Social media evangelist Stowe Boyd comments on Guy Kawasaki’s statement on “Ghost Twittering.” Stowe says:
My response is that just stating that the Twittosphere is a meritocracy, and the cream rises, etc., does not justify ghostwriting. There is a really important difference if the CEO writes those particular words himself, even if his grammar is bad.
In essence, Guy is saying that when you see something under his byline on the web may not be actually penned by him. He is more like Newsweek than a person, and that’s ok, but should be made very very clear.
From my perspective, his personal identity has been hollowed out into a brand, like Colonel Sanders or Aunt Jemima: there may not be a person there at all.
My buy in with Twitter was that it allowed me a back stage pass into the lives of evangelists and marketers. It further humanized the already engaging blogs that these people wrote. Guy raises a valid point — content is king. But with the way the same content is being syndicated across thousands of sites, it feels like the “interesting-ness” of news becomes saturated by aggregators, news sites and blogs.
Both Boyd and Kawasaki approach Twitter from different contexts. I highly doubt there’s one true “right” answer, but Boyd’s rationale seem to be more compelling. If an evangelist lets others do the evangelizing under his name, does it lessen the credibility?
