web content or not.  You’d do it just for email, news, peer communication and streaming media.

You pay for the Internet because you need it, not because you want what’s on it.

Blogs? Podcasts? YouTube?

Those Are Supposed to Be Free, Right?

People don’t pay for what they don’t need or want.  And no one needs or wants web media that’s a cheap approximation of the same stories and experiences they can obtain better elsewhere.

The reason The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde shocked Hollywood is because they spoke to America’s youth.  Sure, these films were groundbreaking on a technical and narrative basis, but that’s film buff talk; what these films did was connect with, represent and empower an entire generation’s point of view.

And people are always willing to pay (repeatedly) for the opportunity to see, share and absorb an experience that excites them.  (Fun fact: By the end of 1968, The Graduate was the third-highest grossing film ever.)

Unless we start creating web-based content that electrifies audiences — content, I should note, that’s specifically designed for the experience of the web, rather than shoehorning old media forms into new media tubes — we’re squandering a golden opportunity to define ourselves through the stories we tell.  It means we’re really just waiting around for someone else to make the rules, because we don’t think we have anything to say.

And maybe we don’t.  Which could explain the whole conundrum.

But there is a bright side.

See, the studio collapse of the 1960s led to the Hollywood upheaval of the 1970s, which in turn spawned the era of blockbusters like The Godfather and Jaws.

So, by that rationale, we’ll all be swimming in money any day now.

We just have to change the world first.

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Do yourself a favor: stop reading Copyblogger.  If you really want to learn how to blog, read Chuck Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs; it’s the only writing guide you’ll ever need, because it has nothing to do with writing and everything to do with making ultra-personal, compulsively readable arguments about anything.

Why This Book Matters

Despite being published in 2003, Puffs reads like a hyper-modern guidebook for our currently self-obsessive culture.  Yes, it preceded the explosion of MySpace, YouTube and Twitter, but the absence of web-related case studies in Puffs* actually reinforces my point:

In 2003, Chuck Klosterman created the blueprint for writing the kind of blog you’d kill to be known for today, and all before anybody knew what a blog was.

But there’s a problem: intent.

Chuck Klosterman is a career hybrid of journalist, essayist and memoirist.  He’s a best-selling author and pop culture deconstructionist.

You write about SEO.

So where’s the overlap?  Easy: it’s all in the way you make your argument.

Listen to Me, and I’ll Say Something That You’ll Think Is Amazing

Simply put, Chuck Klosterman may be the best contextualizer of pop culture writing today.

His explanations of how and why our culture shapes our reality is the kind of writing that makes you think, “Of course; that’s so obvious!” AND “I never would have thought of that!” at the same time.

This makes Chuck Klosterman the kind of expert you want to be: a highly-opinionated amateur whose articulate assertions about “the way things are” have elevated him to cult-like status in the minds of people who believe Chuck Klosterman is “just like me.”

How does he do it?  By employing the same literary devices that have been adopted by the very bloggers you quote endlessly:

• Start with an authoritative argument that seeks to define something anew.
• Cite a vast array of facts that imply your encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.
• Use indefensible phrases like “this is perhaps the most ___ aspect of ___”
• Seemingly concede others may be right… “but.”  Then, disembowel their POV.
• Embed your subjective experience into your otherwise objective dissertation.
• Conclude your argument on an ambiguous note that betrays the entire venture as your own personal attempt to better understand your own consciousness, rather than the generalized education the reader had initially presumed it was meant to be.

In the end, you’ll have said something that may or may not mean anything to anyone but you, but you’ll have provided your audience with ample opportunity to draw their own conclusions.

What Billy Joel’s Worst-Selling Albums Can Teach You About Social Media

You may not think pop culture and social media necessarily overlap, but here’s the kicker: the unifying themes among the 18 essays published in Puffs are the exact same themes that fuel our social media-driven culture.

For example, Klosterman covers such diverse territory as:

• How breakfast cereal mascots train kids to become hipsters.
• Why pornorgaphy made the Internet acceptable, and vice versa.
• How The Empire Strikes Back created Generation X.
• Why the otherwise forgettable tween “comedy” Saved by the Bell succeeds as a litmus test for your own understanding of how “the real world” works.
• What it means to have known a serial killer — and what that says about fluidity of our individual morality.

The pattern?  Like social media, pop culture creates your own reality.

When Klosterman explains how Billy Joel has written some of the most universally-relatable pop songs ever, but we rarely notice how relevant Billy Joel actually is because he consciously rejects any attempts to “brand” himself, you realize that same lesson applies to your brand — or lack thereof.

And when Klosterman declares that MTV’s “The Real World” ceased to document “reality” after its first season and has been creating reality ever since, it blows your mind a little.  Then you realize his central thesis — that a generation has grown up realizing that the only way they’ll ever get to be on a “reality show” is by being a “reality show type” — is undeniably true, and you can’t help but take his side.

Debunking the Deconstructionist

Make no mistake: you could easily debunk every assertion Klosterman makes.  But this in no way devalues his skills as a writer; if anything, it makes him even more readable, because you find yourself forming your own arguments as you’re reading his.

For example, he claims best-selling “Wal-Mart country” artists like Toby Keith  and Trisha Yearwood deserve their success because they document the human condition more simply — and, therefore, more relatably for the masses — than Bob Dylan or Liz Phair.

Obviously, the flip side of that argument (which Klosterman glosses over) involves cultural isolationism, geographic limitations and flaws in our educational and media distribution systems.  But Klosterman doesn’t explore that side of the big picture.

Why not?

Probably due to one huge stumbling block created by his preferred format: length.  If he writes too much, he knows his essays will become too dense for us to read in a single sitting.  And shouldn’t pop culture analysis be as digestible as pop culture itself?

Besides, there’s also the matter of being prolific.  Every spoke on the argument wheel is an opportunity for another article, another essay…

… or, if you prefer, another blog post.

* NOTE: I’ve only read the original 2003 hardcover printing of Puffs; the recent reprint evidently contains new essays, which may be more web-centric.  Klosterman has also written in Esquire, The Believer and beyond; his latest collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur, is now at the top of my to-read list.

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Last week, The Baltimore Sun‘s book blogger Dave Rosenthal proclaimed the ’00s “the Stephenie Meyer decade” — a move destined to manufacture heated debates and, naturally, more traffic to the paper’s site.  His post predictably stirred the passions of 15-year-old gi… er, 32-year-old women, who finally found a national cause they could rally behind.  (Sorry, health care.)

And while this stunt could be viewed as a calculated traffic lure for the Sun, I doubt it’ll cause many of the commenters on this post to read the Sun more often.  Given the sheer volume of feedback on Rosenthal’s post, most Twilighters evidently pounce on any mention of Meyer’s name with the nerve-rattling speed of heat-seeking abstinence missiles, which obviously leaves them little time to read anything else.  (Except — judging by the neverending “JK Rowling is better than / worse than Stephenie Meyer” arguments — for Harry Potter.)

But even if the Sun suddenly did see an uptick in readership, it would be bad news for its readers at large, because the level (and subjects) of writing necessary to “hook” this audience for the long haul would drive the Sun to sub-tabloid levels of journalism.

