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Twitter Will Murder You While You Sleep

Filed Under: SF Business, Top Post

If you are virtuous, you have have little to fear from Twitter.  But if you screw up, it will cut you, man. It will cut you DEEP.    I will explain how I think this can easily be avoided, but first, let’s talk about Twitter.  I swore I would never make a blog post about the “power of Twitter” but this is too fascinating to pass up

In the aftermath of the #amazonfail  debacle, I am only just now coming to realize the ultimate power of Twitter and just how dangerous it can be to the status quo and those in positions of power.  That power remains mostly untapped and completely undirected, for now.

The scandal broke over the weekend.  I won’t go into detail, but let me summarize by saying, basically, a crap-ton of books by gay authors, on GLBT themes, etc  were delisted from search and from sales rankings.   I was driving cross country and missed the beginning, so when I tuned in on Monday, it was a bit bewildering.  I imagine that’s how Amazon’s management felt on Monday morning when they were briefed on the issue.

From my perspective, the issue was a perfect storm of  issues– GLBT rights and publishing.   As I move in writing/publishing circles,  the last couple of days on my twitter feed have been one long angry, outraged discussion, with links, retweets, the whole deal.  It continues as I type this.

Don’t mistake my detached attitude here to be one of condonement.  What happened was bad for writers, bad for publishers, and as we have seen, very, very bad for Amazon.  I am however ambivilent about ascribing blame or malevolence.  I’ve worked in large organizations, and it’s very easy for me to believe that this entire problem was the result of a bureaucratic error.

In the information void that existed on the weekend, many intentions were invented to explain.  Right-wingers had collaborated to manipulate the system via tags.  Amazon had capitulated to right-wingers and dropped the titles.  It was a programming error.  A massive conspiracy of internet pranksters manufactured it so that they could feed on the outraged tears of  twitter users.  And so on.

Much like Nature abhors a vaccum, the internet ahbors an absence of information.

Amazon’s lack of immediate response allowed the controversy to build to unprecedented levels.   Rarely have I seen the internet move in one angry direction so effectively.  It never would have moved this quickly in the time before Twitter.  Email, texts, none of them had the perfect assembly of features and usability that Twitter does.

The equation looks something like this:

(Incredibly Easy Link Sharing + Social Networking + Tagging) X Programming Error/Scandal/Gaffe  = Internet Shitstorm of Epic Proportions

We’ve been seeing this with people losing jobs via Twitter as well.  You tend to think, as a twitter user, that the world is small, limited to your followers.  But they follow others, and others follow them, and it’s easy to resend something you said with a click, and… it’s Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only instead of being linked to the excellent star of such films as Footloose and Wild Things, you get fired and mocked by 30 million people.

Do something bad, catch the attention of Twitter, and don’t respond for several days.  This is a recipe for total and utter reputation anihiliation.

So how do you avoid this?  Well, nimble companies should not be threatened by Twitter’s awesome might.  The faster you fill the void of information, the more quickly Twitter as a whole will move on to something else.   It probably doesn’t matter what you say.  All you have to do is acknowledge it.  Say, “We see the problem. We don’t know what’s causing it.  We’re on it.  Thank you.“ And then keep people updated.  The lack of response is as important as the mistake.

Larger companies like Amazon face a bigger problem.  I suspect Amazon can’t decide what brand of toilet paper to put in the employee bathroom without sixteen committees and massive executive oversight.   The people in power in these companies tend to believe in out-dated ideas like “I shouldn’t have to work on the weekends.”

So, two things if you’re Amazon-big.  One–your reputation doesn’t turn off on the weekends. You need people monitoring it at all times thanks to the internet.  And Two– empower the people monitoring your reputation to manage it.

Sounds risky, huh?  Only Bezos should have that power!  Right?  That’s the kind of thinking that will get you into an #amazonfail scale mess.  Top-down management methodologies will not last in today’s climate.   Twitter and the internet will eat such companies alive.  If your survival depends on the decision-making of one or a few wealthy elites who can’t be bothered to check their email on Sunday, to call an emergency meeting or something, then you are, royally and truly fucked.

To summarize:  pay attention, respond quickly, and for god’s sake, set up an search feed tracking your company name.  If Comcast can respond to any tweet that mentions their name, so can Amazon.

Or, ya know, we can all start shopping at Barnes & Noble or Powell’s or some other smaller independent chain.  We don’t really care.  Twitter as a whole loves getting angry.  Outrage, kittens with bad grammar, and porn  are the fuels in the engines of the internet. And the internet makes it just as easy to order a book from Mom & Pop Reseller as it is AmazonCo.  Brand loyalty doesn’t really count for much, and in the face of controversy, it evaporates pretty damned quickly.

TAGS: amazon, amazonfail, controversy, GLBT, reputation management, social networking, twitter

POSTED: 9:26 am Tue April 14 2009 |