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Source:Mashable!

With the presidential election soon upon us, politics are at the forefront of many discussions. Given that “brand management” is such a hot topic, should these political discussions be avoided? Many people that use social media sites like FriendFeed are consultants in some form. Brand or reputation management is a major concern for these people. Is it possible that someone’s political views could affect the way people view their professional credibility?

I do not believe this will occur frequently, but there are a few interesting cases that we need to think about. About a month ago, I wrote a post on my personal blog regarding how Reem Abeidoh had received an email that questioned her abilities due to her political views.

Are you out of your mind. [Reem Abeidoh] is a left wing loon. No way am I attending this event. Her praise of Olbermann is enough to tell me she is way out in left field. How can I trust anyone’s expertise who is so misguided?

Ignoring the comment itself, the problem is that someone made an assumption about Reem’s professional capabilities due to her political beliefs. I am not sure if there are several other situations like this, but I was surprised when I read about it.

Another example of politics and technology is Jason Goldberg’s use of the socialmedian twitter account. Jason is the CEO of socialmedian, so technically he can use the account however he wants. He has previously used the account to voice his political opinions. This is where the combination of tech and politics gets interesting.

Will people not use socialmedian because of Jason’s political views? I have not seen any real mention of this as an issue, except for a blog post from Kyle Lacy who brings up some good questions:

Should personal politics be brought into the company communication medium? When you are trying to set an image of a company into a market is it best to keep neutral and just share information with your followers?

There has always been the conflict of personal opinion and official company viewpoint. Typically, bloggers will have a disclaimer stating that the views expressed in the blog are personal and in no way reflect the opinion of their employer. With Jason the problem changes because he is the employer.

In most cases, if the CEO has a blog it is considered to be “official opinion” of the company. Because of this predicament, these blogs tend to stick to the topic of the company and their industry. Highly volatile topics like politics and religion are typically avoided. Personally, I tend to ignore the political commentary when I am working with the person’s application. So, in the case of socialmedian, I really do not care about Jason’s political opinions when taken in the context of the application itself. I tend to separate the two, but I know a lot of people will not. Jason has stated that he uses politics as a conversation starter:

People crave thoughtful discussions and dialogues not just links on a page.  socialmedian’s external voice intentionally pushes and prods and has an authentic human voice and set of opinions behind it.

So do you think Jason Goldberg is harming the adoption of socialmedian by stating his political opinion on Twitter and FriendFeed? As I stated above, I do not care. More importantly, neither should you. There will be a lot of political commentary in the next few months. Jason’s views have no bearing on whether socialmedian is a useful application. Reem’s opinions give no indication on whether she has any expertise in social media.

Going back to the brand management perspective, is it a good idea to share your political opinion? Sites like FriendFeed encourage discussion and community. For an individual like Reem or myself, it makes a lot of sense for us to share our political views. Sharing opinions is what makes FriendFeed a community. Obviously, given the divisive nature of political discussions it probably makes sense to be careful with your words, but an individual opinion is likely reasonable.

For a website or company like socialmedian, I would take the conservative approach and not state any political opinions. My reasoning is that you do not want to hamper adoption of your application due to the political views of one person in the organization. So, am I telling Jason to stop with the political opinion? No, it is his site and Twitter account to do with as he pleases. For his sake, I hope it does not harm people’s opinion of socialmedian.

What do you think? Should people that control a brand be mixing tech and politics?

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Like Soft Porn? Try FriendFeed Now!Politics Online Conference 2008: Mashable Readers Save $50Vonage Gets Cut Off from New CustomersGoogle Still The World’s No. 1 BrandWin a Free Ticket to Time Warner Summit: Politics 2008Potentially Serious Bug Discovered in Google ReaderNew Wikia Communities Launch

Source:Mashable!

When Widgetbox debuted its blog network last month at BlogWorldExpo, I described it as “Web rings 2.0.” Today, that vision has come a bit more full circle, as the company has announced a partnership with Yardbarker that will feature Widgetbox Sports Channel widgets being dropped on the more than 600 sports-related blogs in Yardbarker’s network. The deal is exclusive, meaning if you want to participate in the Widgetbox Sports Channel, you’ll also need to join Yardbarker.

The Widgetbox Blog Network is essentially groupings of blogs in different categories – like politics, fashion, and autos – who in turn place a widget on their sites. That widget then displays links to recent articles from all of the members of that category, in turn driving more traffic to the member sites.

In all, Widgetbox’s network includes 32 different categories, while the company claims its widgets are featured on more than 200,000 blogs that reach 68 million unique viewers each month.

Deals with networks like Yardbarker make a ton of sense for Widgetbox – they add hundreds of blogs and millions of new widget views all at once. Meanwhile, Yardbarker gets a new way to recruit bloggers and increase traffic between its sites. I’d expect Widgetbox to make similar deals in some of the other content verticals in its network.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Yardbarker Gets Investors’ Sales Experience, and $6 MillionWidgetbox Launches Showcase & “Get It Now”Yardbarker Launches Site Revamp; Gets FundingWidgetbox Launches iPhone Widget Gallery Sans Apple’s SDKhi5 Opens to Widgetbox Apps to Expand OpenSocial DistributionWidgetbox Showcase Offers iTunes Widget and PlaylistWidgetbox Launches App Accelerator for Bebo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 5:34 pm and is filed under News, web 2.0, blogging, widgets, web, sports, WidgetBox, YardBarker, blog network, San Francisco-San Jose. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.