To wit, some actual comments from the post:

JK may sell more but stephene sells to a wider audience of all ages. Stephenie also stayed light dispite being about vampiers. JKs books got darker and darker and not approprite for thier intended audience.

stephenie meyer is a excellient writer she has great books i didnt like reading until i saw her books at first i thought they were boring until i really got in the middle of the books i love you stephenie keep up the good books

im fully on team stephanie. her writing is unbelievable…each book gets more and moe interesting…and they are so relatable. i can sit and actually be in the main characters place whe i read her books. Jk Rowling simply makes up fake words…no wonder people think her books are complex…because they have to spend so much time trying to figure out what the heck she is talking about.

Stephenie Meyer soo deserves this title
all of you’sz shut your Mouth
She is a VERY tealnted author, and ONE of the most biggest sensational, phenomenal hits of ALL time.

Congratulations to Stephenie, she urned the best author of the decade!

I am 32 and LOVE the Twilight Series. Stephanie’s writing is so intuitive of the feelings surrounding true love in both the female and male perspective. Not only that, she is able to show the drama of dealing with that kind of passion at such a young age and showing the beauty of waitiing until the moment is right. My girlfriends, all in their 30′s love it too. My dentist reads it with his wife for four play. She is amazing! Stephen King is stupid.

The books are very well written for THIS era and personally, Twilight got me into reading again. I’ve read all of the books MANY times. Stephanie has a unique style of writing, JUST LIKE EVERY WRITER IN THE WORLD! everyone writes different, every PERSON is different. This day in age, people are so quick to judge and ridicule everyone and I think it’s just plain stupid. My generation is the future of this country right now, maybe people should start listening to us more!!!

And on… and on… and on…

Am I being elitist in my dismissal of the Twilight phenomenon as a wrong turn on the pop culture superhighway?  Yes.

Am I dense enough to believe that a litany of breathless praise from semi-literate web commenters is representative of the entire Twilight fanbase?  Almost.  But since blog commenters the world over tend to be semi-literate, it’s hard to hold this against the Twilighters specifically.

Instead, let me pose some larger questions, like…

• If Meyer’s books have inspired people to read, why have they not also inspired them to write coherently?
• If an author succeeds by spoon-feeding her audience exactly what they want, delivered in short, unchallenging, candy-coated morsels, is her success truly so unexpected as to be worth commending?
• Will Meyer’s youngest readers grow up unable to appreciate more complex literature — or more complicated discourse?
• Have we reached the point where children AND adults now automatically consider “the best-selling” to be “the best,” period?
• What’s the appropriate response when Meyer’s teen and young adult fans, whom Meyer has “empowered” through self-identification, and who are living in a world marketed as youthful entitlement, invoke the “we’re the future of the world and people should listen to us” clause?

And, of course: should the newspaper industry, which is desperately fighting to stay afloat, be celebrating the success of an author whose debatable skills (and the questionable effect those skills are having on her audience) demonstrate why newspapers are struggling to find an audience in the first place?

Which raises an even thornier issue: what if Rosenthal was right?  What if this really is “the Stephenie Meyer decade” of literature, with all that implies?

In that case… where do we go from here?

First off, a disclaimer: I’m a language snob.  I may use a wide variety of frowned-upon slang, obscure localisms and creatively-worded profanity, but I also know the difference between a complete sentence and a formless vomiting-up of consonants.

If only that were the norm.

Over the past decade, society’s general appreciation of language has taken a turn for the apocalyptic.  I’m not just talking about bad grammar or mystifying syntax, because everybody makes common errors despite their best intentions.  And I’m not the kind of typo nazi who seizes on a single misspelling as a convenient excuse to invalidate a person’s entire argument (see: any comment thread on Newsvine).

What I’m talking about is an increasing public resentment toward intellectuals, literature, complexity and complicated communications in general.  I’m talking about the dumbing-down of modern discourse due to complaints that big words make subliterate people feel small.  And I’m talking about the general refusal of broader society to hold itself to a higher standard than an elementary school reading level for fear that the great unwashed masses won’t be able to play along.

But mostly, I’m talking about the following three examples of things that confuse, exasperate and infuriate me.

How You Use Language Defines You In the Eyes of Others

It’s one of the uncomfortable truths of Twitter: if you pay attention to the Trending Topics, you can often tell which ones were started by a “metropolitan” audience and which ones were started by an “urban” audience.  That’s because the metro hashtags usually involve mainstream news items or technology headlines, while the urban hashtags tend to be grammatical affronts like #uknowuhood and #uknowurathug.

When I noticed a recent topic called #teachaniggatuesday, I made a few sarcastic remarks on Twitter that prompted some exchanges with African-American Twitter users.  My argument is that anytime a culture chooses to refer to itself by a slur, no matter how empowering they feel that action is, it’s another excuse for outsiders to write them off.  One of the counter-arguments I received was, essentially, “I refuse to be categorized.”  And yet, by proving yourself to be someone who’s comfortable referring to yourself in the pejorative, you’ve drawn a line between us, because I’m not.  (And, I suspect, if I did use your word to describe you, you would interpret it in an entirely different way.)

Does it matter?  Only if you believe that we can brand ourselves with language but still work together across party lines.  Given how drastically that linguistic divide leads to ruptures in the culture, I doubt it.  And considering the vast number of personal experiences I’ve witnessed over the years, in which a lack of cultural or linguistic commonality led to passive-aggressive or downright hostile interactions between individuals or groups of people, I’d say yes, it matters one hell of a lot.

You Cannot Value Communication Without Valuing Clarity

An anecdote I often retell, from my days in art school:

One day, I noticed spelling errors in a storyboard that was included among the best-in-class, which had been showcased in the hallway display case for all to see.  I mentioned it to the instructor who’d deemed it worthy of inclusion, and she explained to me that she graded ideas, not grammar.  In her mind, the concept of the storyboard was worth highlighting, and the misspellings could be overlooked because, “in the real world,” someone else would probably catch it and correct it before it went live.

Which, as we all know, doesn’t always happen.

What she failed to see is the implication of her praise: that by rewarding a project with obvious grammatical errors, she was actually rewarding inattention to detail, and informing the full viewing public — including prospective students and their families — that doing an entire job right isn’t as important as doing part of a job well.  It’s this kind of isolationist perspective that convinces people our systems aren’t interconnected, and that we can allow aspects of it to break down because the elements we choose to focus on will somehow elevate the whole.  Romantic as that is, what you’ll actually end up with is a beautifully painted bag of shit.

People Resent Complexity Because It Makes Them Feel Stupid

The Harvard Magazine recently reprinted excerpts from a book by Professor Louis Menand, in which he discusses the dangers of academia’s self-perpetuating cycle.  Among his concerns are the rarity of dissenting opinions to get absorbed into the academic mainstream and the disconnect between the annual glut of PhDs and their inability to find meaningful work.

Predictably, the vast majority of comments on this article take a side, either in favor of Menand’s arguments for a more liberal PhD structure or against.  But two comments in particular stand out because they take a stand against academia itself.  They read, in part:

As a layman, I have I hard time reading and understanding this 5 internet-pages article. And after navigating through that jargons and high-falutin’(i know it’s a slang) words, it all sums to this —Ph.Ds’ problem is they have a hard time getting a job. Frankly, how many Ph.Ds does this nation, or the world need?

and

ALL THESE ACADEMICS WRITE TOO FANCY. EVERYTHING GETS OBSCURED BY SUCH FANCY LANGUAGE. COME DOWN TO EARTH PLEASE.

At first, I was inclined to label the first comment as a self-answering question, but in reality, no amount of PhDs would ever help that person understand the crux of the article.  What he (and millions of others) need is better education at the elementary level, so the mere concept of higher education isn’t seen as a service we can live without.

