Jeremiah Tolbert

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.