Several weeks ago I posted an entry entitled The responsibility of being pioneers in which I talked about the online trend of making invalid and unverified claims of being first to achieve something.
A Podcast named Children’s Book Radio was launched on October 26, 2006. Its website claims “Childrensbookradio is the first independent Podcast dedicated to discussing children’s books” [update 2006-12-12: the screen capture of the Children's Book Radio website which included this quote was removed from this post at the request of that site owner citing that I am not licensed to use it. You can find a cached copy from Google (thanks, Bob).] and the spoken introduction of the two Podcast episodes published to date claim it is “the only independent Podcast featuring entirely children’s books”. Perhaps these statements are part of a marketing strategy to attract advertisers to Teachtopia.com, the network behind Children’s Book Radio.
These claims are inaccurate. There are many independent Podcasts that are exclusively about children’s books. My own independent children’s book Podcast, Just One More Book, launched in July and, as of this writing, shows up second on a Google search of the words children’s book podcast, and is embedded in the first result when those words are bound in quotes. Just One More Book has never claimed to be the first Podcast of its specific type, though we have found no evidence to the contrary – of course, we have only searched in English.
Children’s Book Radio was notified via email on November 27 that their claims are inaccurate. They have not yet responded.
As tempting as it may be and as good as it may feel to be seen as the first to achieve something, we have a responsibility to be good neighbours in the new social media. Let’s eliminate all doubt before we make our claims.
Pingback: Mark Blevis » Social media and ethics