As for the second comment… well, I know I said I wasn’t a typo nazi, but I draw the line at Caps Lock.

Nonetheless, I’m torn between my gut instinct to give these people a book and the sad reality that they wouldn’t know what to do with it.  And that’s not necessarily their fault.

It’s yours.

Who Dey?

Since we can’t blame failing public education entirely for our growing lizard-brained crisis, we’re instead forced to turn the mirror of causation back on ourselves.  At some point over the past few decades, we — seeming innocents like you and I — allowed concepts like complexity and intellectualism to become labels of oppression.  When did it happen?  It’s hard to say, and although I have my guesses, that’s still beside the point.  The point is that it happened, and we could have stopped it, but we didn’t.

We’re afraid to correct others because we’re afraid we’ll be corrected ourselves.  We accept the downward slope of ethnic slang because insisting on audible, legible, coherent expression seems somehow racist, classist, or culturally insensitive.  By allowing everyone around us to backslide into unintelligibility, we’ve effectively admitted that this erosion is all right; that we’re the ones who are wrong for speaking properly, for thinking in complex patterns, for utilizing terms and expressions that would send laymen scrambling for a thesaurus.  We shouldn’t impose our views on everyone else because, honestly, that would be expecting too much.  We’ll forgive your incomprehension because you’re right: clarity is oppressive.

But if we’re the ones who let this mess spiral out of control, then we’re also the ones who can fix it.  The general public won’t wake up tomorrow clamoring for box sets of Masterpiece Theatre, so it’s up to us to remind them, word by word, sentence by sentence, conversation by conversation, that there is a standard level of discourse that’s worth adhering to.  It isn’t always spelled right — but it should be.  It isn’t always culturally homogeneous — but it bridges the gaps.  It doesn’t have to involve a veritable cornucopia of polysyllabic words — but it most appreciably can.

Because if we can’t reframe the argument against the intellect, and prove that coherent expression is imperative to our cultural growth and survival, we’ll never be able to convince anyone that clarity — much less complexity — is worth fighting for.

This weekend, I attended my first Small Press Expo, which is (according to its website) North America’s Premiere Independent Cartooning and Comic Book Arts Festival.  My friends Rachel and Josh went last year and they loved it, and since Baltimore is only an hour away from the event’s Bethesda ballroom, I joined them on this year’s trip down from Pittsburgh.

Being surrounded by hundreds of comic book creators, cartoonists, illustrators, publishers, writers, critics and fans was truly exhilarating, and not just because I’m a longtime comics fan who appreciates the indie scene.  A roomful of inspiration, creativity and self-actualization is naturally infectious, and meeting other creative people always makes me want to create something myself.  Thus, I end up leaving these types of events with a million new thoughts swirling in my head (and, in this case, a mini-comic about mermaid love gone wrong).

Some things I noticed, which may be applicable to your event / business / frame of mind:

People respect you when you do it yourself. Regardless of how talented you are, people admire anyone with the pluck to try something on their own, much less anyone who can earn a living on their own terms.  “Being an artist” is a universally romantic yet seldom-realized dream, so an event like this gives everyone who attends a chance to support those people who are brave (or delusional) enough to make their own rules.  (That said, it does help if you’re actually talented; people are far more inclined to support someone whom they personally think deserves to “make it.”)

Making money is allowed.  (Encouraged, even.) Unlike other web content creators who seem reluctant or unable to charge for their work, the vendors at SPX are unashamed to charge for their creations — and the attendees are unoffended.  Since everyone involved is either self-published or allied with a small press, all purchases help support people who make art for a living.  Nearly everyone I saw had purchased something, and lots of people were sitting happily on the floor outside the main exhibition hall, reading through their fresh stacks of brand new comics.

If there’s something for everyone, everyone leaves happy. No matter your tastes, this event had a book for you.  Vendors were selling comics about super heroes, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, relationships, biography, parody, ninjas, animals, kids, horror, history, surfing, pornography and pin-up girls — and everything in-between.  If you couldn’t find something worth your time at SPX, you weren’t paying attention.  (How many events can you honestly say that about?)

Develop a coverage strategy when attending large events. Since this was my first time to SPX (and since I was conveniently broke and therefore unable to indulge my appetite for reading material), I was content to wander the floor and observe.  Rachel made two passes through the room — once to reconnoiter without buying anything, and then a second swoop to make her actual purchases.  And Josh beelined directly for the books he already knew he wanted in advance, making all his major purchases in the first half hour and then returning to explore the $5-and-under offerings.  Having pre-set expectations helped each of us find what we wanted, and we all left happy.*

There’s only so much time to talk. Josh zipped through the event without engaging anyone he didn’t want to talk to, stopping only at the tables of the artists whose work he already admired or whose work kept his attention for longer than a moment.  On the other hand, Rachel and I moseyed from table to table, inevitably getting embroiled in conversations with the artists about their work, their lives and their print quality.  If you’re in a hurry and don’t want to get trapped in endless conversations, be spatially aware of when a vendor has no one else nearby to speak to and nothing else physically to do — those are the times you’re most likely to get waylaid.

Longevity trumps talent. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you keep doing something long enough, even if you’re an average talent, you’ll eventually be respected as a veteran.  You can’t help but acquire knowledge over the years, and that wisdom — coupled with your obvious hard-nosed grit — will earn you generations of fans who admire you simply for fighting the good fight.  (Again, it helps to actually be talented, but it helps even more to get out of bed every morning and do whatever it takes to keep going.  Talent is singular, but tenacity is something we all like to believe we can achieve; when you do, you become inspirational.)

Different price points provide fans with different opportunities to support you. Dedicated fans are happy to pay $20 or more for your work.  People who’ve never heard of you (but like what they see) would prefer to pay less.  And products under $5 let people take a chance on your work without incurring much risk, or to support you fiscally even if they’re not your biggest fans artistically.

Be personable. I realize that people who create comics for a living are trained to express themselves non-verbally, but events like this are a showcase of talent and personality.  As interested as I am in your work, I’d rather talk to you for thirty seconds than watch you ink a page of your next issue.  I can always buy that issue later; I can’t talk to you again until next year.  (I know, I know: “There’s a thing called the Internet.”  But it’s not the same.)

Give me a reminder. People moving through an event like this are going to see a lot of media all at once.  They’ll be overwhelmed.  Provide them with a freebie so they can find you online later and learn more about your work at a time when they’re less informationally challenged.

We need more events like this. Not just for comics, but for all fields, artistic and beyond.  The communal energy of SPX is reminiscent of the kinetic energy at the first PodCamp, which started out as a meet-up for people who make web media.  The opportunity for like-minded individuals to meet in a common space and share their expertise with peers is rare, but the benefits — both professionally and intellectually — are worth the effort.

*  Admittedly, I didn’t have nearly enough expendable cash for an artistic smorgasbord like this.  Judging by the line waiting to access the ATM, neither did a lot of other people.  I should start a trust fund for next year.

In a purposely provocative blog post, MCM argues that all content is essentially worthless.  The crux of the argument is the variation in price that different distributors attach to content — for example, a hardcover book is sold for $25, but a paperback for $10.  Is the content within that paperback book really worth $15 less than the exact same content in the hardcover volume?  And, if so, how much less (or more) is a digital version worth?

But before we can tackle price, we need to know: who decides *how* value is determined?

