Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Thoughts on #HIT100 – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly – Part 3 (The Ugly)

source:boredpanda.com
Previously, I offered some of my thoughts about The Good and The Bad aspects of the recent #HIT100 event.  In this post I’ll share thoughts and facts about The Ugly part of the event. To be clear, The Ugly are aspects of the event that, in my opinion, should not have occurred, are ethically shaky and/or tarnished the overall spirit of the #HIT100 event.

Note: I suppose this post is not going to endear me to those who may have been involved with some of these aspects. Those who know me, have followed me for any length of time or who may have been unfortunate enough to only sample a subset of my tweets know that I'm not the most politically correct person. I’m not calling out specific accounts and perhaps some of the accounts involved may not even be aware of their involvement.

The Ugly

1.    Voter Fraud – One Vote per Person Please!

What ever happened to one vote per voter? It’s a shame a few people – maybe from my home town of Chicago – voted for their candidate(s) multiple times. For example, the following was observed:

a. A company having multiple twitter accounts used each account to vote for their candidate(s.)
b. One dad voted for his son using – at least - 3 separate accounts; all within one minute of each other.
c. Some created a new twitter account specifically to vote for their candidate. Some of these accounts didn’t even have any followers or even make any other tweets after voting!

What’s next? Employing gangs of low-paid ‘click farm’ workers in Bangladesh to generate votes?

2.    Extreme Self-Promotion

There’s nothing wrong with promoting oneself and many of those making the top 20 did a little promotion. But some were a few that were just over the top with the following - even a few days into the event after several requests were made to avoid excessive RT's and "non-voting" chatter.

a. RT’ing every single tweet that mentioned them.
b. Thanking every single tweet that mentioned them and then RT’ing that tweet just for good measure. Gratitude is a nice thing – within moderation.
c. Creating specific instructions and a template to make it easy for people to nominate themselves or their candidate – or was that their boss?

I imagine all the above also made tallying the results more cumbersome?

3.    Company Affiliations

A couple company accounts really went overboard with their enthusiasm for their brand and executive. I’ve read several posts about the #HIT100 being limited to individuals and I totally agree.

4.    Naysayers

There’s one (or two or three) in every crowd.  Shortly after the event started, a couple disgruntled tweeps started complaining that most of those at the top of the list were not deserving of their rank. Talk about painting all the pennies with the same brush!

Another moaned and groaned that some high-level health care IT folks were not high enough up the list or not even listed - even though most of the people they noted are not active users of social media and/or even involved with information technology.

5.    Hashtag Hijackers and Hookers

The #HIT100 hashtag got hijacked a few times and quite a few XXX and other ‘cretins of the Net’ came out in their attempt to collect clicks.  I suppose this is actually a sign of the growing reach of the #HIT100?

Fortunes and Influence Do Change

One web site that listed the 2013 #HIT100 nominees noted the following:

Many of the "winners", identified by their Twitter handles, will be familiar to most readers, but a comparison with last year's list reveals how fortunes, or perhaps influence, can rise and fall as the years go by.

Indeed fortunes and influence can wax and wane as years go by. And in the case of this year’s #HIT100, some fortunes and influence – at least as measured by ranking in the HIT100 – rised and fell due to a few people who decided to Ugly Up in an attempt to garner votes for themselves and/or their candidates.

Footnotes:

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