For the past few years we’ve seen the role off Social Media head, be titled everything from Chief Listening Officer to Social Media Manager. Frankly, this is with good reason. The role of social media at organizations is often very different than at other organizations. For some the role is about media allocation, for others it’s about marketing or research, for some it’s about communication or policy and for many it’s about checking the box. No two companies are the same and no two companies think about social the same way.

I can understand the desire by some, to want Chief Social Media officers in place. When you formalize something, when you make something a C-Level role, you’re sending a signal that “this” is something important. If you will, calling something, “Chief”, provides instant credibility and recognition. It also greases the tracks and eliminates many barriers. All of those benefits happen with great acceleration when the Chief role has never existed at a company.

But, those are all short term benefits that are soon replaced by much larger and looming problems. I’d like to,share with you my top 3:

1. With a newly minted Chief in place, you’ll be creating an environment of us vs. them. We saw this in the early 2000s with digital. You’ll not only hear the snide remarks of, “oh, those are social media people,” but your inclusion in decision making and meetings will be evaluated by the fact, you’re the social media people. This will set your organization back significantly because it makes collaboration the exception and not the rule.

2. If you’re a frequenter of MadMen, you’ve watched the uneasy adoption of television as a new advertising channel. You’ve watched the all to quick creation of a head of TV role. When we look back on that, it sure seems silly, right? Today, if a company had a Chief TV officer, we’d scratch our heads. It wouldn’t make sense. Guess what? You’ll be doing the same head scratching in a few years if we embrace, en mass, the concept of a Chief Social Media Officer.

3. The most mature organizations and forward thinking pundits are in agreement that social should be impacting the entire organization. Pseudo experts and the like call this “social business.” Me, I call it, just business. Regardless of what you label it, the idea that social should have a horizontal impact on a company makes compete sense. But, when you turn social media into a vertical offering or function you start to put a ceiling on its growth potential before it even has a chance to think about growing.

During my interview process at Walgreens and during on the record interviews I’ve stated that if we were to eventually promote me into a Chief Social Media role it would mean we’ve failed. I fundamentally believe that to become the Chief Social Media Officer would be the equivalent of making someone the Chief Print Marketing Officer. It’s vertical. It’s restrictive. It’s narrow. If you believe, as Charlene Li states, Social Media Is Like Air…it’s everywhere and can be embedded in anything, creating a Chief Social Media Officer is the quickest way to make sure that vision never happens.

I often say, it’s easy to poke holes, but tougher to provide solutions. I stand by that. I think a truly social business needs to have champions and embracers of social throughout an organization. I think a model of many hubs and spokes woven together is the right approach. It fosters accountability, collaboration and innovation. That model sets the organization on a course for success, one that has enterprise wide business goals and objectives as the waypoint…not individual team goals.

But, in a model like this, if you say social is everyone’s job, it will most definitely become nobody’s job. At the center of that delicately woven mesh of hubs and spokes needs to be someone charged with harnessing its collective potential. So you might be thinking, but shouldn’t that be the Chief Social Media Officer? No, well, at least, not to me. Remember at the beginning of this post when I said

The role of social media at organizations is often very different than at other organizations. For some the role is about media allocation, for others it’s about marketing or research, for some it’s about communication or policy and for many it’s about checking the box. No two companies are the same and no two companies think about social the same way.

Well, I see the driver of social eventually folding back into the organization…just like those folks from the TV Department. Some became part of the creative team, others media planning and so forth. Social will be the same way. So the straw stirring the social media drink should be part of the team that’s most aligned with the DNA of an organization. For some companies that might be corporate communications, in others it’s marketing, customer experience or legal. The creating of a Chief Social Media Officer, simply delays the inevitable horizontal permeation that will undoubtedly happen and the eventual fold back into the organization. Save yourself the time and pain and jump right to a horizontal model. Don’t repeat the history of how we handled digital…and TV. In a world that moves at the speed of social, you can’t afford to reorg multiple times.

Lucky # 18, 27, 16, 20, 35, 64

Lucky # 55, 13, 46, 7, 5, 16

Now, many people give Klout a pass when it comes to the inaccuracies in their algorithm. We say, “well, nothing’s perfect” or “it’s still in beta.” We’ve grown accustom to accepting these types of excuses for many social platforms. It’s the price we pay for speed and innovation, right?

That imperfection that we all accept…the pass we’ve given Klout…up until this point hasn’t really created any serious problems. Granted it may have caused some bruised egos. I mean if your Klout score wasn’t high enough to earn you that awesome Perk from Red Bull, you might be a bit irritated and take to twitter to express that displeasure. But, that’s about as bad as it’s gotten for Klout and the brands they’ve partnered with, to date.

Now, let me be clear, I have no idea if what I’m about to say, will happen. I have no insider information that says something like this is in the works. But…I do believe we live in a litigious society and that the righteous web loves to make an example out of companies. Sometimes, this is good, as it forces needed change to happen. Sometimes, this is bad.

So here’s what I can see happening in the very near future. Someone or a some group will file a lawsuit, most likely the class action kind, against Klout or the brand who worked with Klout to provide a perk. The lawsuit will outline that Klout or its partner discriminated against people who should have been eligible for the Perk, but were otherwise eliminated from consideration and the opportunity to earn their Perk, because Klout’s algorithm was woefully inaccurate.

This suit, will force Klout to finally share the secret sauce that is the algorithm that tells us how we “rate” when it comes to influence. Remember, Klout, claims to be The Standard of Influence. This suit, irrespective of who wins, will make marketers gun shy. What brand wants to openly work with an organization that is considered to be potentially discriminatory? From there, those of us who have been pointing a finger at Klout since day 1, will feel vindicated. Those of us who bought into Klout will feel duped. Either way, we’ll all move on to debating the merits of some other social network. It’s a cycle and it’s what we do.

Yes, I’m serious when I say, I think this could happen. Stranger things have happened. Crazier things have happened. If we don’t work to make Klout accountable, someone will.