Circle of Moms Participates in a Circle Jerk with Bloggers
Circle of Moms, a Facebook application that is trying to morph into a bonafide community website, burst onto the scene recently.
According to Nick Gonzalez, who came out of TechCrunch retirement to break the news:
It may seem like the last thing the web needs is another parenting website, but you wouldn’t know that by the impressive growth the new website CircleOfMoms.com chalked up over the past couple of months. The site, launched in October 2008, has already grown to over 850,000 registered users. Seventy-five percent of the users are US-based.
Of course, if it seems a little too good to be true, that’s because it is: CircleOfMoms.com doesn’t have 850,000 registered users - it has 850,000 installs of its Facebook application.
Jennifer Van Grove, a “Social Media Strategist,” informed Mashable readers of the news touting the same figures:
Circle of Moms is a social network publicly debuting today for online moms looking to connect with other moms. With an already active community of 850,000+ members, Circle of Moms is your typical destination social network site, with features including photos and video, user-created groups, a LinkedIn-like Q&A section, virtual gifts, and of course user profiles where moms can input profiles of their kids to create a more dynamic site experience.
I’m used to hype but this seemed a little unusual. So I did a few Google searches and asked a friend of mine to do a little digging for me on Facebook.
TechCrunch
Nick Gonzales, the author of the guest post about Circle of Moms, currently works for Social Media, a “social advertising network” that sell ads for application developers.
Social Media’s CEO, Seth Goldstein, is friends with Circle of Moms founder Ephraim Luft on Facebook.
Social Media investor Naval Ravikant is also an investor in Circle for Moms. Therefore, in simple terms, the company Gonzalez receives a salary from can pay that salary, thanks in part to investment from the same investor Circle of Friends can thank for supporting its business.
Ravikant, Goldstein and Luft are all listed as friends of Michael Arrington on Facebook as well, demonstrating that he has some sort of personal connection to everybody involved as well.
None of this was disclosed.
Mashable
Jennifer Van Grove, who provided Mashable’s coverage of Circle of Moms, is listed as a friend of Luft on Facebook as well. Van Grove is apparently based in San Diego. A quick survey of her friends list seems to show that most of her friends are not in Northern California, hinting that she and Luft do indeed “know” each other.
Like Arrington, Mashable’s chief, Pete Cashmore, is listed as a friend of both Luft and Ravikant.
None of this was disclosed.
So What’s the Beef?
You do the math.
If it seems like there must be a reason why two guest writers posted about Circle of Moms on the same day with the same fluffy story and the same disingenuous inaccuracies about “registered users” and “members,” there probably is: everybody’s clearly jerking each other off.
So what’s the big deal? I’ll say nothing more than this: when your news is the product of a circle jerk, someone’s getting fucked. It’s probably you.
Given that this isn’t a one-time orgy, I’ll quote George Carlin:
Whoever coined the term “Let the Buyer Beware” was probably bleeding from the asshole.
Now back to your regularly-scheduled Pulitzer Prize winning online investigative journalism.
Thanks for the disclosure. It is this kind of research which makes me love the internet.
and today is different from every other day how?
The implication that being someone’s Facebook Friend implies a deeper relationship than the ability to say “Hi, how ya doin’?” without getting a puzzled stare in return (even that’s not a guarantee) lacks a lot of proof, at least on the Mashable end of things. I don’t see any proof that either Van Grove or Cashmore have any business connections (which Facebook isn’t geared to track) to any of the other parties involved.
For that matter, where’s the proof that Techcrunch, Arrington, or Gonzalez profited from this?
Disclosure: I have written several articles for Mashable.com at standard rates.
Mark: I find your comment somewhat amusing. You question what the big deal is yet you had the good sense to disclose that you have a business relationship with Mashable.
Just as a good attorney does everything necessary to ensure that his actions never give the appearance of potential impropriety, a good journalist does everything necessary to ensure that his actions never give the appearance of potential conflict of interest.
Few of the A-listers in the tech blogosphere seem to understand that the appearance of potential conflict is just as problematic as actual conflict and that, ironically, the lack of disclosure only exacerbates the appearance of potential conflict.
I never alleged that any of the bloggers mentioned here were directly profiting from their circle jerk.
TechCrunch’s potential conflict is much more problematic than Mashable’s for the simple reason that the author of the post works for a company that is funded by the same investor who has funded Circle of Moms.
