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Congrats to all the people who tried for the M-G gig, you were amazing and it was a hard choice (to me). Our regular guest Hardy Wallace @dirtysouthwine is the apparent choice of Murphy-Goode, so goode going and get dirty!
I did not follow every detail of the campaign, but I did not have the impression at any time that the votes were any more important than the cheers for Lance Armstrong at the sides of the road (or indeed on Twitter nowadays).
I contend that it isn’t surprising (or wrong) that people like Leo and Kevin Rose, who had a friendly “I have more Twitter followers than you” contest would be outraged when they learned that it wasn’t a vote contest, the votes (again in my perception) were just a way of cheering people on.
I don’t mind that this is now old news in the real time social web, because I think some thought needs to be given to the mob mentality and how it may not be right even if a large number of people line up to crack the whip.
Of course there’s a lesson in this story, too.
Note: we are on GMT+2, 6 hours later than New York in case your comments take a long time to appear, it may be because we’re sleeping.
Here is Martin’s original totally cool Tweet “heard round the world”
Reactions
And here is what happened next, on Digg: 2295 links, 311 comments
FriendFeed.com search for Murphy-Goode also shows about 300 posts:
Today, a Google search of Murphy-Goode reveals items 2 and 4 “not so goode”.
More viewpoints:
When a website has a vote, and even goes to the length of collecting e-mail addresses to mitigate voter fraud, the implied arrangement is typically that those votes mean something. In fact, until this contest I’d never encountered a vote where that *wasn’t* the case.
And that’s what a lot of the internet anger stems from. If you have a large pool of candidates, and you say you’ll filter that down to a “Top 50″, having people vote implies that the top X vote getters will have a spot. Could be just the top one, or the top 5, but not how they did it (skipping 1 and 3).
Not doing that conjures up the two worst words I can think of for a business trying to do public-relations: Bad Faith. And whether they like it or not it will color people’s perceptions of their winery as a whole from this point on…
I understand that this is one interpretation. It just isn’t what I perceived as the rules of the hire. I do believe that the people “in wine” probably “heard” what I did, but we hope to find that out when they join the discussion next Tuesday. Did someone say or imply that the votes mean nothing? I don’t believe that was ever the case, either.
As for Internet anger, I think in today’s world it’s displaced when applied with this much zeal towards something with so little consequence. Nor do I think the anger will have a huge effect on M-G by itself.
I would like to know from every candidate what they expected the vote to mean. Had I myself made a video and entered, I would never have imagined the votes as anything other than cheering from the sidelines. I didn’t even take the trouble of reading the fine print.
I grant everyone that M-G did not forsee the perception of the socmed people, a perception many of us in the biz do not share apparently, but I would not call it bad faith. There is no doubt that a lesson is there to be learned, yes.
I also don’t see what M-G can do other than to say they’re sorry, they made a mistake. It almost shows why they need to hire someone to run their online community, doesn’t it?
As long as we’re discussing this amicably, can I ask the crowd this: Leo Laporte is the most listened to podcaster in the world, a guy whose podcasts are well-known for overwhelming sites whenever he mentions them. So when Leo tells people to go vote for his candidate, is this a measure of something significant and is it a fair measure of anything other than having Leo behind one candidate? If you want some kind of level playing field, you’d have to not have Leo calling for people to vote for one person. It occurs to me that had he just told everyone to go vote for someone after looking at a bunch of the videos, it might have made more sense.
Some interesting points were covered in the most recent Diggnation episode:
http://revision3.com/diggnation/windoze
I expected vegetable-throwing (y’know, from vaudeville days…or Looney Tunes cartoons) but Kevin (Rose) and Alex (Albrecht) actually treated the whole incident quite fairly. Worth checking out before you record, Randy.
I’m not ‘in wine’ and I haven’t ‘heard’ what you did, but now that you’ve teased I’m curious what you did that people ‘in wine’ might have ‘heard’ about.
I totally understand your take on the voting aspect of this ‘spectacle’ but it is a bit hard for me to swallow. The whole point of the ‘contest’ was to get M-G ‘in’ with social media and it kind of backfired, didn’t it?
All I can really say is that it was just plain dumb for M-G to not include Martin in the final 50 even if they knew they didn’t want to hire him and he wouldn’t make the next cut.
IIRC, the ‘contest’ was supposedly going to use the votes to get down to 50, then it was in the M-G people’s hands to get it down to 5 or some small number that would get to go in person to interview.
Here’s some quotes from stuff i’ve found around the net now that i’ve gone back to research this situation:
“In searching for a social networking maven, the company attempted to take advantage of Web 2.0 and connective media. Unfortunately, the people that it attracted are also exactly the kind of applicants who are best positioned to damage the company’s name. Further, by suggesting that it was engaging in a Democratic process, the company drew the attention (and, ultimately, the ire) of similarly plugged-in networkers. ” via http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/07/10/murphy-goodes-job-contest-turns-sour/
“Of course, the winery had portrayed the “Goode Job” campaign as an extended job search, complete with interviews. But voting on its Web site complicated that picture, especially as social media thrives on popularity rankings. The purpose of the votes wasn’t explicitly stated, but candidates quickly lobbied their networks for a boost.
