Jalopnik 
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Detroit, 8:54 PM
Mon Nov 30
29 posts in the last 24 hours
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02/15/09
Jalopnik content is useful and entertaining to me.
I've never found Facebook or Twitter to be useful or entertaining. Ever. More like highschool gossip. Frankly, I'm surprised anyone at Ford is spending actual money on 'social media'/circle jerks. I guess they have extra money they don't really need.
It will be interesting to see how long they do.
02/15/09
That smacks of Scott Monty promoting Scott Monty, not Scott Monty promoting Ford.
02/15/09
A final thought: more than a few of the comments remind me of the mob mentality that these blogs/comments can induce. "Person X is a douchebag" followed by a bunch of "Yeah, that's right" comments. Easy to castigate someone when you don't know them. I don't know the guy, but would really judicious before saying something like this in a post that you (in a very non-self-promoting moment, btw) point out reaches 1.7 - 2.5 Million people.
02/15/09
But that's a far cry from saying it wouldn't have been dealt with in the very same manner. Except more than likely, it probably would have been done without the self-centered promotion of Monty.
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02/14/09
Like him or hate him, what did he do wrong. The post had traveled so fast that day, he couldn't keep up it. Scott actually took the time to post replies on site's like jalopnik, to try and help get the rumormill under control, and if you look i even posted in that thread, to help let people know that scott was working on it.
I was so impressed with scott, i even wrote his boss and complimented on how scott and ford handled the situation that was ballooning out of control.
To say that he isn't doing his job and that he is an overpaid twit, is kind of sad. If you would actually take the time and speak to him, you would see that he actually has our hobby at heart. He has honestly been one of the only people i have met from ford that agree's that our hobby should be allowed to flurish, and not be shutdown because of using names like and articles. So needless to say, i am a little disappointed with jalopnik, for not taking the time to get to know this man.
If you want to ban me from your site as well, please do so. But this site has always seemed to be upstanding and willing to take the good with the bad, and sadly we were all lead astray by the site that said they were being shutdown because they had ford in their website's name, never mentioning that the entire legal issue was over counterfeit ford products.
Doug of Insanemustangs.com
02/15/09
02/14/09
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02/15/09
And yes, we are a masturbatory echo-chamber -- we're a site obsessed with the cult of cars and we're honest about that.
Also, are you saying we've had fewer puff previews and reviews now since you're no longer managing editor? I don't think you are, but it kinda reads that way. ;-)
02/15/09
02/14/09
I don't know or particularly care about this Scott fella. I would appreciate companies running their propaganda through official outlets. I don't mind that they do it. But using straw men, astroturf and sock puppets to do it shouldn't be tolerated. It might be hard to ferret them out, but it should be punished, because it lowers the quality and honesty of your unaffiliated commenter's efforts - which is the meat of this site.
Maybe the formulation you're looking for goes a bit like this:
That twat twits me all day long. But he doesn't know diddly. That makes the rest of us twitter, and wonder what's become of Nibbles.
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Scott Monty was hired by Ford to direct its social media efforts, a supplement to the PR efforts and, in essence, and extension of the PR team online. Keep in mind, Ford has a huge PR team and several agency partners, so if you have a long-standing contact with the company, they may not know Scott yet. (Though if they don't, I'd worry about how in the loop they are.)
Yeah, you can criticize how the company handles things and call people names all you want, but Scott knows his stuff in the social media space and is trying to help Ford connect with people here, on Facebook, Twitter, etc. He's not always going to be perfect or do it the way everyone thinks it ought to be done, but if you want a question answered at Ford, he's a good place to start.
Now let me tell you something from an observational stand point that you Monty-haters might agree with. I will say that ever since he took over the social media reigns at Ford, he's changed a bit and is sometimes a tad over-zealous with his Ford pimping. Put he's an honest guy who has a great deal of pride and enthusiasm for what he's doing. I've made fun of him for mentioning the Ford Flex every time I talk to him. But I know when I want to find something out about Ford, I have someone to reach out to. He even made sure when my wife was shopping for a new SUV/Van type vehicle to haul my kids in, that we at least considered a Flex. He had the local dealer set us up and treat us nice. We like it, but it ultimately wasn't our choice and Scott was gracious about it. We appreciated his effort on our behalf, though.
