Enter World: exploring mediated cultures

Friday, June 01, 2007

brief list of current corporate screw ups re online communities

It seems online communities bought out by companies are messing up severely these days. I would chalk it up to the companies operating them not really understanding the existing community and having different sensibilities. That doesn’t mean they can’t learn, on the contrary they seem willing to learn albeit only after mistakes.

• LiveJournal deletes accounts in an attempt to rid the site of child pornography but goes way overboard and lands in the news.
• The flickr debacle where the person who had photographs stolen for commercial use and was posting about it had the post deleted by Flickr, which later apologized.
• And, though there is no sign of learning here, the JPG Mag take over that led to a member response of account deletions. This is truly a shame, because the approach to publishing is brilliant.

Corporate screw ups are probably to be expected, though still disheartening. Community action against it is not only a positive side, but perhaps needed to iron out the way corporations interact with the communities that grew up around social networking tools before the tools were purchased.