I Don't Want A Social Media Relationship With My Hard Drive

Posted by Tom Foremski - May 14, 2009

My social media world is all a twhirl about corporate social media marketing. It's probably because I have a lot of contacts in marketing and communications.

And there are a gazillion social marketing "experts" out there hawking social media marketing strategies to corporations.

This is a mistake. Corporations are not people. They are made by people, and people work there, but they aren't people.

A while ago Seagate, the hard drive company, asked me to be its friend on Facebook. Then it asked me to be a "fan." I use Seagate so I clicked yes both times to see what was up. But do I really want a social relationship with my hard drive? No.

I interact with a 100 different brands throughout my day. If they all jump onto the social media bandwagon what happens then? Am I going to check out the Facebook status of my toothpaste? Will I wonder what parties my microprocessor is going to tonight? Hey, my jeans just uploaded some new vacation photos.

I don't want to socially interact with my hard drive or my dishwashing liquid. Managing social relationships is tough enough, I certainly don't want to do it with my products. I just want them to sit quietly and not engage with them. I paid for them, now I just want them to sit there and be inanimate. Don't send me emails, Twits, or try to engage with me. Thank you.

Same for adverts. There's a ton of jabber about "engaging" advertising. I don't want to engage with adverts, either. I don't want to engage with products. I like to engage with people.

I don't want to be harsh on Seagate or other brands. These are all very early days and I like to see people experimenting and seeing what works. There is a way for corporations to interact with social media but it's not the way it's being done so far.

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