The Great Tweetup Controversy 2010

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.
Benjamin Rush

Can't we all just get along?

For those just now checking in for details on tomorrow’s tweetup at the Blue Chip Casino – see our original post Kyle Lacy Tweetup at Blue Chip Casino

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE EVERYONE!

Now for the controversy that rocked  NW Indiana on Friday some bullet points:

• The NWIndiana Tweetup has been working terrific for the last 14 months as a collaboration of many participants, no one person has control or is trying to make money off the effort.    (@nwitweetup)
• There is an active social media scene in the Michiana area and a tweetup was destined to take place.  At some point in 2009 Cheryl from Michianatweetup.com began the planning, set up a ning social networking site, and starting connecting interested people.
• Our own group here in NW Indiana thought it might be fun to reach out and do a joint event in Michigan City, and the opportunity was upon us with Indianapolis author and social media expert Kyle Lacy coming to town tomorrow April 13th for another event.   We asked Kyle if he would be willing to stay around for the evening and join us.  He agreed and it was on!
• At some point in the promotion our own Dave Woodson (@davewoodson) talked to a Wayne Clayton of another group calling itself Michianameetup.com but moving quickly on April 6th during these same conversations to attempt to take control of the name #MichianaTweetup for his company.   He even went so far as to suggest that because they were scheduling an event on April 30th, they could not help promote our event on the 13th.  Weird!
• It would be awesome to show Wayne’s first mildly threatening comment on this blog, but he has since edited our the threatening portion.   Well after threatening this blog with words suggesting that he owned the term and would like us to stop using his term … the floodgates opened wide.
• Now some 80 comments and 45 retweets later it would appear that Wayne’s company was attempting to be the only Michianatweetup organization, and perhaps even profit off the name.   To put it simply … things started to get ugly.

Now that raw nerves have calmed down, and cooler heads in both NW Indiana and Michiana have prevailed we come to the point of a few salient summaries.

• First, no one owns a twitter hashtag
• Second, this tweetup in Michigan City was probably going to be attended by our normal 40-45 people … but now due to the controversy we can expect to see a far greater number of attendees.  The shear volume of comments, tweets, retweets, and other blog posts about the subject has driven the information into more hands.
• Third, as we’ve noted in the past … a whole lot of links and events get promoted in the many hashtags on twitter.  But in the absence of the A-list users getting involved, it’s hard to get noticed.  This is the same as any other kind of media or marketing.  Twitter is no different, the only real change is that you can become an A-list Twitter user if you put in the work to collaborate, engage, retweet, and give freely.   It takes time, and buying 15,000 followers does not an A-lister make!

I would suggest that the controversy was good for Northwest Indiana and Michiana.   Did Wayne suffer from wading into the fray, sadly yes.  But even at that members of our own group have offered to cross promote his profit making event and work with the competing group.  Why, because we’ve all benefited from the collaborative environment that exists in NW Indiana.

As a political fan, one who doesn’t think all things political are bad, this raises the question of fabricated controversies.  In this instance there was no battle until Wayne jumped into the fray with a veiled threat.    But what are the twitter and blog ethics surrounding fabricating a controversy just for the sake of traffic, activity, promotion, and profits?

Or did we …”

(Contributed by guest author Steve Dalton (daltonsbriefs) from Northwest Indiana Real Estate and Mortgages)

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