friday social

For me this new job description signals two important developments: first, the increasing confluence of PR and marketing; second, the end of thinking of the consumer as standing behind a huge wall that is only semi-permeable with (unidirectional) tools like market research (that’s the way Rob Kozinets put it and I like this metaphor very much).

So I would add that Community Managers could also develop an interesting relationship to market research. What they are (or rather could be) doing is to some extent ethnographical field research.

Unfortunately in Germany Community Manager is all too often misunderstood to be the guy that manages the company’s support forum and deletes the spam there.

The problem is that trackbacks are not necessarily connected to profiles on Friendfeed. So the usual way to block messages or comments (and to let through messages by friends of friends) won’t work with it. That could be a nasty gateway for spam.

Otherwise: yes. Trackbacks would be a nice thing because Friendfeed seems a bit “under-linked” to me at this moment.