Jeremiah Owyang Taught Us Many Lessons…Sadly!

Please read Jeremiah’s recent blog post:

Expect Changes at Mzinga

Mzinga is one of the companies that I closely watch, in fact, they were in my recent Wave, which was started last summer, and performed well.

I’ve been hearing from multiple sources in a variety of folks that Mzinga is undergoing some changes. With the recent layoffs a few months ago, to apparently voluntary leave of the CMO this week, there are a lot of questions I have to ask.

Today alone, I’ve received over four direct messages or emails from individuals suggesting there is some difficulties. I’m being vague on purpose, as I’m not going to start rumors and I’m not going to speculate without first talking to the company.

Mzinga responded to my queries in public on Twitter, and we’re planning on speaking next Monday, one week from now. It’s interesting to note, that if I don’t hear from the company themselves, others will tell me, resulting in my asking questions in public.

Why this post? It’s my obligation to have my clients best interest in mind, and this is the fastest way for me to reach them, by using the tools where we’re already connected.

I strongly recommend that any Mzinga clients or prospects stall any additional movement till they brief me next Monday.

I promise to be fair and balanced in my coverage towards Mzinga –yet with the interest of buyers and brands foremost.

The following is my response on his blog:

1. Derek Showerman March 17th, 2009 5:53 am

   Jeremiah, I respect your work and find pretty much every Twitter post to be insightful and incredibly valuable. But to me, this post shows that you need to be humbled. When you are talking about “rumored” changes, you need to leave it at that. There are people’s jobs on the line. People with children! People with dreams! People that are passionate about their job.
   The beauty of Social Media is it allows people to be human-and to err is human. So I will throw you a mulligan for this one. However, Social Media also self regulates-I would be remiss if I didn’t call you out. Telling companies to stop buying from Mzinga is not your job. Your job is to analyze, not be passing judgement on who companies should be doing business with based on “rumors”.

So what are the lessons learned?

1. Journalism 101 tells you to never report based on rumors.
2. Be objective and dont pass judgement!
3. Verify! verify! verify!
4. Listen to your inner-self! With success comes responsibility. Many years of hard work can be hurt if you don’t continue to think before you act. If something doesn’t feel right while you are writing it, then chances are you should not publish it.

In the end, Jeremiah will be fine! He is smart guy, a great person in fact, who had an error in judgement! We all have moments in life where we are humbled. Throw Jeremiah a mulligan on this one and don’t judge him. Let’s hope his rumors are not true!