Everyone’s a Critic — and an Appraiser

Is value based on quality?  Or scarcity?  Or on difficulty of production, or of distribution?  There’s never been a collective agreement about *how* quality is determined, and now each of those spokes (and others) are being disrupted yet again.

If Stephen King can blog a novel in chapters, thereby cutting out the publisher… what should he charge?  What’s his actual work worth?  And does he charge according to the time he’s invested, or the difficulty of creation, or according to his own subjective estimation of his own talent?

If Radiohead allows fans to pay them whatever they’d like for an album, how do the fans decide what that album is worth?  How does that estimation differ if the listener has to pay in advance vs. paying a week after downloading (and forming a more educated opinion)?  Is there anything karmically wrong with considering a free album a gift from the band?

All Things in Their Own Time (and Place)

If I paid $20 for a hardcover novel, at least I physically owned it; an eBook or an MP3 might not be on my hard drive tomorrow if its publisher so decrees.  Is the value in content linked to my ability to possess it?  Or to the relative quality of its packaging?  Should content that “lasts” (like a CD) automatically become more valuable than content that doesn’t (like a live performance)?

Does content become more or less valuable over time, based upon the relative quality of other content?  Or based on fluctuations in its own relevance?  Jane Austen was underappreciated in her own time, but she’s a literary giant in ours.  Does that mean her stories have somehow become better over time, or that our reaction to her as an audience has simply become more amenable?  And, either way, how does this more recent fashionability impact the perceived value of her work?  (What if she falls out of vogue again next century?)

I happen to think Mad Men is one of the better shows on television these days.  Does it mean I think Mad Men is one of the best shows of all time?  Or, compared to what I might think the best possible TV show could be, what if Mad Men only rates a C+?  Does that mean the show is somehow worse than I thought?  And what criteria should I use when comparing it to TV shows from decades past?  Quality of acting?  Writing?  Set design?  Pacing?  Morality?  How does Mad Men stack up against American Bandstand or The Simpsons?  Or a book, film or album?  Can it even be compared?

Content may be worthless, but before we can even make that argument, we should come to some general understanding of what worth is.  Without it, we’re doomed to sell our own great works for pennies on the dollar while overpaying for what *they* say is “worth it.”

Yes, lately I’ve called bullshit on Twitter, mocked the self-indulgence of SXSW and found infinite fault with Socialnomics.  I’ve also admonished the social media community for talking too much and doing too little (of any lasting value).  I’ve even been drafted to host a session at PodCamp Pittsburgh 4 called “Pissing People Off to Encourage Interaction,” which seems to be my M.O. these days.

And yet, I don’t consider myself to be a curmudgeon.  I just happen to have particularly high (or, in some cases, entirely self-imposed) standards when it comes to things I consider to be valuable / useful / worth endorsing.

Thus, as proof, here are 10 Bits of Media I Actually Don’t Hate (and Even Support):

1.  Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky. One of the most coherent and convincing arguments yet in favor of the alleged “social media revolution.”  Shirky’s writing style is occasionally too repetitive for my tastes, but the facts and figures he cites are impressive ammunition.

2.  Starbucked, Taylor Clark. How Starbucks (and America’s coffee culture) became what they were, which makes what they’ve become during this economic downturn all the more shocking.

3.  CTRL. A short, well-produced and smartly-organized web series that’s actually funny.  (Starring Tony Hale of “Arrested Development”.)

4.  The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How It Changed America, David Hajdu. Anyone who thinks comic books have always been a haven for superheros doesn’t remember a time when crime, horror and romance comics ruled the stands — or how politicians and churches teamed up to circumvent censorship laws and toppled the original comic book empire.

5.  Tank Riot. It’s like sitting in a Wisconsin basement with three of your geekiest friends, except they always know more than you do.  Then again, by the time they’re done, you’re all even.  (Their “History’s Greatest Douchebags” episode about Henry Ford is a great starting point, as is their antidote: an episode about Muppets creator Jim Henson.)

6.  Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen. Something of an anti-Shirky, Keen is a staunch defender of the “gatekeeper” culture that separates you, the unwitting audience, from all the good (and bad) media out there.  Although I disagree with about half of what Keen says, I’m also glad someone is making a case against unquestioned adoption of social media.  If this really is a revolution, let’s earn it.

7.  Adventureland. IMHO, the best movie of the year (so far).  Understated, awkward and emotionally compelling in a way that’s all too frustratingly true for anyone who’s lived through their early 20s and had the time (and stomach) to look back on what should have been.

8.  Ghostland Observatory. Music for people in need of swagger.

9.  The Bird & The Bee. Music for people who’ve moved past swagger and now need to seal the deal.

10.  The Ballad of G. I. Joe. Hollywood honors the original ’80s cartoon with misplaced (yet somehow authentic) reverence.

Like thousands of web surfers, I was recently intrigued by the snappy video promoting Erik Qualman‘s Socialnomics.  I work in social media, so I was interested to read what I presumed would be an analysis of how social media is directly impacting business and the world economy.

Alas, this is not that book.

And I’d be happy to leave it at that if I weren’t so frustrated by what this book actually is: poorly written, barely edited, misleading, misrepresented and unfounded.

And, also, an Amazon bestseller.  (It’s currently #3 in the E-commerce category, #3 in Web Marketing and #6 in Economic Conditions as I write this.)

Those sales were presumably piqued by the video, which has since come under fire for being inaccurate.  It cites statistics that are selectively interpreted and, in some cases, unsourced.  That same fuzzy truthiness permeates Qualman’s entire book, which — considering its sales — means hundreds (if not thousands) of people who don’t know any better may take his claims seriously.  That’s their prerogative, but it might help if someone sheds a critical eye on the book’s contents before they begin to be referred to as facts.

Warning: This is an exceedingly long Socialnomics review.  (It was over 8000 words long before I started editing it down to only the most vital points.)  Casual readers may opt to browse the Basics and Unverifiable Claims sections, while anyone seeking a more detailed analysis may enjoy reading further down the post.

Disclaimer

I don’t know Erik Qualman personally, nor do I know anyone employed at Wiley, the publisher of Socialnomics.  All opinions and assertions I make in this post are solely based on my own reading of Socialnomics, along with some additional web research.

The Basics

First, a pre-emptive apology: if the Socialnomics team never intended to write a book about how social media impacts business and the economy, then I misunderstood the promotions for (and the title and summary of) the book.  In fact, it’s entirely possible the fault is mine; Qualman goes out of his way to avoid practical statistics, and instead seems intent on promoting three messages:

• It’s a people-driven economy,
• Social media is making the world a better place, and
• Profits are less important than brand awareness

Note that Qualman never explicitly states that final premise, but due to the absence of actual fiscal data in this book, I can only presume by exclusion that the “socialnomics” he’s referring to is the exchange of personal relationships, not money.  (Which would be an interesting premise, except that Qualman then spends nearly half the book pitching his own business ideas to the Fortune 500 companies he hopes will read them; see below.)

Let’s also ignore for the moment that the book is structurally and grammatically challenged like few books I’ve ever seen published before.  (Scroll to the bottom for examples.)  Style aside, my primary concerns with the book are threefold:

• It fails to support Qualman’s stated maxims,
• It cites questionable and, in some cases, unverifiable data, and
• It prompts several questions about publishing ethics

For the purposes of this post, I’ve subdivided my critique of the book’s most objectionable passages according to the nature of the offense.  Any bold emphasis below is mine, not Qualman’s, unless otherwise noted.

