Beware the words of the fallen, the bitter, and the unsuccessful, for their only comfort is to see us fail.

“Fear, panic, and mayhem gripped Google yesterday as employees saw their fortunes vanish before their eyes.”

This article, published by Daya Baran of Webguild.com, is depressingly malicious and painfully ill-informed; in fact, the blind anti-Google bias is so strong that it makes what little “fact” is present very difficult to take at face value. For example: the “panic” described by the author cites no sources other than “junior employees.” That aside, common sense dictates that a minor fluctuation in stock prices is, as one commenter astutely puts it, “just another Day in the Valley.” Case in point–Google stock is at 526.65 today, a 4% recovery of the original 4.5% loss (529).

Did you happen to catch the term the author uses to describe Google employees? “Gayglers.” Based on this alone, I wouldn’t trust a word that comes out of Webguild.

“On Twitter alone, Internet strategist B.L. Ochman reports that self-described social media experts more than tripled their presence, from 4,487 to 15,740, between May and December 2009. And while many are the real deal — Ontario’s Scott Stratten, B.C.’s Kris Krug and Lorraine Murphy, and Massachusetts’ Chris Brogan among them — a disproportionate number are charlatans who’ve left a snake-oil slick on the profession’s image.”

This Montreal Gazette article strikes closer to the truth, though it draws an over-generalized conclusion from a limited example. It’s absolutely true that social media is a territory “ripe for douchebags,” where liars and cheats can make a few bucks before their victims catch on. Therein lies the rub: every field is plagued with “posers” who ride the coattails of success. This does not mean we discard social media as a lost art and start over–we identify and deal with fake experts where needed, then prove our own value in the field by offering intelligent functionality to our users that eases the assimilation and dissemination of information. (Say that three times fast.)

From the same article: “Shankman and his partner, Sarah Evans, made a 25-point list of warning signs that cue a potential scammer (http://tiny.cc/1wwr4). These include offering social media as an add-on, as opposed to integrating it into a comprehensive public relations strategy; charging a company for signing them up with a social media site; and measuring success by the number of Twitter followers amassed.”

In my own experiments with Twitter follower-boosting, I’ve found that to be completely true. It’s remarkably easy to inflate an account to X thousand followers without much effort at all–but in terms of advancement, this means next to nothing. By and large, these “readers” are a spam network of interdependent home-business and marketing “specialists” who all follow each other, automatically thanking new “friends” with a direct message that encourages them to connect on Facebook and further perpetrate the illusion of influence and power. My favorite example: Twitter user besserwerber, boasting 200,000+ followers and not a single tweet.

[I should note that one good thing came from the experiment. Every 20 followers or so, you happen across a solid contact with informative tweets and interesting ideas. In general, it's still difficult to connect with such users directly (or else everyone in our field would easily follow and be followed by at least 1,000--this is the interwebs, after all). When you're swimming in a stream of marketing mediocrity, that moment of mutual recognition and respect stands out as an event worth repeating. To my mind, this is the only justification for participating in what is otherwise a misleading and misguided activity.]

Despite the best efforts of trolls like these, progress will not be stopped. The only question is this: will we be in the driver’s seat, the passenger seat, or running to catch the bus?