X

Slagging Goldman, pushing Daisey--all on social media

Almost everyone will miss almost everything discussed on social media. Here's what was hot last week, including widely shared topics such as Goldman Sachs, Mike Daisey and Pinterest.

Sree Sreenivasan
Sree, who teaches digital media at Columbia, is the university's first chief digital officer.
Sree Sreenivasan
5 min read
An illustration by Winston Huff shows the chaos of social media. Shows dozens of marbles with logos for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn on them
Credit: Illustration by Winston Huff (@WinstonHHuff)

Another week has flown by in social-media land, which means, you--and I--have missed a lot of developments, new products, etc. Most of them, of course, don't matter, but these Week in Review posts (March 12; March 5; February 26February 19) are meant to help you catch up with the ones that do. Wherever I can, I insert Twitter handles so you'll have some new folks to follow. Each week, you can help by posting links in the comments section or e-mailing me or tweeting with @sree or #sreetips.

First stop: Mashable's 46 Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed by Charlie White (@Charlie_White) is where I go to catch up with the best of what that site posted during the week. Several among them are worth saving for later, including:

Burning bridges at Goldman Sachs: The very public resignation of a Goldman Sachs veteran lit up Twitter and Facebook. A good collection of the responses is in this Storify (a social-media compilation tool) by WSJ's Emily Steel (@EmilySteel). In addition to all the serious commentary, there were plenty of parodies. My favorite two were a letter from Darth Vader resigning from the Empire and Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein announcing the bank will be replacing the departed exec with Joseph Kony (who was a new media star last week). "For those unfamiliar with Mr. Kony's resume, let me assure you that he has the character and moral standards you have come to expect from Goldman, and like the rest of us here at the bank, he has dedicated his life to doing the Lord's work," read the letter that had somehow been obtained by humorist Andy Borowitz (@BorowitzReport).

Mike Daisey's fabrication: Last Friday, all the social media tech traffic was about the launch of the new iPad, but suddenly I saw my streams turn to another Apple-connected conversation. Turns out that Mike Daisey (@MDaisey), creator of the highly-acclaimed one-man play, "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," had fabricated portions of his story and, more importantly, lied about them to Ira Glass and the public-radio show "This American Life."

The play, about the deadly consequences of the way Apple products are made in China, had been featured on what became one of the most popular episodes of TAL. Thanks to the enterprising on-the-ground reporting by Rob Schmitz (@Rob_Schmitz), a China reporter for "Marketplace," another public-radio show, Daisey's lies were exposed. The classy way that Glass and TAL handled the entire crisis--on the air and in digital media--is a model for other media organizations. Be sure to listen to "Retraction," the hour-long TAL episode on the episode, so to speak.

I spoke about the messy situation to a group of college journalists yesterday and one of them, Charlene Divino (@CDivino), tweeted: "So I'm here at #nyc2012 and @sree said @rob_schmitz is a hero and we should follow him. Done and done :)"

Pining for Pinterest--or not: After months of hesitation, I plunged into the popular social network Pinterest and wrote last week about six things I learned from six days using it. Think of it as an easy way to share more visual materials--photos, recipes, gift ideas, etc.

I had underestimated its power, but also its copyright issues and had to add two more items I learned to the mix. I will report back about any progress I make--or the lack thereof. My favorite response was on my Facebook wall, by Stanley Mieses, who wrote: "Thank god there's yet another way to stay home and marvel at other peoples' stuff rather than actual people."

Infographics Week in Review: I am a big fan of smart infographics and the best of them get a lot of play on social media. Here are three I noticed this week.

LinkedIn Week in Review: Thanks to a roundup of the most-shared stories on LinkedIn by Daniel Roth (@DanRoth), we get a glimpse of what people have been reading there. This week, the top stories were:

  1. Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs (NYT)
  2. The Magic of Doing One Thing at A Time (HBR)
  3. How to Be Creative (WSJ)
  4. Low Cost Ways to Show Your Employees They are Highly Valued (Fast Company)
  5. Why I Left Google (Microsoft)

YouTube Week in Review: I'm going to try to highlight some videos each week, looking through the YouTube Trends Blog. The popular video I picked involves a cat, like a lot of YouTube videos do, but at this is an animated one.