Introducing a New Kind of Tweetup: Social Media Battles

Aug 26th 2010 View Comments




If you’ve seen me speak, or read my blog you’ve probably heard me rail against unicorns and rainbows advice. Going to lots of social media conferences, and reading a lot written about it, I’m noticing a disturbing lack of healthy debate, nobody disagrees with anyone else (at least not by name, in public).

Taking an idea from hip hop culture, I’m organizing a new kind of Tweetup: Social Media Battles.

Each battle will be composed of 2 people representing opposing viewpoints on a social media topic. They’ll each be given 2 minutes to make their case, and 1 minute rebuttals to their opponents, then the audience will decide the winner. Fast, simple and honest. We’ll do a bunch of these depending on how many people want to step up to the plate and battle.

The first one is going to be during FutureM week here in Boston on the evening of October 7th at the HubSpot offices in Cambridge, mark it on your calendars.

If you’ve got ideas for topics to debate, please leave them in the comments. And if you’re feeling brave and want to battle, email me.

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  • http://www.grizzard.com/author/epratum/ Eric Pratum

    It would be interesting to throw this into the mix the night before the SEOmoz seminar this next week…assuming there are enough people in town interested in a tweetup, which knowing Seattle, I’m sure there will be.

  • http://twitter.com/danzarrella Dan Zarrella

    Eric, do it up if you can, I’ll be there on Sunday.

  • http://www.grizzard.com/author/epratum/ Eric Pratum

    Sounds good. I’m getting dinner with family that evening, so I wouldn’t want to show up late to something I helped organize if dinner runs late…Hmm, I’ll figure this one out.

  • http://twitter.com/danzarrella Dan Zarrella

    I’ve also got a dinner thing, so maybe the battles start/run late?

  • Davednh

    sounds like the old “point-counterpoint”. Nice idea.

  • http://twitter.com/ahrdor Meg

    Not “Twattle”? ;)

    Fantastic idea! You should come hang around my circle of tweeps, we get the sparks flying every now & then. :)

  • Anonymous

    EXTRAORDINARY IDEA… This will help people ultimately… ALOT of folks are wasting there time on SM… Best, Brina-

  • Anonymous

    Then you guys should definitely organize one in St. Louis.

  • http://www.grizzard.com/author/epratum/ Eric Pratum

    Sounds good to me. Today or tomorrow, I’ll let you know what sort of response there is.

  • Anonymous

    I know what you mean by conferences but that is such a clubby environment. People are not going to openly disagree with their peeps in a public forum, at least, not to a certain degree. Those conferences are about dialogue but also coming to a common understanding. However, there is plenty of healthy debate on social media blogs. I would disagree that people are reluctant to disagree with each other or speak their mind.

    I find that type of dialogue (discussion on blogs and forums) much more interesting than an ego-boosting battle. I’m all for opportunities for LEARNING; including hearin other people’s viewpoints. But not in a scoring way. That concept completely turns me off.

  • http://twitter.com/osakin osakin

    I wish I thought that. So I’m going to steal this idea.

  • Anonymous

    Please do! Organize one in your city.

  • Anonymous

    Sounds like exactly the kind of point we should debate! ;)

  • http://newenglandhd.com Office

    “Twitter is like hugging. Just because it’s hard to measure the return on investment doesn’t mean there isn’t value there.” Tony Hsiesh

    Hard to imagine social media pros not deferring to one another, even during a debate. The social media world is too much of a “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” environment. Piss someone off, and the public flogging begins!

    Michelle Quillin for New England Multimedia and New England HD
    Twitter: @NEMultimedia and @NewEnglandHD

  • http://www.mvarmazis.com Maria Varmazis

    Sounds intriguing! I hope to attend :)

  • http://twitter.com/AllTravelSites AllTravelSites

    If two opposing sides get into heated debate or even start mud slinging, a lot of times these types of relationships can get a lot of attention. Sure you don’t want to go calling names, but disagreeing is not such a bad thing.

  • http://newenglandmultimedia.com/ MichelleQuillin

    Very true — the whole “controversy drives traffic” principle of social media. But *Gulp* not for the faint of heart. It’d be cool to see who has the guts to do it!

  • http://socialthreat.com Davezilla

    Sadly, I have a speaking gig on the other side of the country that day or I’d volunteer. It’s a great idea. Brogan’s Third Tribe Marketing is kind of playing to your point Dan, the argument behind a paid firewall. They believe in three opposing schools of social media thought: 1) It should be free. 2) It should be paid for via affiliate marketing. 3) It should be a combination of free and paid.

    They have everyone from black hat SEO pros to far left free Internet champions and everything in between, but again, hidden behind a paid firewall. So I welcome your idea of taking the gloves off and duking it out in the open.

    My argument is that social media should be measured using sociological analytics, not marketing analytics, and that attempting to measure the ROI of Social Media (while possible) is a waste of time and simply the wrong thing to measure. Disclaimer: I am Executive Vice-President of one of the larger ad agencies in the US (Campbell-Ewald), so when I say marketing measures aren’t any good, my coworkers cringe a bit.)

    I’ll take on anyone. :)

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  • http://kbjonline.com @katebuckjr

    I’ve been thinking the same thing recently, Dan.
    http://vsconf.com/

  • http://www.ConnieCermak.com Connie Cermak

    I’d like to hear a debate on what the future of social media looks like! With so many people tweeting 24/7 there’s already twitter fatigue. I think we’ll see something new platform soon.SMB Chicago please!.

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  • http://twitter.com/rharris Roger Harris

    This house believes that “Social media should not be used as a vehicle for public relations spin, but to build meaningful, engaging relationships.”

  • http://twitter.com/kkish Kim Kishbaugh

    How about streaming the event so those of us not in Boston can take part?

  • Anonymous

    The return on the investment for buying Twitter followers from http://www.socialkik.com has been unbelievable! I purchased 5000 Twitter followers and started seeing tons of visitors coming from Twitter to my site and some of them turned out to be regular customers. The Twitter followers that Socialkik delivered were 100% real and they’re quite interactive with us on Twitter.
    We’ve used http://www.socialkik.com to buy a few Twitter followers for multiple Twitter profiles and they always over-delivered on the number of followers that we purchased by up to 30% of extra followers. After Socialkik campaigns were over, newer visitors to our Twitter profile are more willing to follow than before, because they see that we’re being followed by over 10,000 followers.

  • http://www.elishatan.com Elisha Tan

    How about Censorship vs Freedom of Speech?
    Oh, do consider doing a cypher as well. Let all participants do a short clip on themselves telling us their social media views! ;)

  • Marcus Christopher McFann

    I’d love to see a battle between Symbian, MeeGo, Android, and iOS, and another between Nokia and Apple. Please contact me on Facebook, and feel free to add me, if anyone wants to battle that out. I’m on the Nokia/MeeGo/Symbian sideline, so you know. Just mention the Social Media Battles thing, and its on. I already do this on a daily basis, so I’m glad to see this sort of thing.

    http://www.facebook.com/people/M-Christopher-McFann/1358767397

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