Freedom of Tweetch
July 28th, 2009 by Nhat PhamPosted in Uncategorized
Ok, I know we live in a litigious society but this story takes the cake and also leaves me scratching my head. There are two lessons to be learned from this um.. Incident. First, choose your battles wisely. Going after a girl who had a whopping 20 followers on twitter hardly seems like a case that constitutes $50,000 in lost revenue. Ok, well maybe if these 20 people retweet to their followers, then their followers also retweet, then there’s mass chaos in Chicago because people are moving out of their buildings run by Horizon Realty therefore contributing to the growing homelessness problem. Not likely, but ok, it could happen. But, it’s not exactly libel if the roach motel really is well… moldy, is it?
Unfortunately, Horizon Realty didn’t predict the boomerang effect of consequences and negative PR coming their way. The link to this article already came up three times on my twitter feed alone, and not with a positive spin. Not smart Horizon Realty, not smart.
Secondly, if you’re a business, this article shows us the importance of staying on top of what’s being said out in the Twittersphere. Be conscious of who’s saying what. Constantly be searching your company’s name on Twitter as well as other social networking sites. That way it gives you an opportunity to respond to the issue. No one wants to deal with negativity but if faced with it, it should go more like this:
@Abonnen: “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks its okay.”
Horizon Realty: ” Gee… let’s check out this issue and see if our apartment building really has a mold problem. And if it does, let’s fix it”
Makes sense to me… Just sayin..
 |
|
