Sarah Phillips ESPN: Scandal Shows Us How Powerful Social Media Has Become

How many Twitter and Facebook followers to you have? More importantly…how much are they worth?

The online journalism world has been rocked by the shocking Sarah Phillips story released by Deadspin and it brings up multiple questions that need to be answered as the new age of media continues to rapidly evolve before new rules are put into place.

The main concern that has been brought up revolves around identifying the “realness” of an online writer in 2012, attempting to confirm an identity beyond a few online photos that may or may not be them without meeting this person face to face.

Looking at the Covers photos compared to her ESPN profile, clearly Phillips isn’t the person in both of them. That was a hiring gaffe on the part of the two companies, but it’s not the end of the world.

A 22-year-old college student conned websites into a job and they liked her writing enough to let her be. This is no different than the thousands of job seekers that embellish their resume to land a job and are able to hold said job once they get it.

What’s the most fascinating part of this story, in my eyes, is the incredible value Twitter followers and Facebook “likes” can create.

The real crime of Phillips was conning a 19-year-old named “Ben” out of his NBA Memes page that had north of 300,000 coveted “likes.” She used the coveted four-letter acronym “ESPN” to entice the college student, and it worked like a charm. The same could be said about the agreement to take over the @OhWonka Twitter account, one that has over 800,000 followers attached with it.

In today’s media landscape, this is currency. The more people connected to you, the more valuable your personal brand becomes.

Phillips wanted to broaden her Twitter followers, so she took these stolen vehicles and used them to race out in front of the competition. Phillips was looking to increase her brand with the exposure that had been created by others.

It’s the newspaper equivalent of stealing a byline—taking somebody else’s story and scribbling your own name on the top. In the digital world where everything can be altered and disguised, it’s a dangerous problem that the world of journalism is now forced to deal with.  

So when you think about your Facebook profile and see how many friends you have, or your Twitter account and how many people follow you, it’s no longer the sentiment “I must be popular.” It’s a business and the more you can rack up, the more money you can make off of it from advertisers concerned with the almighty click. There's even a company that charges money to give you more Twitter followers. Shelling out $277 for 25,000 more followers? Phillips would do it. 

I think ultimately, the Sarah Phillips story is going to be a positive.

She is the example people can think about when asked by a “business partner” to share their user name and password on social media accounts they’ve been cultivating for years.

Luckily, she didn’t obtain a respected reputation of a writer who people actually rely on for news. What if she had swiped ESPN info man Adam Schefter’s account and started tweeting out outlandish NFL reports that were 100 percent false? The impact would have potentially destroyed Schefter’s career after years upon years of hard work to achieve his current status.

The most powerful tool for today’s journalists is their social media accounts, and the trends seem to only be further pointing in that direction. You have to treat it like your baby because when placed into the wrong hands…everything you worked to build can be gone in a flash.

Welcome to media in 2012.  

Follow Eric Ball on Twitter.