Obviously, we don’t know how deep the relationships between Van Grove and Cashmore and Luft and Ravikant are. I’m told that Cashmore has “thousands” of “friends” on Facebook while Van Grove has far fewer and is not located in the same geographic region as Luft so it appears that there is some sort of relationship.
My question here is this: how did Van Grove find out about Circle of Moms and why did she choose to write about Circle of Moms? Couldn’t one of Mashable’s other writers (not connected in any way to Luft) produce the story on Circle of Moms?
But going beyond this, the larger problem is that in a world where “friends” are reporting on “friends,” backscratching, favoratism and bias inevitably follow. Sometimes this backscratching, favoratism and bias is unconscious but that doesn’t mean that it’s not backscratching, favoratism and bias.
Question: if the New York Times did a piece entitled “Silcion Valley Startups Surviving the Downturn” and you later found out that the author of that story had personal connections to some of the startups mentioned in the article, wouldn’t you wonder why those startups were selected? After all, wouldn’t you question why, out of all the startups in the world, he chose to feature ones that he has some connection to?
Of course you would because most intelligent people can see the obvious potential conflict.
So ask yourself the question: why would Nick Gonzalez decide to write a guest post about a startup run by guy who is friends with his employer’s CEO and who is funded by the investor who backs his employer? Why would Jennifer Van Grove wake up in the morning and decide to write about Circle of Moms on the same day when it’s run by someone she obviously “knows” in some fashion?
The problem: we don’t know the answers to these questions.
We can debate the difference between “alleged” and “implied”, but, other than the fact that you noted the business relationships and associations between several players in this story and left it for the reader to draw a conclusion, I’d have to agree that you made no such allegation.
I’ve been thinking about this issue while reading your response. While I’m prepared to accept the possibility that social networking relationships (strong or weak) might be worthy of disclosure, I do wonder how far this goes to make sense.
Yes, we don’t know the extent of those particular relationships. We also have the same staggering lack of knowledge for millions of other relationships.
The timing of two similar articles probably looks suspicious to someone like yourself who researches this kind of thing far more than I do and knows what to look for. I’m prepared to see it as a coincidence, but I could be wrong.
Final point: I disclosed my Mashable contributor status because it was the right thing to do (being an example of a business relationship). That’s pretty concrete and I was well aware of that being the correct protocol. On the other hand, I’ve blogged positively about a number of my Facebook and LinkedIn contacts without divulging that we’re contacts. If I, and thousands of other bloggers, now need to start disclosing all of these contacts based on every Web site we belong to, don’t you think that’s going to get ridiculous after awhile?
Mark: I think your response highlights perfectly the problems inherent when blurry lines exist between the tech blogosphere’s “journalists” and the people and companies they “report” on.
What sort of disclosure is reasonable? In the case of TechCrunch, the direct business relationship should have been disclosed, in my opinion. In the case of Mashable, I have no idea how “strong” the connection is between Van Grove and Luft, or between Cashmore and Luft and Ravikant.
The problem is that the people who are doing the reporting are often “players” (small and large) in the industries they’re covering. They often work together and play together. Where their professional relationships end and their personal ones begin is unclear. In many cases, it looks as if no such distinction exists.
Personally, I don’t really care for most of the popular tech blogs these days because I’ve already accepted that the blogosphere is largely a circle jerk. I may not know who is participating in the circle jerk at any given moment but I see all the signs of a circle jerk. Circle jerks retain no credibility with me.
But for people who actually care about Web 2.0, social media, etc. and who implicitly trust that these blogs are applying some journalistic standards this issue is far more problematic.
I suppose the lesson is this: if you’re a fox, don’t put yourself in a position where you’re guarding the hen house.
More on this subject:
http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/366825/mary-meeker-and-the-blogosphere-s-identity-crisis.html
I would have been happy to answer any of your questions regarding this matter, should you have chosen to reach out to me - but you chose not to. I can’t speak for TechCrunch or even Pete, but I don’t know Luft personally. When I was writing the post, I called him to clarify a few things in the release. Later that day he added me as a friend on Facebook and I accepted the request. That’s the whole conspiracy in a nutshell.
If you ever need to reach me directly, you can email me directly at jvangrove[at]gmail[dot]com.
Looking for anal. jmc48103@yahoo.com