Unverifiable Claims

Maybe I’m just a stickler for facts, but when I read a book that’s ostensibly about economics — and one that refers to itself* as “a page turning business book aimed toward the same audience as The Long Tail, Freakonomics and Groundswell“ — I expect to see hard data to back up the author’s theses.  Instead, Qualman repeatedly includes names and numbers that may or may not exist.  Examples:

• “Million-dollar television advertisements are no longer the king influencer of purchase intent.  People referring products and services via social media tools are the new king…  The end result is that everything from purchasing a baby carriage to drafting a last will and testament is easier and cheaper for the consumer and more profitable for the seller.”  (Introduction, p. XVIII)**

This is a wonderful claim; actual data would prove it.

• “If a new father sees via social media that 14 of his closest friends have purchased the same brand and model baby seat and they all express glowing reviews, he will not waste hours on research, as it has already been done by people he trusts.  This recaptures billions of hours that can redistributed toward the betterment of society.”  (Introduction, p. XIX)

Qualman’s optimism is outweighed only by his love of hyperbolic numbers.

• “Is it any wonder that the television audience is shrinking by the minute?”  (Chapter 3, p. 44)

False: Nielsen reported in February that the television audience is at an “all-time high.”

• “Microblogging’s popularity was originally relegated to teens, but then it quickly gained popularity with adults and businesses.”  (Chapter 5, p. 90)

False:  As has been much discussed in social media, microblogging services like Twitter are fighting an uphill battle to attract teen users, who never utilized these services in the first place.

• “In the foreseeable future, while e-books will be exceedingly popular, they will be not an absolute replacement in the short term like the music and newspaper / magazine industry has experienced.  However, the popularity will be huge.”

How huge?  How foreseeable?

• “Interactive games like Second Life and Sims were big for a while, and then their popularity started to wane.”  (Chapter 6, p. 121)

False:  From January to July of 2009, the NPD Group reports that Sims 3 has been the top-selling PC game, with two other Sims titles in the top 10.  (Admittedly, Second Life’s popularity may have waned, but Socialnomics gives no statistics to confirm this.)

• “Much more helpful and useful [than Amazon's real-time suggestions of what you might like based on your own prior purchases] was Amazon’s introduction of the ability to showcase to users: “People who purchased this book also purchased these other ones.”" (Chapter 6, p. 130)

How much more helpful and useful?  According to whom?  And where can we find the data on how this tool has boosted Amazon’s sales?

• “Companies should still microblog, because the upside is still greater than the downside…”  (Chapter 7, p. 153)

Really?  Do we have any data to verify that?  Do we even have statistical proof of a real fiscal upside?

• “Worse than making a mistake is doing nothing.  As someone once said, “I’d rather live a life making mistakes than a life doing nothing.”"  (Chapter 7, p. 181)

I’m not sure which “someone” Qualman isn’t bothering to cite, but I am suspicious of any business book advocating that action for the sake of action — and regardless of the cost involved — is preferable to inaction.

• “There is a [Facebook] fan page for chocolate milk that as of April of 2009 had over 1.4 million fans!  Imagine how much power the user who started that page has with Hershey’s?”  (Chapter 7, p. 183)

And we’ll have to continue imagining, because Qualman doesn’t bother to find out what — if any — “power” that unnamed Facebook user has with Hershey’s.  Remember: this isn’t a book about facts, it’s a book about potential.

• “In 2000, when there were only a handful of blogs, a post or article would be commented on for about a full week; its half-life would be around three to four days.  Today, given the myriad blogs and the expansion of microblogging tools like Twitter and FriendFeed, the half-life of conversations has been reduced from days to minutes.”  (Chapter 8, pp. 189-190)

No statistics or data are cited to support these claims.

• “As of January 2009 the AdWords program accounted for roughly 10 percent of Google’s revenue.”  (Chapter 8, p. 206)

To his credit, Qualman actually does footnote this claim with a source: “author’s estimate.”

• “By the time this book is published, MSN’s [Live Cashback] program could be defunct for several reasons.  Or, it could be a wild success.  That’s not the point.  What we want to highlight is that these are the types of programs that we will see in a Socialnomics world.“  (Chapter 8, pp. 193-194)

So Qualman would prefer we ignore the factors that could torpedo the validity of these programs and focus instead on their mere existence as validation for a socialnomics revolution?

Economics Without Numbers

Qualman talks a lot about costs and profits without always actually mentioning costs and profits.  Examples:

• In a section detailing Stride gum’s sponsorship of the “Where in the World is Matt?” videos on YouTube, Qualman states: “For the nominal fee of sponsoring Matt’s travel costs, Stride was paid back in millions of dollars worth of brand equity.”  (Chapter 1, p. 28)

But what were those nominal costs?  And how has this sponsorship impacted Stride’s actual bottom line?

• When discussing Ben & Jerry’s 2008 election promotions, Qualman asserts: “However, because the primary push for this promotion was by sending an alert to their followers on the Ben & Jerry’s Handmade Inc. Facebook fan page, there were few upfront costs, and the action of taking down the promotion was roughly only 20 to 30 minutes of work.“  (Chapter 4, p. 80)

Really?  How few were those upfront costs?  And how rough is that time estimate?

• “It is estimated that Starbucks spent less than $400,000 for [its 2008 election] promotion, which Oprah quickly paid back by giving it some major coverage on her show as did every other media outlet (including this book).”  (Chapter 4, p. 81)

Estimated by whom, exactly?  And where are the figures that correlate a mention on Oprah with a $400,000 ad buy?

Ad-Hoc Business Advice

One of Erik Qualman’s primary inspirations for writing Socialnomics appears to be his desire to provide unsolicited business advice to companies who might not otherwise pay attention to him.  The book is filled with lengthy passages describing what Qualman believes businesses should do (without supplying convincing statistical arguments to validate his suggestions), or outling elements of current business workflow that Qualman finds personally objectionable, followed by his own free advice on how these things could be improved.

For example:

• Qualman suggests that social networks could provide an automatic shopping cart and transaction model, wherein they could “take a .005 percent cut of all transactions” for their troubles.  This would enable small businesses to be “up and running in a few hours on a social media storefront, and the fractions of pennies that the social media platform captures from transactions would hardly be missed by that small business, but would be a huge revenue generator for the social media platform when they collect from thousands of businesses.”  (Chapter 1, p. 26)

(Didn’t we see this done in Office Space?)

• Qualman also sees e-books as the death blow to libraries, but don’t worry; he has some ideas on how they can avoid oblivion.  But they’d better work fast; as he says, “most reading this right now are probably on an e-Reader.”  (Chapter 5, p. 117)
• Qualman vastly prefers the way ESPN’s Fantasy Football Today podcast integrates advertising into their show, rather than the “old paradigm” advertising model that caused Best Buy to run the same ad for seven straight months on CNET’s Buzz Out Loud podcast.  “What a wasted opportunity for Best Buy!” laments Qualman, who goes on to illustrate how he thinks podcast advertising should be done.  (He also advises that ESPN allowing Matthew Barry to host both their fantasy football and fantasy baseball podcasts is a mistake, because “in our new niche world, Berry should focus on just one sport, because his audience and future competition will.”)  (Chapter 7, pp. 135-147)
• Qualman takes Hasbro to task for suing the Agarwalla brothers, inventors of the Facebook application Scrabulous, rather than partnering with them or buying them out.  In his worldview, the Agarwalla brothers actually did Hasbro a favor by building a successful web application using Hasbro’s intellectual property, and should have been rewarded, not punished — this, despite the fact that “it is estimated that the Scrabulous game had been generating advertising revenues in the range of $25,000 a month for the Agarwalla brothers.”  (Chapter 7, p. 170 — no reference provided for the revenue estimate)

An Olympic-Sized Problem

Qualman’s disgregard for measurable metrics is further evidenced in his claim that “[NBC] would have been better served opening up their online viewership [of the 2008 Summer Olympics] because:

• It’s more measurable.
• It has a younger audience.
• Users can’t TiVo through commercials.
• Users are willing to give you valuable demographic information like name, age, gender and so on in return for video.
• It increases — not decreases — your total viewership, which means more eyes on advertisements.

