Social Media: Why Discussion Groups Annoy Me

I recently joined several industry discussion groups. I had heard that Selected Independent had a great one and, since I am not a member and can’t join it, I joined several others.  I guess I am naive because I was hoping to really engage in some meaningful discussion forum about industry issues with people expressing differing viewpoints.  I am sorely disappointed.

Rather than a dialogue among practitioners these group discussion forums are used almost exclusively by vendors seeking to advertise their services (for free).  I don’t know about you but I find this both intrusive and offensive.  Certainly, it is not helpful.  When I joined the CANA discussion group, for instance, I received an email informing me that I would have to wait to be approved for membership in the discussion group.  Great, I thought, they are being selective.  I am a consultant so I half expected to be denied as a non-practitioner.   A couple of days later I was approved. Since then I have received almost daily emails inviting me to new discussions that are nothing more than advertisements.

I find I have two emotional responses to these intrusions: 1) It disgusts me that someone would hijack a discussion forum  2) I mentally take the vendor off my list.

I don’t know.  Am I weird?  I know that it takes time to police this stuff.  I do know that if I ran one of these things and someone reported this activity to me I would take the offending vendor off the list immediately.  But I did report it and… well never mind.