“Hey…I’m not ready for a relationship with you yet.”
Social media will play an increasingly important role in transmedia storytelling, but there are a few things that storytellers are going to have to learn first. One of them is not to push users too quickly to enter into a relationship.
I spent some time this weekend checking out a few nonfiction transmedia or interactive stories – Bear71 from Canada’s National Film Board and Journey to the End of Coal from HonkyTonk Production among them. I ran across some online buzz about Take This Lollipop, described as an “Interactive Live Action Facebook Connect experience”.
“Sounds interesting,” I thought and figured I’d check it out too…until I hit the first page of the site.
Given the issue being explored, I shouldn’t have been surprised about what I was being asked to do…but I was. That’s because I really wasn’t sure what Take This Lollipop was all about when I decided to take a peek. It was only afterwards that I found this description:
However, social networks can be dangerous places to share information, particularly if you are careless about the data you provide on your profile without the proper safeguards in place. Take This Lollipop plays on the fact that many people underestimate the power of social networks and the information that can be obtained from them, connecting to your Facebook account to play through a scene where a creepy man spying and tracking you. (Source: Matt Brian)
Take This Lollipop was asking me to bare myself (or at least the Facebook version of myself) on the first click. It wanted access to my basic Facebook information, profile information, family and relationships, photos and videos, information people share with me, my news feed posts, and custom friends lists.
This wasn’t the first time in recent weeks that a site has asked me to do that. While I haven’t seen any hard data yet, I have a sense that this practice is growing in popularity. If that is indeed what’s happening, it’s most unfortunate.
I can understand why there’s such a frenzy grabbing data about anyone and everyone at every possible opportunity…there’s money to be made…lots and lots of money. I also suspect that we will soon see such overreach that the practice will become much more regulated. Right now, however, it’s a free-for-all and pretty much anything goes (at least in the USA) and everyone wants to get as much information about you as they can while they can.
From the perspective of transmedia storytelling, however, this rush to build a “relationship” could be counterproductive. Take This Lollipop and the other sites that wanted access to my Facebook information, for example, will never have the opportunity to build a relationship with me. Perhaps they don’t care because enough people click the “Allow” button to make my resistance irrelevant to their overall strategy. (A little analysis with Google Analytics or similar tool should tell them pretty quickly what’s happening on that first page.)
Those who use social media for marketing and communications should pay attention to what’s happening as social media use becomes a mainstream activity and privacy issues get greater attention. Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project released a report this week that restricting privacy settings, “pruning” online profiles, and “unfriending” people is on the rise.
The number of social network users who prune and manage their accounts has increased: 63% of them have deleted people from their “friends” lists, up from 56% in 2009; 44% have deleted comments made by others on their profile; and 37% have removed their names from photos that were tagged to identify them.
I get the point that Take This Lollipop is making…but I got it from someone else. I suppose that’s its okay if my message is retold by others, but as a storyteller I think I’d really rather deliver my message to the audience myself. That’s part of the fun of storytelling!
Transmedia storytellers will find social media can be a powerful tool (I’ll get into that much more deeply in the months to come) but it is a tool that needs to be used with finesse. The mistake that Take This Lollipop made was that it didn’t ease me into its storyworld, capturing my attention and interest before hitting me for a demand for information. It didn’t show or tell me why revealing information about myself would be of value to me. It didn’t take the time or put in the effort to help develop any level of trust.
So I said “Don’t Allow”!
The beauty of transmedia storytelling is that we have the opportunity to build deep, long-term relationships with our audience. We have the opportunity to get to know our audience and them to know us. And we have the opportunity to develop trust.
But if our audience walks away from the first web page, tweet, blog post, YouTube video, or whatever medium we choose to use, those opportunities are gone.
As transmedia storytellers we need to give and give and give some more before we ask someone to give something back. It’s just part of building that relationship.
Otherwise, what we are likely to hear is: “Hey…I’m not ready for a relationship with you.”