"Guys, there's this awesome competition about designing an marketing plan for some product.Want to take part?" Hell yeah. I am an MBA student. I am majoring in marketing. Why should I not? Well I should have read the rules more carefully in the beginning. The design was nice and the plan was good. Now the organizers had decided every team should make a Facebook page an detail their plans in the same. The uniqueness and the 'number of likes' would be counted in the final score of the team. This particular aspect, I had not bothered to read much into. The 'number of likes'. Ok, I get it they are trying to promote their name, the competition, the sponsors. But why in the name of heavens, 'the number of likes'? Is it really that important? Some say, thats the skill of your networking. Now someone please tell me, why would I use my networking strength to get a LIKE for a competition. Is this why I developed my network? To use it for some god forsaken competition.
Firstly lets look at the requests people send. Hell, even I used to send these requests. Now over a period time these requests are now standardized, I guess soon some site would even offer 'How to send a request for a FB like'. The message, though, goes something like this, "Guys, I/My friend has taken part in a competition. Please visit the below/above link and Like the page/photo/video for them to help me/them win the competition. Thanks. Also if you can tell your friends about this." Copy, paste for each of your friends in the list. But people forget one thing: The power you hold over others lessens each time you make use of that power. Sure, my 'MBA' friends would realize why I am doing this. But does it make sense? What abut my non-MBA friends. My work/school/college friends. The networking strength should not be used to promote such things. This is nearly an atrocity in the name of networking.
We have all been taught, not to sacrifice quality in the name of quantity. Yet these competitions(if you can call them so) factor in quantity than quality. I have personally seen entries which would not, in any given competition, make it past the second round, winning the bloody damn first prize. Why? oh it had so so many Likes. How can people be wrong. I guess this was not what James Surowiecki had in my mind when he talked about the power of the crowds.
Now, as of today, I nearly want to 'Dislike' a competition for that rule. Sadly, that feature is yet not available on any social media site. Even if it did exist and I did it, I would not be allowed to participate in that competition. In the book, The Goal, Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox mentions about the single objective of every firm. Now, i have been left wondering what is their single objective, to invite good entries or to gain more social publicity? Is this what competitions have boiled down to?
Thought it may feel like from above, I am nor anti social networking sites neither do I hold anything against designing social media pages, photos or videos. I am just saying that people should not be forced to Like something at random because somewhere someone's friend sitting in a far off (possibly remote) location entered some competition.