No data is provided to confirm Qualman’s claims, nor is the disparity between TV and online advertising rates discussed.  Whether or not NBC would be better served fiscally by such a move is secondary to Qualman’s insistence that they should do so simply because it’s possible.

Qualman’s frustration with online coverage of the Olympics extends to Google:

“When lesser-known athletes burst on the scene, the search engines had a difficult time serving up relevant search results.  When the United States’s David Neville dove for the finish line in a gallant effort to capture the bronze in the 400-meters the search results on Google showed an actor / model by the same name, along with a company that could help you find people’s phone numbers.

These poor search results were consistent for many of the athletes, so much so that Yahoo! and MSN attempted to manipulate the results by hand.  Google finally threw in the towel and pushed news feeds and Wikipedia results to the top of the listings for many of the athletes.”  (Chapter 7, p. 157)

Since his background is in SEO, Qualman may have a firmer handle on the previous point than I do, but is he really suggesting that Google search returns should be manipulated in advance of a subject’s relevance, rather than as a response to it?  And is he also intimating that the rise in relevance of news feeds and Wikipedia listings was orchestrated personally by Google, rather than as a result of user interaction?

Rethinking Marketing (and Revenue)

While Qualman might be stingy with his numbers, he’s never slow to tell you how he thinks they might change.  For example:

• “[O]n sites like Hulu, users are most appreciative of the sponsor, because when they hear that the program was brought to them by McDonald’s they know they owe McDonald’s some gratitude for making it available online for free.  This same message sounds hollow to the viewer via traditional broadcast television.“  (Chapter 7, p. 163)

Really?  Where is the psychological survey to substantiate Qualman’s statement?

• “[T]he end user is smart — they understand that user generated content is beyond a brand’s control.  If 90 percent is good and only 10 percent is negative, the positive will overwhelm the negative, and the 10 percent will not cripple your brand reputation.  That is a much different philosophy from the past where even the slightest negative news could destroy your brand.  Heck, if there isn’t 5 to 10 percent negative noise around your brand, then your brand is either irrelevant or not being aggressive enough in the space.“  (Chapter 8, p. 205)

Lessons learned: it was actually easier for people to “destroy your brand” before the Internet made information-sharing ubiquitous, but brand leaders should still strive to maintain a 10 percent negative rating.  Gotcha.

• “If Time Warner or Comcast starts to see more and more people cut their $150 monthly cable television bill, they could react by increasing the fee for the Internet connection or set up pricing models to charge per stream.  We can only hope that competitors and alternatives for high-speed Internet emerge or that policies are put in place to obstruct this type of malicious behavior.“  (Chapter 7, p. 166)

Never mind that Time Warner already tried this once (which Qualman seems unaware of); what should we make of his assertion that — at least as presented in this case — a company’s attempt to offset the loss of income by monetizing other potential revenue streams amounts to “malicious behavior”?  For a book about economics, Qualman seems to have moral presumptions about how businesses should and shouldn’t be allowed to profit.  (See Ad-Hoc Business Advice, above, for more Qualman tips.)

Cavalier Legality

Qualman seems as comfortable offering unverified financial advice as he does unsourced legal advice. To wit:

• “Companies should leverage existing platforms such as Digg, Delicious, hi5, Facebook, MySpace, and so on, which have already vetted much of the security and privacy gaps.  This also shifts any potential liability to reside with the platform, not the advertiser.“  (Chapter 7, p. 179)

No legal precedents are furnished to validate Qualman’s claim that social platforms are “liable” for any security and privacy gaps — nor are any well-known gaps referenced.  (Evidently, Qualman doesn’t believe that companies or their customers should be particularly concerned.)

• “[When the Associated Press] requested that Google remove [AP] stories from the Google News feed… legally, Google would have been fine saying your request is unreasonable, but they didn’t.”  (Chapter 8, p. 199)

Really?  Under what precedent would Google have been “fine” saying that?  None is cited.

Questionable Logic

In his efforts to make the case that social media is better, faster and more relevant than traditional media, Qualman prefers stating his own opinion to citing actual data.  For example:

• “… straightforward and true stories resonate well with consumers as evidenced by Subway overtaking McDonald’s as having the most restaurants in the United States.”  (Chapter 5, p. 102)

Really?  Subway has more franchises because the story they tell is more straightforward and true?  Evidently, economics, demographics and actual menu items are far less important to a restaurant than feel-good marketing.

• “If we have 1,500 [Twitter] followers, are any of them really listening?  I’d argue that most are not.  However, it’s still a huge marketing tool, and the nobodies are now the new somebody [sic].”  (Chapter 7, p. 150)

So Qualman doubts that most of our Twitter followers are really listening to us, yet Twitter is still a “huge” marketing tool?  Yes.  Here’s why:

• “If a local plumber has 1,500 followers, even if most of them aren’t likely to be listening at any given moment, as long as at least one person is, that’s all that matters.”  (Chapter 7, pp. 150-151)

Unmentioned:  how many work hours it would take to build and maintain a Twitter audience of 1,500 in exchange for converting one sale.

• Qualman points out Budweiser’s missed opportunity, noting that “during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, when the Tina Fey “Palin” spots were popular, a brand like Budweiser could have done the preroll [ad on YouTube] and said “if there was a Joe Sixpack drinking game for every time the word maverick was mentioned, you better believe the people playing it would be drinking a Bud.”  (Chapter 8, p. 203)

Here, Qualman seems unconcerned that Budweiser might not want to a) alienate one political party by appearing to favor another, or b) position itself as the beer of choice for people mocking the electoral process.

Fuzzy Math

When he’s not inventing stories to support his claims, Qualman is inventing numbers.  For example:

Let’s perform a quick calculation based on the average number of people that a person on Twitter has following them to underscore the importance of social media.  The old rule of thumb was that a person who had a bad experience would tell 6 to 10 people about it.  The average person on Twitter follows 100 people. If you take that and assume that 10 percent of the people following someone will pass it along, then you get the number 10 (100 x 0.10 = 10).  Ten people will be influenced directly.  If those 10 also have 100 followers and only 5 percent pick it up, then another 50 individuals will be influenced indirectly, and so it goes on down the line.  (Chapter 2, p. 41)

Where is Qualman getting these numbers?  And how do fictional assumptions confirm his theories?  (Also, where is the matching extrapolation of how many people those 6-10 individuals in the original “rule of thumb” would pass a message along to?)

