How to run a social media shakedown

1. Launch a free and open social network based around a social media trend such as people posting videos of their dogs dancing. Give it a title which evokes non-commercial fun.

2. Allow organisations interested in targeting the users of your network to build large groups of followers on it. Show every one of their updates to every one of their followers.

3. Let organisations place adverts on your network for a fee. Make the system for placing these adverts extraordinarily complex, arbitrary and governed by arcane, regularly-changed rules.

4. If the advertising works, they will keep spending. If it doesn’t, they will blame themselves for having failed to master the system and send their marketing executives on courses.

5. Set up a separate company under a different name which offers courses to marketing executives on how to be better at advertising to people on your network. Charge huge fees.

6. When organisations stop spending money, punish them by radically reducing the number of followers who see their updates. If they complain, tell them their content is just not up to scratch.

7. Set up a new company offering courses to marketing executives on how to make effective content. Charge huge fees. Briefly boost their content on your platform before downgrading it again.

8. After they have spent a couple of months in the social wilderness, offer the non-spending businesses free credit to start advertising again. Repeat steps 1-8 for different trends.

9. You are now rich. Orchestrate a hostile takeover of Elon Musk’s Tesla. Sell it to Twitter for a dollar.

Posted on Friday, June 28th, 2024 - Categories: #47 - Apr-Jun 2022, App Issues.