Some others above have mentioned his answering question-after-question on Twitter. Twitter (like it or not) is just one channel Ford and Scott are using to have conversations with customers about their products. If you're not on Twitter, what do you care? Twitter's audience has grown 900% in the last year. It's the fastest growing social network on the Internet (yes, faster than Facebook). It may not be a place you want to hang out, but why bash those who do? There are a few Jalopnik readers there, I'm sure.
Bottom line, Ford is trying 1,000 different things to re-establish itself as the U.S. auto industry leader. From design to sales to safety to engineering ... and yes, to marketing. Which in this day and age means reaching consumers in conversations on the web. That's what Scott Monty is in charge of.
Attack his methods if they don't sit well with you. That's fair. But I would challenge you to reach out to him first and find out what he's in it for. He's smart enough to know if you say, "Back the hell off. We don't want your new media stuff." He will.
Just two cents from the other side of the aisle. If Jalopnik spent this much space bashing a buddy of yours, you do the same.
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02/14/09
"Since I can't comment on Jalopnik, I'll respond to your comment here. Since Jalopnik moderates comments, you don't really know how many comments he's allowed or denied. And you're assuming everyone on the Internet follows a niche site like Jalopnik. Most the people I interact with online don't know the site.
Scott Monty"
via my poor, little, innocent flickr account
02/14/09
Also, I'd like to point out our "quantified" numbers on Quantcast indicate we have 2.5 million people a month coming to Jalopnik:
While Scott's Twitter feed has about 11,473:
I can't help if he talks to people who don't read sites about cars, have no interest in cars and aren't in the market for buying them.
But Ford might have a problem with that.
02/14/09
I'm not going to get into the particulars of who said what to whom and when because I think there's a larger issue that's ultimately fueling this conflict. That's the issue of self promotion - vs - company promotion in PR. This is something that digital marketing and social media in business communication is changing whether anyone likes it or not.
In the interest of disclosure, I work in social media, and if anyone ever wrote something like this about me with the subsequent string of comments, I would probably feel devastated. I always try to be very conscious of the balance between self-promotion and company-promotion and I'm sure Scott does, too.
The reality is companies envy the kind of engagement, influence and community sites like Jalopnik have. That's what *they* want. Think about how unsuccessful this site would be if every post you wrote had a "Jalopnik Staffer" as a byline -- if your face wasn't out in the world and on CNBC as a commentator as an accompaniment to this content. Doesn't a little self promotion help facilitate the promotion of this site?
Anyway, I would love to dive deeper into the other issues raised about the "social media echo chamber" and echo chambers in general -- as well as the issue of why those of us in social media indulge a lot of interview requests from others in social media, but I have some thinking to do before I write a diatribe over here.
Again, as much as I hate the tone, this has actually made me think and I'm grateful for that.
02/14/09
But maybe I've been wrong all these years in my belief that my job is to promote the site and not myself. Maybe what Scott's doing is the right way to go. I hope not.
02/14/09
Within this "social media echo chamber" as you describe it, there is actually a pretty powerful impetus for us to be helpful to others who are also trying to learn. Right now, there are so many people trying to learn that people like Scott get asked to speak on this all the time. On the social media side he has to think about people saying that he promotes Ford too much... on the Ford side, he has to worry about promoting himself and/or social media too much.
The emphasis in these cases is always about sharing and collaborating rather than exposing. I think this is mostly because there are no clear guides for how this kind of interaction is supposed to work, a lot of what is discussed is purely theoretical and when someone is actually employed to put these theories to work, there is a lot of interest in the person, his/her background and how they go about creating and implementing a social media strategy.
I hope I'm not being a pest -- it's just that this is touching on a lot of the things I've already been thinking about.
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Scott, like many other SM experts, actually connect with real customers; addresses real individuals in real conversations; acknowledging OPENLY real successes and real failures; makes a real difference in the organization; learns from each conversation regardless of the medium.
What he, and true SM experts don't do are use their blog as a PA system while wearing earplugs, rant negatively about a topic they know nothing about; throw stone.
Best of luck with the short term spike in traffic, and long term loss of respect.
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