SLAPP Me Senseless and The Malcontent Bitch Session

A recent article in the NYT is an interesting introduction (for me, anyway) to the concept of a SLAPP - a strategic lawsuit against public participation.

At first blush, there is an appealing David vs. Goliath aspect to the example used in Dan Frosch's article - a college kid railing against the (perceived) injustice of big, bad corporate America in the way that college kids do today: by launching what amounts to a Facebook flame war.

And in the context of SLAPPs, any sympathy for the college kid is understandable.

But there's something else going on here, something about the power of social media to really, really impact companies -- much more than -- as Frosch mentions, "a tirade in a bar or a rant in a public meeting."

The undeniable fact is, with such a user-generated megaphone like social media at anyone's disposal, there ought to be some responsibility for its power - a power, by the way, that WE have all bestowed upon it.

So while Mr College Kid has his right to speak his mind, he does so essentially at his own peril. For if social media becomes the mouthpiece of the malcontent bitch session, its power will wane and eventually no one - not college kids, not corporate America, nor you and I - will have any use for it.

When Two iPhones Make Out, from Mobile Insider

I had to share a brilliant article by Steve Smith called "Phoney Sex" with some great insights into the hyperconnected culture of personal technology.

One of the article's leading points has a particular resonance with me, as both a mobile marketer and, of course, as a human being. Before long, our devices (at our bidding, mind you) will be interacting with the world around us, registering approval and disapproval of everything we encounter, from advertisements to potential sexual partners, based on self-calibrated measures of taste and preference.

We are at a point, as Steve implies and I agree, where the advancing current of our technology has met a tidal shift in our attitudes toward personal publicity, and the force of both have created an irresistible and self-reinforcing spiral that will define our culture for a generation to come.

You can read the entire piece Phoney Sex: Whatever Two Consenting iPhones Do In The Privacy Of Their Own Conversation on MediaPost.com.