And though several candidates said they were contacted by a recruiter who indicated the votes had minimal value, the message apparently didn’t filter to fans who had, in essence, been blasting their Twitter feeds with free advertising for Murphy-Goode.
Digital marketing strategist Paul Mabray of VinTank in Napa, who is advising several finalists, said the winery fell short by trying to embrace social media without fully understanding its rules.
“It’s about knowing the players,” Mabray said. “It would be like sitting in a room with (pre-eminent wine critic) Robert Parker and telling him he doesn’t have a good palate for wine. What would that do to your brand?”
via http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/10/BUJM18I79M.DTL
Thomas also has a really good point about requiring email addresses for voting. This gives the impression that it does mean something. What it meant was that M-G was looking to harvest some email addresses (6000+ from Martin’s supporters alone). Lots of people were upset at that ‘tactic’.
We can agree that this does highlight the fact that they do need someone who knows more about web2.0/socialmedia/etc than to just copy other successful campaigns (re: Queensland’s Best Job in the World http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS291US316&q=best+job+in+the+world+queensland&aq=f&oq=&aqi= )
@Todd, thanks I’ll look at the Diggnation thing. (Fast forward, edit I am looking at the first part now. I already don’t agree with Kevin’s initial explanation that the voting system was implied to be the decision mechanism. Martin’s video by the way shows that he’s brilliant at what he does, but I think he’s over qualified for the M-G gig. Nice job, Martin! The Digg guys are right in one point, which I’ll restate as “Be careful what you wish for!” M-G tried to embrace socmed and made a mistake. At the moment I guess the question is, what if there had been no vote? Ironically, if M-G didn’t want Martin and they put him in the 50 as Alex says, that would be hypocritical and if it ever came out that that happened, it’d be worse IMO. So I totally agree that they should have done exactly what Alex said, shunt the guy into the top 50 with no intention of him getting the gig. Now, though it means we don’t care about getting Martin’s hopes up and those of the same community who would come down even harder on M-G when Martin doesn’t make the top 10. Cue the disgruntled M-G employee that then tells web 2.0 “Martin was never gonna be hired anyway, they didn’t like the drunk image he was giving, spilling wine, etc.”)
@Chris, thanks for the reference material, I agree with Paul’s take – but then Paul is in both wine and socmed in a big way. I also agree with you, yes it did backfire. That will have more of an effect on the rest of the wine business potential socmed actions than it will on M-G I think.
I don’t buy the email address thing at all, but only because I view every single request for my email first as a potential spam source and second as a way to identify “voters”. It’s a standard method for that, so I didn’t read that into the email request.
I’m a musician, and we often talk about what you “hear”, I didn’t mean I’d heard something from a source, what I meant was this: When I learned about the M-G campaign, I did not read any meaning into the votes for your friends, other than sideline cheering, as I’ve said. I imagine that whoever came up with that part of the idea was thinking like I would. Neither one of us is ready to run a campaign like this, apparently. I was lucky in that I didn’t try.
This said, I maintain the all the indiggnation (pun intended) is disproportionate and has too much echo and +1, “me too”, “pile on in the bar fight” mentality. Maybe my opinion is based on the fact that I generally wouldn’t pile on a bar fight, even on the Internet. The points made are valid takes, even if I disagree. They way they’re made is often self-aggrandizing, though.
I can put myself in the shoes of the person who made this mistake – and it obviously was a mistake – but I don’t think it was an intentional ploy or nefarious plot. I don’t accept the bad faith definition because I don’t know – nor does anyone – how exactly the decisions were made. If someone produces a memo saying “let’s screw with their heads, it’ll get us publicity” I’ll start being indignant. Until then, what I see is a saddening use of one the greatest tools for good ever invented, the Internet. Finally, Chris, your last paragraph is right on, so, yes, we can agree about that! Not that disagreeing is bad.
My admiration for Leo Laporte is practically boundless, I could give a lot of reasons why, but suffice to say that he is number one and he’s done wonderful things for the net, netcasting and a lot of people and causes. However, I think his initial action in the game was inappropriate and a light-hearted attempt to influence the voting. Leo knows perfectly well what his influence can do and if he was here having a glass of, uh, beer, with me right now I would ask him if he didn’t admit the gesture was somewhat disingenuous. When Leo says to do something, hundreds of thousands of people do it. TWIT Army is a real Army, if Leo ever decided to do what Andy Griffith does in “A Face in the Crowd”, we’re all in deep trouble. Amazing movie by the way, with a totally atypical Andy Griffith performance. As someone who wields that much influence and knows it, can he then call foul? I’ll still listen to most of his netcasts even though I think he was wrong in this one issue.
Robert Scoble, who was attacked in the most severe terms a few years ago in some “scandal” about photo rights, posted a more neutral headline that I appreciated, but I can’t find it now.
