So yesterday, Sunday morning, I did yard work. I didn’t think about work at all, despite the inevitable self-induced pressures of starting one’s own business. Instead, I concentrated on pulling weeds, spreading mulch, and the glory of late spring in Northeastern Ohio.
A quick check of my Blackberry — my family is known to email me on weekend afternoons — reveals a couple of new messages. One of them carries the subject line, “Go check u’re Twitter feed for @amandachapel comments,” and the other is from Amanda Chapel.
This is a two-fold mystery for me on a sunny Sunday. Why would there be anything in the Twitterverse connecting me and Amanda C.?
According to the @AmandaChapel Twitter stream, someone had claimed to be me, and had engaged in a lengthy, heated Twitter debate with Amanda. This led to Amanda connecting this individual’s Twitter handle to me, including at one point linking to my LinkedIn profile in a Tweet. Amanda’s tweets included IABC and PRSA leaders. I stood accused of violating these professional organizations’ codes of ethics.
I was frantic. I’m serious. This was a “When did you stop beating your wife?” moment. What recourse did I have besides denying the allegations? Of course, this has been one of Amanda’s best themes in her criticism — on the Internet, anonymity breeds unaccountability, and without authority, where is accuracy?
I replied to Amanda’s email, offering a character witness and declaiming knowledge of why she’s sent me the note. I Tweeted, declaring the same thing. I added a second Tweet, referencing @AmandaChapel, saying that this was mistaken identity. Whether this other Cleveland-area, IABC member, PR measurement guy had appropriated my name or what, I had no clue. Nor did I have any idea what to do. My Sunday evening was quite a bit less sylvan as a result.
I’ve enjoyed reading “Amanda” for several years. She’s mordantly funny, sharply witty, and performs an excellent service — attempting to keep the PR profession from taking itself so seriously. She’s a critic, a gadfly, even, calling out PR people and especially, social media fans with razor comments, frequently calling into question the entire orthodoxy of social media. For Amanda, the wisdom of crowds celebrates the mob, the Cluetrain carrying public relations to perdition.
What had I done to get called out myself?
While following a social media conference on Twitter a few days ago, I Tweeted that I was enjoying following the conference, except for Amanda’s rants (particularly profane that day). Did that push me onto the radar screen? When Kent State’s professor Bill Sledzik interviewed Strumpette co-creator Brian Connolly earlier this year on Tough Sledding, Bill’s blog, I commented critically (but, I thought, respectfully) on several of the video posts. Was this a contributor? Or was it the other guy, choosing to offer my name as his own?
If a member of the news media says bad things about me, I have recourse — that’s not the case on the Internet. Journalists have (are supposed to have) a strong ethical base — if they get the story wrong, they’re accountable for getting it right.
As it turns out, Amanda posted an apology to me, and said she’d removed my name and @CommAmmo handle from her Tweets, and requested Twitter do the same. I appreciate that very much — and on two levels. One, it takes grace to admit you’re wrong. Two, it demonstrates that some people in social media have an ethical base. Amanda also declared that she “quit” — I assume that means quitting Twitter. Her updates are now protected. I hope she’ll remain on the Web at Strumpette. Despite this personal and rather scary incident, Amanda’s good for our profession.
But this has me spooked. I blogged earlier about the blurring of the lines between the public and private, and this is a situation I didn’t anticipate. I was thinking theory, abstraction, ideas.
Now, I just have to see about getting this wound stitched up.
Tags: Blog, measurement, reputation management, Social Media, Twitter
Sean, there is a Sean D Williams on twitter, fyi. I know you go by Sean Williams, but it’s easy to see how a person might mis-take. Certainly makes the case for going by a very unique handle.
Sean,
Very scary! Brings to mind all we know and say about managing reputation and how quickly things can go awry.
It also makes me think of when I was a child, and toys were not as well screened for safety as they are today. My Dad gave me a miniature steam engine. You’d put water in a tank and pellets of fuel underneath. Light the fuel and the boiler would drive a wheel. You couldn’t do much else with it, but for a kid my age, it was fascinating. I was old enough to know that if I stuck my finger in the flywheel, it would get hurt. However, it did not occur to me that if I were to touch the top of the boiler, it would be hot. One touch taught me that!
My point is that with new media, we’re a bit like kids with a new toy. It frequently is difficult to play out future scenarios with variables that are new to us. And all the new social media tools are new variables. Your experience and those of others help us all see how these situations can play out and that there is danger hidden within the allure.