(Right about here, I hear the whitewashed chamber choir of social media savvies cry out against the word “manipulate”, however, scrutinising the process; it remains the main objective – pretty manifestos, social media camps and other exotic highbrowery notwithstanding).

The infinite amount of status updates, tweets-retweets, largely unfounded and undigested flow of uninterrupted information poses three main problems. One, since every social media entry is by definition egodriven, then recycled – it will be hard to create any lasting credibility as the information goes through the replication process (losing value by every egodriven retweet). Two, as argued by CUCUMATZ, whenever a corporation creates an online persona, it fails to use the inherent power of its own preexisting networks – diluting the brand image in the process (thus following the target audience deviation trajectory of any successful brand). Three, the modern father of nonsensical information transfer, Jeff Koons, will (presumably) be proud to know that social media messages largely follow the aesthetics of transfer, aswell. Meaning: the way in which the message is relayed seems to be superior in importance to the actual content of that same message.

Whenever one or several of the above problems occur on their own or combined, the end result of communication relayed via the social scene creates a form a digital scar tissue that not only threatens to overthrow the message itself but also adds to the problem of controlling the credibility of content, a major issue for any brand or corporation. Modern gurus will tell you that it is an inherent factor of the social game and beyond any real circumstance save the fact that it “probably will occur”. In other words, internet professionals are trying to magick their customers into thinking that flawed communication using the social scene is better than letting the scene construct its own reality – tweet by tweet eroding away at the single remaning tool of any brand aspiring towards longevity and profit – credibility.

The organisational infostream is to reduced to a near-alchemical process where input gets stuffed into the leaden jar at one end and coming out as discolored confetti in the other. I’m not saying that organisations should stay out of engaging into online conversations. Quite the contrary. Make sure you actually have something to say, then say it using your own existing network.

There are however further problems with communicating in social media fashion. As Paul Virilio argued, the (modern) speed with which we communicate induces a state of confusion. And as classical philosophy puts it (dispensing with the ideal state of Plato), we exist in the manner of us being here and now, Hic et nunc. That might very well have worked for nearly two thousand years. Our current here and now however is split in so many facets and can via status updates, online presences and other digital tracks set us in so many here’s and now’s that the classical notion of existing becomes not only flawed but borderline ridiculous. You are your tweet and your status update. Or are you the comment on your status update? Or are you the construct path of your cellular phone record? And just what were you when the two lanes of information intersected?

The same notion of accelerating confusion will apply to any brand or corporation entering the social media circus. Further disambiguation follows loss of control and credibility. Who is the corporation hijacked on the information slipstream? Tweet with care, fellow brands – perhaps it will turn out that the best medicine against a digital motion sickness is slowing things down in order to evaluate what actually needs to be said and what value this will add to the community, if any.

A circus is so easily transformed into a freakshow.