Toward an Open-Source Social Media Management Platform (Or, Social Media is Bullshit)

Riche Zamor is an old friend and someone always on the move — and today he’s here to talk about a new project that sounds like something plenty of you might be interested in helping out with:

Social Media is Bullshit

It’s a growing topic of discussion in the media. Tech and business journalists are increasingly writing about it (read here, here, here, and for a laugh watch this). The growing consensus is that social media is bullshit.

We know social media adds value to brands, but many are using it wrong. There is too much focus on vanity metrics. Marketers don’t focus on driving business results through social media. Brands are still using social media as a broadcast channel.

One challenge I have found social media marketers face is access to technology that is flexible enough to meet their needs for approval workflow, compliance, asset management, moderation, etc. The tools available for managing social media are often lacking, and perpetuate the issues in social media marketing by overemphasizing broadcasting content and vanity metrics.

To solve this challenge, I started a project to build an open source social media management suite. My goal is to provide a customizable, scalable platform individuals and organizations can use to build social media management software that meets their specific operational, editorial, and measurement needs. All for free (as in cats, not beer) download online.  

In a survey I recently conducted, 63% of respondents indicated their current social media management software did not meet their needs. 93% were interested in trying an open source alternative. There is a market for this. We just need to build it.

If you are interested and would like to support this project, visit our IndieGoGo page here:

http://www.indiegogo.com/open-source-smms

If you’re interested in getting involved with the project, send me an email so we can set up time to chat.

Thanks for your support!
Riche

Count me in as a beta-tester — sounds like a great idea from here.

– cpd