Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV may have started getting into video and Twitter and other social media to push wine, but he has become a leading proponent of using social-media tools to build your personal brand and sell whatever it is you want to sell (including yourself). In the video clip embedded here, he takes on Howard Stern — who should probably change his name from the King of All Media to the King of Old Media — who launched into a tirade about the uselessness of blogs and Facebook on a recent episode of his satellite radio show. I think Gary is probably onto something when he says that Howard (to whom he gives a lot of props for succeeding wildly at the conventional radio game) sees social media and the Web as a threat to his empire in some sense. Howard’s original rant is here.
Update:
Fraser Kelton says that Gary V is wrong, and makes a fairly persuasive case in a post from a couple of years ago that Howard is actually using social media and community a lot better than some people think — although in his own way. Not being a Stern listener, I’m going to take his word for it, and the fact that Loren Feldman, Howard Lindzon and Chartreuse all posted comments agreeing with Fraser makes it even more likely that he is right. Drama 2.0, who started this whole thing, has a not-safe-for-kids response here.
