I’m taking a break from all this SE/Management idea bashing to move on to another type idea bashing. :D
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The blogosphere-buzz-of-the-week for this week is about Ako Mismo (I myself in Tagalog) an advocacy campaign urging people to pledge something for the country. A lot of people have seen their commercials due to the Hatton/Pacquiao match last Sunday.
As expected from people living in one of the most corrupt countries in the world and looking for any slivers of hope they can find, a lot of people signed up. Obviously, some of them are bloggers. However, as expected from people living in such a country, some people need to wait and see if the campaign is not corrupt itself before signing up. Again, some of these people are bloggers too (including Martin, a classmate back in grade school whose blog name coincides with the campaign name, effectively putting him on top of Google’s results :D ). One of the more critical and popular blog posts about Ako Mismo is from a forwarded email to Gang Badoy, founder of another advocacy group Rock Ed.
As I see it, Ako Mismo’s success will depend on whether the doubt spreads like a wildfire in Plurk and Multiply. This is a one-sided memetic competition — with no spokespersons or avenues to answer criticisms raised against them (at least, as of this writing), Ako Mismo’s only defense against the doubters is the sheer number of people who are ignorant of the criticisms raised against them. If for some reason (because IMHO this is unlikely) the doubt reaches critical mass in the blogosphere before they open avenues other than their website, they will suffer the same fate as Sony did when they tried to use viral marketing three years ago for the PSP.
Coincidentally, Plurk just rolled off their version of real-time search today. IMO, this is one of the “fronts” that can be used by the doubters to spread their thoughts. People will use the search to find info about Ako Mismo. The search result will likely influence the searcher: if the results are purely people talking about the campaign, even if it’s just people wanting a dog tag, the searcher will probably be enticed to sign up. However, if the results are discussions about the authenticity of the goals of the campaign or links to the forwarded email, the searcher will think twice about the campaign and might even re-plurk the links.
The fun part here is that even just a small group of people can influence those search results. :D
I am personally tempted to do so even just to see how many people will use the new search function for Plurk, but I’d prefer to sit this one out.
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My personal thoughts on Ako Mismo below the cut.