• Qualman is a fan of electronic voting.  In his words: “If the average hourly wage (factoring in white collar) is close to $16, and keeping in mind that drive time along with the physical act of voting takes an average of two hours, the summation is starting [sic].  This is $6.7 billion lost in productivity (210 million x $16 per hour x 2 hours)!  All that could be saved by a few simple clicks online!”  (Chapter 4, p. 85)

Where are any of these numbers coming from?

Citation Needed

Qualman cites dozens of alleged facts in his book without providing attributation for his claims.  This is either the result of laziness or of fiction masquerading as fact.  Examples:

• “CBS… sends a majority of its March Madness basketball traffic, not to its own website, but to www.facebook.com/brackets.”  (Chapter 1, p. 1)
• “If what you need is not on the first results page, it might as well not be anywhere because only roughly 5 percent of users go to the second page.”  (Chapter 1, p. 7)
• “[Rick Sanchez] raised his CNN program to number three, only behind Fox News O’Reilly Factor and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s Countdown.“  (Chapter 4, p. 77)

Number three according to whom?  And in what sense — among shows in the same time slot?  Among all news programs?  Nightly?  Weekly?  (Also, a minor quibble: the MSNBC show is actually called Countdown with Keith Olbermann.  For more examples of Things the Fact-Checkers Missed, scroll down.)

• “100 billion stories-updates per day are processed through Facebook’s News Feed servers — 100 billion!”  (Chapter 5, p. 90)
• “Also, with today’s technology, it is still 25 percent faster to read something on a piece of paper than it is to read it from a computer screen, let alone a smaller handheld e-book reader.”  (Chapter 5, p. 115)
• “A fan of the San Francisco 49ers is more “wine and cheese with a flair for the dramatic” whereas a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers is more “cheese steak, blue collar, and no nonsense.”  [Note: It's possible that Qualman -- or his editor -- has Pittsburgh confused with Philadelphia, home of the cheesesteak; as a Pittsburgher for 12 years, I can vouch that we're more of a Primanti Brothers town.]
• “Many celebrities have “ghost tweeters.”  (Chapter 7, p. 152 — no examples  given)
• “Speaking of grandparents, it was estimated that 40 percent of [Scrabulous] players were over 50 years old.”  (Chapter 7, p. 167)
• “This is radically different from 2001 when banner advertising almost accounted for 100 percent of the [Internet's] advertising revenue.”  (Chapter 8, p. 210)
• “Online sites now hold 110 million jobs and 20 million unique resumes.”  (Chapter 8, p. 234)
• “In a study done in Canada of 18- to 34-year-olds, it showed that the average person held five full-time jobs by age 27.”  (Chapter 8, p. 235)

All of these statements may otherwise be 100% true, but in a book where many other facts and quotes are accompanied by the appropriate citations, why aren’t these?

Things the Fact-Checkers Missed

Then there are the out-and-out untrue statements — mostly minor misquotes and misattributions, like:

• Six Apart (the parent company of blogging platform TypePad) is incorrectly listed alongside Twitter and FriendFeed as a “microblogging technology”  (Chapter 2, p. 35)
• “In a sign of the times ahead and for the first time since e-mail was invented, Boston College will not be giving out @bc.edu e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen for the class of 2013.”  (Chapter 3, p. 47)

Kind of.  Had Qualman included the attribution for this statement, he might have also clarified that BCU has stopped giving incoming freshmen email accounts.  They’ll still be given email addresses, but those addresses will be forwarded to the students’ external inboxes of choice.

• “Recall that one of the popular songs of [the 1980s] was Madonna’s “Living in a Material World.”"  (Chapter 3, p. 53)  [Wrong: the song is called "Material Girl."]
• Craig Ulliott, developer of the “Where I’ve Been” application for Facebook, is consistently misspelled as Craig “Ulliot.”  (Chapter 5, p. 105)
• Mark Twain is quoted as having said: “I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead” — a popular inaccuracy; Twain never said it.  (Chapter 8, p. 189)
• MSN’S Live Cashback program is twice referred to as “MSNBC’s Live Search Cashback.”  (Chapter 8, pp. 195 & 197)
• Qualman refers to “the Web 2.0 era (starting in 2006),” even though the term was coined in 1999 and popularized in 2004.  (Chapter 8, p. 206)
• Qualman identifies a “cookie” (in web terms) as an “invisible pixel image,” although Wikipedia defines it as a piece of text.  (Chapter 8, p. 207)
• Qualman botches the most memorable line of dialogue from Field of Dreams.  While the film version is “If you build it, he will come,”  Qualman quotes it as “Build it and they will come” (Chapter 8, p. 218), which he incorrectly attributes to James Earl Jones’s character.

Fictional Anecdotes

• “One of the key maxims of this book is that wasting time on Facebook and social media actually makes you more productive.” (Chapter 1, p. 4 — emphasis Qualman’s)

For this key maxim, Qualman fails to provide any supporting evidence.  Instead, he includes the first of many fictional anecdotes meant to validate his claims — in this case, a 2-and-a-half page tale of Sally Supermarket, whose day is obviously (but not measurably) improved by checking on updates from her social media networks while she’s waiting in line at the checkout, rather than “flipping through a magazine she has no interest in,” or “being rude and placing a call on her cell phone.”

Other examples of Qualman’s fictional anecdotes include:

• A 3-page story about a guy named Steve, who uses social media to make decisions about buying a baby seat and a new car.  (Chapter 5, pp. 90-94)
• Karen, who only needs five minutes to spend her IRS refund check on an iPod Nano after seeing a glowing review of one from her friend Sally via her social network.  (Chapter 5, p. 94)
• Suzy (age 34), who books a $1,400 South American vacation based on the fact that two of her online friends took trips to Chile, thereby saving “hours of painstaking research and the fees of a travel agent.”  (Chapter 5, p. 95)

But the one that stands tall above all others is the anecdote Qualman uses to illustrate his “five pillars” of social media fundamentals — or, in Qualman’s words:

“The best way to look at these five pillars is through a real world example: my Mom’s friends’ summer cheerleading camps, one of the largest in the country.“  (Chapter 7, p. 175-178)

Aside from her first name (“Betsy”), we’re told nothing else about Qualman’s mom’s friend, nor the name of her business.  Nonetheless, Qualman spins quite a yarn about how Betsy used “socialnomics” to create a web tool that would allow her campers to interact online — and which could be used to measure the retention rates of campers in future years.  Despite an abject lack of attribution, even here Qualman can’t be bothered to reveal any statistical data to validate Betsy’s venture.

Personal Interviews

Throughout the book, Qualman includes numerous quotes from people like “German-based social media user Christoph Marcour” and “Heather, a mother of three.”  Who are these people, and how did Qualman solicit their testimonials?  It’s never explained.  Beyond their descriptions, each of them is merely cited as “Personal Interview,” so we’re left to take Qualman at his word when people like “Connie Weatherald, 83, of Stuart, Florida” say things like:

It’s in my doctor’s best interest to make money and he does that by performing surgeries or having repeat business.  That is why I look to my friends with similar issues for advice.  Social media is the quickest, least intrusive and effective way that I know of to do this.”  (Chapter 5, p. 101)

If only all 83 year-olds trusted Twitter as their primary source of medical information…

It’s a safe bet that at least some of the interviewees are people Qualman knows personally.  For example, might “avid Internet video fan Mary Alison Wilshire” (Chapter 7, p. 162) be the same “Mary Alison” in his immediate family that Qualman thanks in his Acknowledgements (p. XIII)?  If so, why go through the trouble of presenting her as an objective case study?