Intention never matters in cases like this – perception of intention does. At least to the public at large. I would wager most of the folks angry over this would agree with the Bad Faith scenario, even though the intent of M-G may never have been that. They’re going to need to work on changing that perception if they want to smooth things over with that crowd. How? Your guess is as good as mine
As for collecting e-mails to vote, we’ll have to agree to disagree
In my experience, the more careful and serious you make the vote process the more weight people will assume it has in the end. I don’t see CNN or ESPN asking for e-mail addresses for their throwaway polls, which if you think about it are just popularity votes for a small pool of “candidates”. Those are when folks are just cheering from the sidelines 
As for Leo, I’m not sure how impactful he really was here at the beginning. Martin got 6K votes, which was 4x the next person. But, when you consider Leo’s number of followers, it’s not that much. I’d say Martin’s own followers were the voters here. I do agree that Leo (and Kevin Rose) added some gas to the fire once they alerted their followers to what had happened with the top 50, though…
Thomas, I get you and I appreciate the way you express your thoughts and opinions. If you’re able to phone in to our live conference, I hope you’ll consider doing so. That applies to anyone of any opinion, of course. The more the merrier.
While I’m not very familiar with Kevin or anything he might have done, Leo’s call for votes was certainly significant. I’m not at all familiar with other resources Martin had to garner votes. I think Leo himself might admit that in the context of he and Kevin having their own friendly competition on Twitter for the most “votes” in the past, neither is ignorant of their immense power to influence.
I mentioned Scoble somewhere, here’s a quote from one post in the outcry about theuse of a photo on the videoblogging list:
http://www.mail-archive.com/videoblogging@yahoogroups.com/msg47406.html
‘podtech and other companies that attempt to buy their way in to a “community” that in reality is neither here nor there. contests, awards, content contracts, faux transparency and so on. it’s largely a game where their are some winners, some losers and many observers.’
Pretty on topic in some respects.
Here’s part of the Podtech issue I was trying to find:
http://www.mail-archive.com/videoblogging@yahoogroups.com/msg42738.html
There is no good way that I know to actually read this story unless someone knows of a full post somewhere.
This is interesting: Unfortunately it’s in French, but it is a contest and they spell out exactly how it works in these terms.
http://www.terredhermes.com/conteurs/html/reglement-fr.html
More on this Tuesday when I’ve had time to study it, since we’re working on a project related to this kind of thing at the moment.
???Where is the lynching? A diggnation episode? Who cares? So what Murphy Goode chose the finalists. I hardly doubt this is going to hurt sales, and they definately have benefitted from the attention. So I guess I am confused why we are talking about this…Maybe Murphy Goode is offering to sponsor this thread!
@Ryan join the call and let’s talk and you’ll understand what I see as the significance of the event. I don’t necessarily this will affect sales, but it affects certain things and should be watched. There are negative effects not limited to Diggnation (which I’ve watched twice in my life) and Digg link that was seen by a lot of people and a few articles on widely read sites that a lot of people see.
this sounds great! Will try to listen in for sure!
Will be catching a plane to the US at this time…headed to the WBC…Will try to listen after, though I still think this is a whole lot of nothing. Yes Murphy Goode doesn’t get it, but it’s their job…and now it’s up to the real winner to have fun!
We’ll miss you live. I have to disagree about it being “nothing” when the red flagged results come up on the first page of a Google search, though. We’ll see how long this lasts.
In the absolute cosmic sense, I’d say… well, let’s see what everyone says in a couple of hours. Have a great trip and a great WBC: http://winebloggersconference.org/
Listening to the podcast later, something Dave said about the “fine” print and how it failed to state how the candidate would be choosen.
I *do* remember reading multiple tweets from MG stating: remember to make your vote on who you think really will fit into the winery.
These came out often when the #areallygoodejob hashtag would become overflooded with “vote me” tweets and their retweets.
And something Randy said: why not keep Martin in the top 50 just by merrit of what he accomplished… lead me to the thought that you see that MG’s sole purpose in the process was to find the correct person for the job and not to milk Martin for all the “free publicity” he could have brought to the campaign had he made the top 50…
(And now I am cutting the interview short, sorry… I am tired. I will come back, though!)
One more observation: Martin did not send out oodles of “vote me tweets” nor did he plaster his blog with posts on it, he did one post, two or three tweets and then just let it run.
Andy , thanks for listening and commenting. The idea of keeping Martin in the top 50 was from Alex from Diggnation, not me, and I don’t agree with it. Although I applaud his idea for commercial diplomacy value, in the absolute it would be a lie and I think if anyone ever found that out, it would create a much worse stink: “They knew they didn’t like him but they still raised his hopes and cheated his fans!”
My conclusion is still to not have had a vote at all since now I feel that people would never have read the clause about the weight of the vote. In other words, the value (or not) of votes would have to be one of the main statements on the original site, and let’s face it, that’s stupid and wouldn’t fly.
I also think what I’ve always thought: Almost no one actually reads web pages (we scan them) and of that small percentage, NO ONE reads the fine print. Putting EULA, TOS or Fine Print above a paragraph is like a guarantee that the crickets will chirp and people will doze off.