It all started with a social media campaign launched by well known Fast Company — a campaign to find the most influential person online. In social media today we are all searching for the most influential people to help us launch our ideas, to cover as many people as possible, and to get the biggest bang for our buck. The campaign was not as successful as Fast Company imagined and it fell somewhat flat and took some criticism. The campaign turned into a spamfest with little to no worth to either the community or Fast Company. I won’t beat a dead horse or add my own flogging of the program. I’ll let the flogging – be it good or bad – be done by pirates. No, I don’t mean we are all going to talk like pirates and make fun of them. I mean I’m going to talk about the campaign being hijacked by Pirates!
The team at ItStartsWithUs.com are going to take the campaign and hijack it and make something of what they see as an opportunity to do some good. They specifically tell us their plot:
We’re gonna turn this ship around and take it somewhere new. Somewhere a little bit better. Because it would be a shame to waste all the energy and attention that’s already been spent on this project without doing something meaningful. Please sign up below and help us get it done. Instructions to pull this off will arrive via email.
Fast Company, consider yourselves hijacked.
Ahoy, mates.
In a response, Fast Company produced a blog post somewhat joining in on the fun. It appears they will continue on with their experiment and with their campaign plans without assisting the Pirates. At this point it appears the lines have been drawn in the sand. To the victor goes the spoils.
The Pirates have told us all that they have good intentions and that this is not a publicity stunt for their company. They plan to launch the program on August 11, 2010 and we will put that date on our calendars to see just how much this will steer the campaign away from its original intentions and off on a new course. I think the folks at Fast Company have been boarded and we will see in the coming weeks if this has much merit. I for one would love to see something good come of the program that we all have had fun taking shots at over the last couple of weeks. I am sure Fast Company thought this would come out differently, but now it is in the hands of Pirates and we will see if the good can be found through the treasure map of good intentions.
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Photo via Fast Company and Shine 2010 – 2010 World Cup good news.
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Tags: causes, Companies Doing Good, Fast Company, ItStartsWithUs.com, social media
It's great that you brought the Fast Company vs ItStartsWithUs hijack campaign to light, but the greatest lesson for good happened a few days after the planned attack. Here's an update http://www.itstartswith.us/blog/2010/08/03/the-in…
The post by ItStartsWithUs is a lesson we can all learn — follow your heart and never lose sight of why you do what you do.
Noland Hoshino
Do you know Nate St. Pierre from ItStartsWithUs? I love the story of how he got the whole thing going.