Likewise, personal interviewee “Scott Mueller (37), Oklahoma city [sic]” is quoted in Chapter 8 (p. 217) as saying, “I used [Apple iPhone's "Tracker" application] on my oldest teenage daughter as somewhat of a bribe.  I will get you an iPhone on the condition that you have this Tracker application installed.”  Presumably, this is the same Scott R. Mueller from Oklahoma City who also reviewed Socialnomics on Amazon, crediting the book with changing his opinion on the relevance of social media.

All of which makes me wonder if there’s anything ethically questionable about interviewing friends and family as objective case studies for a business book and then encouraging those same people to leave 5 star reviews on the published book’s Amazon page.  But hey, marketing’s marketing…

Anonymous Sources

Several quotes in Socialnomics are attributed to people… just not people Qualman felt obliged to name.  For example:

• “At Apple, we generally hire early adopters.  That being said, I was still blown away when we recently hired a 22-year-old and he had literally never sent an email.  Via his iPhone he had always communicated with his friends either by instant messenger, text, phone call, or comments within Facebook.  I believe he is not alone and this is a trend we will continue to see with the next generation,” said a director of Apple iTunes.

That is fascinating, anonymous director of Apple iTunes — especially since the iPhone was released in the United States on June 22nd, 2007, which means this 22-year-old new hire went from never using a digital device before to becoming extremely proficient with one in the space of 2 years.  Hell, I’d hire him too.

Then there’s this quote from “a spokesman for Southwest Airlines,” who claims, “after the first year, we hit the 2 million mark for downloads [of the Ding Widget].”  (Chapter 8, p. 236)  Too bad that same anonymous spokesperson didn’t mention the $150 million in ticket sales generated by the widget in that time — a figure that would have supported Qualman’s claims implicitly, but which I had to track down myself while researching this post.

A Lack of Transparency

In addition to his unfounded numbers and “personal interviews,” Qualman leaves out some other information as well.  For example:

• He showcases a case study in which EF Educational Tours has “roughly 800 people” following them on Twitter in April of 2009, and extrapolates that to infer (via a query on http://twinfluence.com/) that the EF Educational Tours Twitter account has a “social graph influence” of 8.5 million people.  Questionable as that logic may be, it’s compounded by the fact that EF Educational Tours is also Qualman’s day job — a fact he never states in the text of the book, but does mention in his bio.

Can an author cite his own personal experience as objective research?  I certainly hope so, because Qualman does it several times:

• He references an inauguration trip co-ordinated by Smithsonian Student Travel (a subsidiary of EF Educational Tours), in which NPR, MSNBC and PBS “immediately replied to Smithsonian Student Travel’s tweet, expressing interest in hearing from… students and teachers.”  (Chapter 7, p. 151)
• In a section about the potential of “Webisodes” (Chapter 7, p. 174), Qualman’s lone example is the “Life on Tour” series produced by Bunim/Murray Productions for — you guessed it — EF Educational Tours.  Despite having over 6 years’ worth of web video series metrics to solicit, Qualman’s sole reference is to his own (uncredited) work.

Soapboxing

When he’s not ruminating about the future of the Internet, Qualman has hours of suggestions about how everyone from businesses to individuals should be running their lives — and Socialnomics is his bully pulpit.  These tidbits include:

• “Newspapers should no longer be reporting the news; instead, they should be commenting on the news and what it means.”  (Chapter 1, p. 12)
• “A high school teacher can’t simply take on the [online] persona of a hooker specializing in sadomasochism without realizing long-term ramifications when this eventually becomes known.  In fact, schools have terminated several teachers for this type of unacceptable social media behavior.“  (Chapter 6, pp. 121-122 — also, no attributation given for bold quote)
• “It is without question much “cooler” to say you are bungee-jumping in New Mexico than updating your status with “I’m watching the latest adventure reality series.”"  (Chapter 6, p. 122)
• “Whether we like it or not, or if it is right or if it is wrong, we have to adapt to communication in succinct and salient sound bites.”  (Chapter 6, p. 128)

No word on what would happen if we didn’t, or why “right and wrong” don’t apply in this case but they do in other instances throughout this book.

Points for Style

Everyone has an opinion, and since Qualman’s book appears to be comprised primarily of his, I think it’s only fitting to include a few of my own here.  Thus, let’s acknowledge some of the inelegant turns of phrase, cryptic observations and general literary clumsiness I found so head-scratchingly amusing in Socialnomics:

• “This book does not need to be read like a sultry novel, nor should it be.” (About This Book, p XV)
• “A salient example of this is…”  To the detriment of Thesaurus advocates everywhere, Qualman’s book unendingly repeats the phrase “a salient example.”
• “Even if you believe that life with social media is worse, you cannot argue that social media has forever changed the way in which we live.”  (Chapter 6, p. 120 – emphasis Qualman’s)
• “[W]ith so much information flowing this way and that, it is extremely difficult for a person who is well rounded to stand out in this new world.”  (Chapter 6, p. 121)
• “Once you decide, be quick and be decisive.”  (Chapter 7, p. 181)
• Qualman later weaves a metaphor starring “a shepherd (company) watching over his flock of sheep (customers/users).  In this analogy, a fence breaks, and the sheep suddenly have access to a new pasture (social media)…  The shepherd (company) is uncertain about what to do and decides not to go into this new pasture to find his sheep.“  (Chapter 7, p. 185)

Precious as this parable may be, it’s logically unsound on numerous levels.  As a non-shepherd myself, I can’t speak from experience, but my gut tells me that one of the basic rules of shepherding is to shepherd the sheep; why would there be uncertainty?  Rather than jettison this analogy for one that makes sense, Qualman presses forward, again demonstrating that he has no understanding of a shepherd’s primary job description:

“Even if you decide not to herd your sheep, you should be in the new pasture helping to guide your sheep away from dangerous cliffs and waterfalls.“  (Chapter 7, p. 186)

Or, in other words, shepherding the sheep…

So…

How can a book whose arguments are this poorly constructed, and which contains this many typos, grammatical errors, unchecked facts and spurious claims still be sold legitimately?  If this is how stringently Wiley edits their books on social media, I can’t help but wonder if the fact-checkers on their other best-sellers are any better…

Also, from a strictly organizational standpoint, I found it mystifying that the chapters were named in the header on each page but not numbered, whereas the citations were listed strictly by chapter number, not name.  This necessitated repeated re-checking to verify which chapter I was actually reading while attempting to find validation for the author’s claims.  (Perhaps someone was hoping to make this as annoyingly difficult as possible?)

But… Why?

So if I thought the book was this bad… why write about it?  Simple:  I believe in the potential of social media to effect significant cultural change in the world, and when books like this become the kinds of bestsellers that threaten to be taken seriously, it diminishes the legitimacy of an entire medium.  Not that I begrudge Erik Qualman or Wiley their opportunism.  As Qualman himself says in the summary of Socialnomics:

“Making multiple mistakes within social media is far better than sitting back and doing nothing at all.”  (Socialnomics Summary, p. 241)

And sometimes those multiple mistakes can add up to a bestselling book.

* That description comes from the website American Novel, which purports to celebrate the American novel but — since it’s run by Qualman himself — currently spotlights Socialnomics on its homepage and includes the above description.

** NOTE:  All page numbers referenced in this post cite the initial hardcover printing of Socialnomics; future editions (since their existence seems inevitable) may be numbered differently.