A situation arose on Twitter yesterday which didn’t quite sit right with me, and from the tweets still popping up in my stream it’s continued through to this morning.
In light of the revelation that the News of the World hacked Milly Dowler’s phone, a storm of – not misplaced – moral outrage has swept across the media, blogs and Twitter.
On the social media front, incensed tweeters have been listing the Twitter accounts of the companies who advertise in NotW, and in some cases directly asking them if they’ll be re-thinking their advertising spend with the paper. But here’s the thing – they’re doing it blindly.
Social media is a powerful tool for advancing change on a social and corporate level, but it has to be used properly. The research has to be done before scores of angry tweets are unleashed upon unsuspecting social media and comms officers.
At least one of the accounts on the receiving end of the tweeting public’s ire is a spoof. @PCWorld_UK is not the official account of the computing retail giant everyone is aiming at. If the legions of moral crusaders had bothered to read the tweets from that account (or, in fact, just read the bio!) they would know this.
But no…Twitter is angry, so Twitter will roar!
I don’t know how many other accounts are spoofs and have been flooded with anti-NotW tweets, there might not be any others, but whether it’s one or 100 the point stands. People and organisations cannot just be taken at face value online, you need to check them out.
Without knowing you’ve got the right target for your campaign you’re not a moral crusade, you’re an angry lynch mob.
Whoever runs that spoof PC World account will probably feel like shutting it down now (hopefully not, it’s quite funny), and the real PC World Twitter account carries on oblivious. In that situation all you’ve done there is do a favour for the guys you were trying to picket in the first place.
By blindly re-tweeting and hitting the wrong account these people have shown that while Twitter has undeniably done a lot of good in the world, it shouldn’t be the first port of call for campaigns like this. It’s lazy mob-justice. An email campaign, telephone calls to PC World HQ or good old fashioned pen ‘n’ ink letters would have required the minimum research of finding an email address, phone number or postal address.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m behind the campaign in principle and what NotW did was an outrage. They’ll be taken to task over it, I’m sure, and there will certainly be fallout where their advertisers are concerned.
In the grand scheme of things this example of Twitter getting it wrong is mostly harmless, but there was a similar situation in Glasgow recently when the wrong guy was identified via Facebook as being one of the guys who threatened Celtic manager, Neil Lennon; fortunately that was rectified quickly, but it had the potential to be very dangerous.
Justice may be blind. Social media can’t be.
Hate new Facebook? Quit whining and leave!
Image: West McGowan on flickr
So it seems Facebook has gone and made a bunch of changes. Again. And for some reason they’re mightily unpopular and there’s been an instant and almost universal backlash. Again.
Let me just say to all you folk on Twitter and Facebook who are bemoaning the latter’s latest set of changes to the newsfeed, “Bored now!”
If that’s my opinion, you can bet Facebook got there three updates ago.
Oh, you go ahead and re-share that image to voice your displeasure…on Facebook. You’ve done your part for the cause there, and no mistake! The Facebook decision makers will see all of those duplicate images, see the solidarity of the disgruntled user and…
…do sweet Ffff-anny Adams about it. Just like they did when you all HATED the Newsfeed, and when you all HATED the adverts, and when you all HATED the changes to FB Group pages.
Can you imagine Facebook without those things now? No, because you keep using the service and Facebook leaves the changes in place, you get used to it, and eventually you forget why you hated it.
Facebook isn’t a consumer product. It’s an ad-supported service, free at the point of use and as such they care about the advertising dollar, not Joe User’s.
You can reshare that image, complain to your friends and “like” the plethora of New Facebook Sucks pages all you want – you’re still using the service and creating ad impressions for Zuckerberg’s bean counters.
This is just speculation on my part, but I’m willing to bet that Facebook usage actually increases during the period when people are whining about changes, because they do it ON FACEBOOK while going about all their usual business of commenting and posting updates.
Want to send a message to Facebook? Close your account.
You don’t have to delete it, just put it to sleep. Then go sign up to Google+ and send Zuckerberg a message (he has an account) telling him why you’re there.
Nothing will grab Facebook’s attention like a sudden massive spike in inactive accounts. Why? Because it’ll go hand-in-hand with a drop in ad views and click-through rates.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not gonna put the Big Blue out of business, but it might grab their attention long enough to make the user heard.
Facebook aren’t stupid, they “get” social. Hell, they pretty much “are” social. They can see your complaints, and they don’t give a damn.
Mark Zuckerberg is the Borg Queen and you, reader mine, are a drone. But are you going to be Designation 462894 of 750M, or break away from the collective and be a sexy Seven of Nine?
Do it. I double dare ya, +1.
Is this one change too many to Facebook? Will you be closing your account, or are you happy for Facebook to mess you around forever?