If the revolution is tweeted it'll probably get lost in a sea of tweets about Justin Beiber

There has been a lot of hate vibe directed at Malcolm Gladwell by the 'Net bloggerati, for daring to suggest that Social Media activism is more about people sucking up to causes that will yield them online social capital than due to any actual strong feelings, and thus one should not really expect them to die on the barricades, or even put up any money, for said cause. The article was in the New Yorker last week, I read it and thought - yeah, typical Gladwell, state the well known (among the people who study an area) in a new way for mass appeal and get it 80/20 right and I moved on - but everyone seems to have got very huffy this week (clearly being seen to disagree with Malcolm Gladwell is becoming yet another of the causes he critiques ). The core of his argument is as follows:

The platforms of social media are built around weak ties. Twitter is a way of following (or being followed by) people you may never have met. Facebook is a tool for efficiently managing your acquaintances, for keeping up with the people you would not otherwise be able to stay in touch with. That’s why you can have a thousand “friends” on Facebook, as you never could in real life.

This is in many ways a wonderful thing. There is strength in weak ties, as the sociologist Mark Granovetter has observed. Our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. The Internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency. It’s terrific at the diffusion of innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, seamlessly matching up buyers and sellers, and the logistical functions of the dating world. But weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism.

He highlights the difference between what in game theory are called "strong tells" and "weak tells" thusly:

The evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinction; they seem to believe that a Facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter in Greensboro in 1960. “Social networks are particularly effective at increasing motivation,” Aaker and Smith write. But that’s not true. Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires. The Facebook page of the Save Darfur Coalition has 1,282,339 members, who have donated an average of nine cents apiece. The next biggest Darfur charity on Facebook has 22,073 members, who have donated an average of thirty-five cents. Help Save Darfur has 2,797 members, who have given, on average, fifteen cents. A spokesperson for the Save Darfur Coalition told Newsweek, “We wouldn’t necessarily gauge someone’s value to the advocacy movement based on what they’ve given. This is a powerful mechanism to engage this critical population. They inform their community, attend events, volunteer. It’s not something you can measure by looking at a ledger.” In other words, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.

Cue hundreds of huffy Social Media bloggers, including the Huffington Post. More interestingly perhaps, I did a Twitter parse of comments on the subject over the last 3 days or so, and it was on the whole far more positive about the Gladwell article than the Harrumphosphere would have you think - as with the Facebook Movie, the Wisdom of the Commoners differs from their A-List blogging betters.

My take on all of this, since you asked?

(i) Gladwell is mostly right - social networks are by and large comprised of weak links, and those weak links are not what you need to create concerted action. Game theory looks at weak vs strong tells to gauge the likelihood of a player's commitment, and I am sure you would not be surprised to know that painting your avatar green in support of Iran is not a strong indication that you will be prepared to die on the streets of Tehran. Clicktivism is clearly more about garnering social capital than actually doing anything (Tom Lehrer had a go at "slacktivism" in his satirical "Folk Song Army" in the 60's - see above YouTube video of Tom and his 88 string folk guitar)

(ii) But, he has underplayed the impact of Social Networks in informing large numbers of people and allowing them to see that others think the same way (or not) and slowly, drip by drip, change opinions of large numbers over time.

Update on this thought after exchange in the Comments:

- I think what social media is good at is to threaten inaction, eg product boycotts - which is why consumer companies are very responsive, whereas say regime change has different drivers.

- Maybe social media is thus better at Gandhi style passive protest - passivism rather than activism?

As always its in the comments to the blog posts that you get the real gems - in a fairly standard harrumphblog, one commentator (Jeff Rivers) notes:

The simple (sad?) reality right now is that all this connectivity and access has resulted in exponentially more mundane conversation about the minutia of our lives and a fractional shift in social activism or discussion of anything bigger than ourselves. The signal to noise ratio is ridiculously high in social media right now and I don't see that trend changing. Maybe it will when we all get used to playing in these new media.

Gladwell could've saved himself some grief - and you a lot of time crafting this eloquent response - if he'd just subtitled his original article:
"Why the revolution will almost certainly not be tweeted"
or
"If the revolution is tweeted it'll probably get lost in a sea of tweets about Justin Beiber".

By the way, the level of argument in above said harrumphblog is at this leve:

Malcolm Gladwell’s take on social media is like a nun’s likely review of the Kama Sutra — self-righteous and misguided by virtue of voluntary self-exclusion from the subject. But while the nun’s stance reflects adherence to a moral code, Gladwell’s merely discloses a stubborn opinion based on little more than a bystander’s observations.

With enemies like that, Gladwell doesn't need friends

Or, to update Tom Lehrer:

"If you feel dissatisfaction,
Tweet your frustrations away.
Some people may prefer action,
But give me a hashtag any old day"

And the rousing Chorus......

So join in the Clicktivism Army,
Twitter is the weapon we bring
To the fight against poverty, war, and injustice.
Ready! Aim! Tweet!

With one's avatar turned green or whatever, natch.......... (marshmallow white says Paul Kedrosky)