Have you asked yourself if you might be one? It's not a silly question since a spate of e-tailers are counting their last venture capital millions on you behaving as one. In a business plan seemingly written by George Romero, you are expected to not really pay attention (or mind) that you are forced to open your social networks.
It seems there a lot of e-tailers who are counting on you to be brainless idiots who don't pay attention. It's insulting.
I've noticed a disturbing trend lately: retail sites that will not allow you entry until you connect your social networks (which invariably include Facebook). The Find, Fab, Gilt and almost every fashion .com won't even open their doors until you commit to a friendship. A deep, loving friendship that also has benefits. If 1% off and discount shipping is a benefit.
Dissolution
The net effect of this requirement is that I now have "relationships" with sites that I vaguely remember visiting. Brand identity? None. It's as if the requirement to open my directory to their whims of marketing is just to be expected. Further, the stream of my friends' retail-relationships really has just made me mute those friends' posts.
It appears that Circle has taken this one step further. Undoubtedly planned during a venture capital "meeting," the brilliant idea is this: by deluging the new app user with TOS screens and "accept" buttons, they simply switch out the repetitive "accept" button to automatically send out spam to your entire friend list.
What's wrong with this? Well, to begin, if you treat your potential customers as brainless idiots, they really won't be your damn customers. I'm all for social networking and retailing being happily wed if I opt-in. I'm pretty sure that my friends don't give a shit about the pasta spoon set I just bought on cooking.com. Similarly, I have no interest in my friend's cat-scratch-tower-thingy
A Call to Be Anti-Social
Is "social media" (yes, I know, I just typed that) really all that important? It seems that no one is actually producing empirical, fact-based proof that all this "liking" and "sharing" and +'ing really does anything.
Except make you decidedly not very interesting to your friends since they befriended you for who you are, not what you buy or for your account at Neiman's. I hope. 'Cause if that is the case, my little circle social is going to start looking mighty weird.
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