A few days ago I wrote about a new group I created on the Businessweek Exchange platform called “social media marketing.”  I added a lot of great content and promoted it to a few people.  Now the group was “pending approval” but I figured there is no way that they can turn down that topic right?  Wrong.  After spending hours adding content and getting people excited about it “social media marketing” was not approved.  Apparently there is already a group called “web 2.0 marketing.”  Here is the e-mail I received from Businessweek:

“Dear Jacob Morgan,

Thank you for participating on the Business Exchange.

The topic you suggested, Social Media Marketing, is a great one-in fact, we already have a topic that covers the same information. Since we are trying to cultivate a community around these discussions, we will have to deny your topic. However, we do invite you to visit Web 2.0 Marketing at http://bx.businessweek.com/web-20-marketing/ and share your knowledge.

If you have any questions, please contact me at (email deleted)
Thanks for your help.

Michelle

Michelle Lockett
Senior User Participation Manager
(email deleted)”

I decided to pay a little visit to this “web 2.0 marketing group” here is what I found:

If you can read that it basically states that web 2.0 marketing is a type of online marketing that uses trends in social media…huh?

Next I decided to take a look at some of the content that was presented:

None of these submitted articles have anything to do with social media let alone web 2.0 marketing.  What sort of value is a user searching for “web 2.0 marketing” supposed to get out of this?

Let’s take a look at what I wanted to populate “social media marketing” with:

Now you tell me, what is more valuable for web 2.0 marketing or social media marketing?  As a user trying to find out about how to use “social media trends” what would you prefer to see?

Going beyond the content for a moment let’s also look at the term web 2.0 marketing.  First of all does anyone even use that term?  What the heck does “web 2.0 marketing” mean?

One of my readers, Ari Herzog, wrote a great post on why versioning the web is silly, maybe business week should read it?

Instead of allowing the group “social media marketing” to exist it was deleted and replaced by a 404 error page…genius!  Now, instead of capturing the users that may visit the site they will just be pointed to an “error” page.

Not only that but users that visit the platform are much more likely to search for “social media marketing” instead of “web 2.0 marketing.”  Social media marketing means something, it means using the social media tactics, tools, and strategies out there to build relationships with your users.  Web 2.0 marketing means…who knows.  Might as well have called the group web 3.0 marketing.  People understand what social media means but many people have no clue what web 2.0 means.  When I say facebook or twitter, do you think social media or web 2.0?

I think businessweek made a real bonehead move by not allowing the creation of a “social media marketing” group.  I mean the whole businessexchange platform is a “social media” platform not a “web 2.0″ platform.  Sure I understand it’s great to eliminate clutter, but take a look at the content in each of the groups, do they even remotely overlap?  No.

Sorry BusinessWeek but what you did, was (for lack of a better word) stupid and I hope you guys change your mind and allow the creation of the “social media marketing” group as so many have requested.  Of course, I could go on and on about the other issues and problems with the decision you guys took, but I think I have made my point.

I didn’t write this to bash you or insult you but to help you.  I like the new platform you guys created and I want to see it succeed (in fact I may even be willing to help).

Here are just a few of the responses I received on twitter when I told over 860 people that you just canceled the “social media marketing” group.