How Gather Members Can Hijack the Media and Change the World

My Avon district sales manager sat next to me at my kitchen table three years ago. She wore soft caramel lipstick to match her Asian print jacket, a shade just two tones shy of her sculpted bouffant.

"Birdie," she said, her index pointing first to her lips, then mine, "every woman buys lipstick. Your new Avon business manual shows you how to sell the exact type of lipstick your customer needs. Here, take a look."

I glanced at the open blue binder, at a chart where you can match up hydration versus long-wearing versus affordability, ingredients, lifestyle, you name it. Each of the core Avon lipsticks was dissected, outlined, splayed on the page like an alien anatomy diagram. I nodded my head as if I beheld the sacred Tibetan Book of the Dead. I made a mental note to memorize these facts FIRST! And I did. I did.

Three years later, I could still cite the Lipstick Mantras, spill them into the palm of a questioning customer. Avon thinks Avon Knows Best, but let me tell you a secret: My customers knew a hell of a lot more. I learned what lipsticks have staying power, which leave tell-tale stains on crisp white men's collars, which provide the most bang for the buck. My new Lipstick Mantras were based on my customers' needs. Not everything Avon needs to know or ought to know can be found in a focus group.

But I was one lone Avon Lady wolf, howling at the internet moon. Even when one voice has an audience, it's easy to discount that voice. Even with multiple voices, if these voices occur at different times and disparate places and in varying manners, there's a diminished impact. It's easy, simple, for these disconnected voices to be shushed, swept under the bed. Focus and large numbers are what has impact.

Already, there are some blogging coalitions that provide some kind of focus. All of these groups gather bloggers who share some interest - be it an anti-war agenda, a love of a particular musical artist, an opinion on abortion, environmental issues. By sharing a concern or compliment, bloggers can combine their individual power into something bigger, something with teeth, a snarl. This is the new media version of letter-writing campaigns. There are also incredible Social Networks such as this one - Gather - as well as MySpace and LiveJournal where word of mouth travels faster than wildfire. These networks have a domino effect, amplifying one person's yowls with the Amens of thousands.

But imagine something even more powerful than discreet coalition entities and roving social networks. For example, imagine that some non-profit Meta Organization was formed with the task of identifying major concerns and issues to particular groups who have a presence on the internet through blogs and other forms of comment and criticism. The mission of this non-profit would be to provide focal points involving temporal placement - meaning a specific time - for issues and concerns of organized and unorganized groups that have not had the means to collectively focus their opinions in such a sharp and global way. It should be a temporal focus, because everything happens in time, and you are harnessing power, focusing the comments and opinions of large numbers just like light, in one place in one time. Like light, it would cause heat, shine brilliance, get attention.

Imagine if this Meta Organization had no personal agenda outside of organizing those writers' focus. Imagine if it selected a day that month where it was announced that all interested parties will focus on one particular issue and will put forth their most potent thoughts, serious concerns, most constructive comments and solutions on that one day, complete with links to all participating parties. Focusing and targeting that product or service or social concern would cause an instant revolution! What company would want to be in such crosshairs? What politician? What interest group? Imagine thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps millions of bloggers opining on that day's topic.

Major media influencers, whether corporate or government or other large institutions, have always had the power to pick and choose when and where and how to create a buzz around what's of interest to them. But now the opportunity is here for thousands and millions of disparate individuals to have the same kind of power to focus - through an organized network - on things that are of concern to them. For the first time, bringing about some balance between the powers that be and the powers that have always been but could not be easily heard is possible.

As a mom, ex-Avon Lady, woman and a blogger, I sometimes write about my dissatisfaction with the media's Perfect Woman Ideal. I know other women blog about this, too, and try to shout into the wilderness that they are unique, beautiful, forces of perfect nature. All of our disconnected voices haven't made a big dent in the way things are done. But I can imagine participating in such a Meta Organization, where one day the focus is on the unhealthy media portrayal of beauty issues. Imagine fifty thousand bloggers - on the same day! - blogging about specific companies and their product literature and magazine advertising, pointing out the unobtainable standards, the way the language used in those advertisements is at odds with the images shown. Would companies listen to fifty thousand writers who yelled all at once? Would the journalistic community? Would something happen? Hell. Yes.

With Gather's fast-growing membership, it's not out of bounds to imagine a network of one hundred thousand writers who unite on specific days to cover a specific topic. It's time for the bloggers of the world to combine forces. We'd be unstoppable.

Let me know in comments below if you're interested in participating.