SCI: The death of Social Media

By Harry van Vliet on 28 September 2010

Now one of the biggest mainstream entertainment companies of the world (Endemol) has encapsulated social media in its new television format ZOOM, we can finally say social media has arrived big time. In this television format five ‘subjects’ are followed in their daily routines, 24/7, with the possibility of the audience to constantly peak into their lives, much like Big Brother, the breakthrough television format of …Endemol. Endemol ensures that it deviates from the Big Brother formula, for one thing: there is no voting involved. Instead ‘the’ social media are constantly monitored and the ‘buzz’ about the different contestants is harvested and aggregated into a so-called SCI: Social Communication Index. As soon as one of the contestants’ SCI-score drops below a certain threshold he or she is eliminated (from the show that is).

This move into social media triggers some suspicion, eh… questions. I mean Endemol is there for the money, nothing wrong with that. But why skip the sms-voting route, which is a profitable business, and take the non-profitable social media route? Where is the money? Second, why swap a controlled environment such as voting (anyone who truly believes that the counting of votes in TV shows is not in some way manipulated should seriously consider a crash course media literacy!), towards an uncontrolled environment such as social media. There are several social media harvesters available and in development, and I can easily make up my own SCI. It is just one step down the road to sue Endemol for manipulating the figures, because the figures are out there. So where is the catch? Thirdly, why miss the obvious point of involving the active social media user by giving him or her esteem: wouldn’t it be nice to have an achievement on your Facebook page saying your ‘vote’ was the crucial vote to eliminated a candidate? (My personal answer would be ‘No’ but then again watching The Voice of Holland, Popstars and every other ‘nobody’s got talent show’ is just work for me, hé somebody has got to do it!). Finally, one essential characteristic of social media is that it is a free ‘forum’ of opinions, nonsense, great ideas, self-promotion, dating rituals, ideals and manipulations. But there are also some mechanisms at work that trigger people to despise obvious ‘misuse’ of their opinions and chats: marketing campaigns that infiltrated social media and gone ‘wrong’ are examples of this. So is there a social media community out there that gives ‘consent’ to being used for a commercial product? And if so, isn’t manipulation just around the corner (remember ‘Geen Stijl’ potato chips?). But the most obvious consequence would be that social media is downsized to a voting medium: in the end SCI is a counting algorithm of which the audience is aware: so it smells like voting, it moves like voting and it looks voting. I call that voting. And so SMS rules once again, now in the disguise of Social Media Suicide. I mean, if Zoom and its use of social media are a huge success we cannot just say social media has arrived, but it has peaked and it’s on its decline, big time.

tagged with: endemol, social media, television

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