18th
#bizinboston: Tweetup or Marketing Evil?
Thursday I was highly critical of Hubspot.com’s plans to invite Boston-area Twitter uses to the weekly taping of their HubSpot.tv show where Twitter founder Biz Stone might appear. This appeared crass and cynical to me, and felt like a corporation impersonating community in order to further their own commercial goals.
Several of the HubSpot crew—including several personal friends—responded to my criticism in public, and invited me to attend the event. In retrospect my criticism was harsh and many of my concerns were unfounded. Not only did Biz Stone show up, but the event was really quite good. Some concerns remain about these practices, but I had ample opportunity to make peace with the friendly people at HubSpot.
I should point out that I count many people at HubSpot as friends, and met many of them before they joined HubSpot.
So What Is a Tweetup?
Tweetup is a Twitter pun on meetup, a term popularized in the early 2000s for events where online communities gather offline to meet in person. Meetup.com was founded in 2001 and was famously used by Dean supporters to organize locally during the 2004 presidential election. I have attended and hosted about a dozen Boston-area Tweetups in the past few years, and all had the common theme of Twitter friends meeting in person. At every Tweetup I’ve met people who I follow on Twitter for the first time.
The key here is community—people come to Tweetups to build connections with people in a social setting, not to take advantage of amazing discounts or to listen to sales pitches from financial planners. We introduce friends who have mutual interests, and find interesting new people to follow on Twitter. Sometimes there is beer.
What’s the Big Deal?
I accused HubSpot of abusing the term Tweetup for an event that was actually something else. If you follow any of the HubSpot crew on Twitter, as I have for years, then you’ve seen their relentless promotion of the Friday event—inviting locals to join in, have a beer, and watch the filming of Karen Rubin and Mike Volpe’s HubSpot.tv show. Many firms hold informal beer parties on Friday afternoon. At Shiva in the 90s, it was called Mandatory Fun, in a nod to the awkwardness of forced corporate culture. The HubSpot.tv events have always felt to me like a broadcast version of this time-honored tradition. The fact that you’re holding a beer doesn’t make it a party.
If it’s OK for HubSpot to call their promotional event a Tweetup, I thought, what’s to stop auto dealerships and department stores from calling their sales events Tweetups? We promoted it on Twitter, they’ll say, and that makes it a Tweetup. Also, the magic words Free Beer make everything OK!
Also, I thought it was just plain wrong to promote an event on such speculative terms. Why stop at Biz Stone? Why not invite Bono, Barack Obama, or Mick Jagger? Because it’s unethical—and probably illegal—to promote an event using someone’s name without their permission, when they’ve made no commitment to attend. When Tipjoy founder Ivan Kirigin built a “Happy Birthday Shaq” site to promote Tipjoy back in March, Shaq quickly asked him to shut it down. [1] Unfortunately the success that HubSpot has had with this practice is going to embolden them—and others—to do more of the same. As Twitter becomes increasingly mainstream, I can easily imagine a Twitter-powered mob of thousands gathering, demanding the appearance of Tom Brady at someone’s wedding.
The atmosphere will be quite different when the target—I mean “guest of honor”—doesn’t show up.
Why So Critical of HubSpot?
HubSpot’s business—as I understand it—is inbound marketing software. Their tools help businesses improve their presence on the web using SEO and social media. They promote inbound marketing (people finding you) as a modern, enlightened alternative to direct marketing (everything from junk mail to cold calling).
Everything HubSpot does to promote their own business and events is instruction for their clients: this is how it’s done. Their techniques become de facto standards, and so I feel it’s important to challenge their ethics and discuss their techniques before everyone copies them.
I had seen at least a half dozen other invitations extended to @biz from other Boston area Twitter users, but as a marketing company, HubSpot has perfected this technique—they had dozens of people joining the rally, simultaneously calling for @biz to attend, and spreading word of the event across the Twitter network. It’s impressive—when the HubSpot guys publish a book on inbound marketing, there will surely be a chapter on invite-mobbing. Or whatever they call it.
Was It A Tweetup After All?
By my own definition, I would have to say yes. Not counting HubSpot employees, I met about a half dozen people I had previously known only from Twitter, and had some great conversation—only half of which was about Twitter and Tweetups. The HubSpot team didn’t pitch or try to control the conversation—they merely provided a place and a friendly atmosphere for people to meet and talk. And Free Beer. Local burger shop B.Good showed up with six trays of “sliders” after Biz raved about their vegie burger Thursday evening. The event paused for about a half hour for the taping/live streaming of the show, but returned to its previous form instantly.
It was a shame that Biz could only stay for a half hour, and a large portion of that time was dominated by HubSpot, including the recording of a quick interview that was not part of the live broadcast. It’s always challenging when organizing events like this to ensure that everyone gets some time to talk with the celebrity guest.
All told, though, it was the best Tweetup I have attended in a while.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=504599
Note: this was also published in a comment on Xconomy.com
