Stephan Reed — The American Nightmare

Another amazing bgsu blog

Archive for September, 2012

How ‘Dub the Dew’ Went Terribly Awry

Sep 21

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | 3 Comments

Social media is great way to communicate with your audience and consumers. However, without careful planning, it can blow up in your face. On the Internet, there are trolls that keep an eye out for chances to mess things up or make someone mad. For example, in August of this year, Mountain Dew introduced a new Granny Smith apple-flavored soft drink. They decided to have a little fun and let their fans name it, or as their slogan stated “Dub the Dew.”

This went horribly awry when members of 4Chan.org, a group of the Internet’s best hackers, most curious individuals and people with too much time, decided to get in on the voting.

The poll was on the Mountain Dew website, so an Anon [Anonymous member of 4Chan] banned people together to vote for some really goofy names. “Gushing Granny,” “Granny Squirts” and “Fap Apple” made their way on to the list. Mountain Dew came out and said they did not have to choose the top name, just one that was on the list. 4Chan accepted this challenge and continued to flood the poll and hack the site.

By the end of the contest, “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” was at the top of the chart, there was no reasonable name left on the poll and the pranksters hacked the site with Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna’ Give You Up” as an unwarranted pop-up. According to one blog related to this social media fail, hackers went so far as to add “a banner that read “Mtn Dew salutes the Israeli Mossad for demolishing 3 towers on 9/11!”

Mountain Dew gave their public too much freedom. Their intent was good: use social media to interact with their fans and gain their input. However, the Internet trolls took control of the situation and created a social media blunder for the soft drink moguls.

My biggest takeaway point from this experience is that companies need to monitor social media more closely. When a situation starts to arise, they need to extinguish it before it gets out of hand.

They also need to use more tact when dealing with Internet trolls. Mountain Dew’s statement to the trolls could be seen as antagonistic. Had they just let it go, the pranksters would have lost interest, but since they engaged in such a way, the trolls had to have a little fun.

Before a company begins a social media campaign, they need to recognize how it could go wrong and figure out a quick and painless process to fix it. After all, Mountain Dew could have just deleted the poll.

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Don’t Understimate the Abilities of a Fresh College Grad

Sep 14

Posted by Stephan Reed in News Related | 3 Comments

There I am, my first day on the job as Ford Motor Company’s newest social media correspondent, an organization known for its good social media etiquette. I sit at my desk, performing each task to a t in order to not mess up and disappoint my boss.  Every word is triple checked. Every phrase is carefully thought out and delicately formulated. I know, going into this job, that if I mess up, then I’ll be out of a job, out of a pay check and desperate to find a company that didn’t catch my social media mishap.

This is how I, a typical young, college-educated potential employee thinks. I feel the Digital Entrepreneur list underestimates the mentality of a young employee. I know that many of my friends, and myself, can be quite goofy and immature, but when the time calls for it, we can transform into responsible adults. While hanging out on the weekends, one may be incredibly silly, but when at work, the professional is put guard up and that individual becomes the rational human being that he or she has trained to be. After all, we didn’t work through four years of school just to mess around on the job.

However, I don’t believe a company should hire someone and put them in full control of all the social media accounts right away. They have to learn what the company is about. They have to understand the audience they are appealing to. They have to know there is something to lose. Putting someone who has at least a years’ worth experience with the company would be optimal.

I do like the point the article makes about having a few people know the account information for the business. Suppose the hypothetical social media correspondent gets fired for some reason, changing the password should be done before that employee actually get their notice to insure they don’t “go postal” on your social media accounts.

Younger employees should not be treated as incompetent. They can learn the niche audiences of the business and ways of communicating to them within a decent amount of time, especially if that was their educated specialty. I don’t believe you should give a young employee or new hire complete control of the accounts, but don’t be afraid to let them do a job they have trained years for.

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What does a deleted post really say?

Sep 6

Posted by Stephan Reed in Uncategorized | 4 Comments

It’s late. You had a bit too much to drink or maybe you’re just irritable because of fatigue, but you decide to log into Facebook and respond to your ex’s post about her new relationship or you really let your boss have it for making you stay late. You let your true colors show — and they are not beautiful.

You wake up in the morning and your phone is blowing up from notifications about your post. You promptly delete your post, pretend it didn’t happen and continue on with your day.

That post was deleted and never happened … right?

Wrong. Even if you delete a Tweet or remove a Facebook post, it was still read and has been archived.

When a user posts on another’s wall, the receiving user gets an email with the text of that post. This is proof or evidence. If you tweeted an ill-tempered tweet — or any tweet actually — it has been archived by the Library of Congress. If someone follows you to his or her phone, your angry tweet is saved as a SMS text. 

Suppose what you said online could be considered threatening; if someone was truly offended and wanted to report you, saving the evidence is as easy as a quick keyboard command to screenshot your post.

I know this latter archive technique because I used it once. Someone I knew threw water balloons at my car and put a Frosty on my windshield. I was unhappy, so I browsed Facebook and found the culprit because they didn’t think before they posted. I “screenshotted” what she said before she deleted it and made her clean up my car or else I would get police involved.

Suppose an organization begins to delete negative posts on their page, there will be some backlash. (Unnecessarily vulgar and explicit posts are fair game for deleting, especially if stated in the About section of the page.) These posters will ban together, spam the page and continue to do so until the organization addresses the problem and fixes it. People don’t like it when you ignore their criticisms, let alone delete them.

Deleting posts show weakness either way. If you said something dumb, take responsibility for it. If someone posts a negative critique on your page, respond to it in a mature way.

 

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