Inauguration 2.0

The news: The inauguration made history in more ways than one. The web allowed people to connect globally to watch this historic moment take place.

According to this post, Twitter had five times the normal Tweet traffic. The word “Obama” appeared 35,000 times an hour during his speech in different Tweets. There have been over 300,000 new videos uploaded to YouTube with the tag “Obama” over the course of the week. Closely behind that number, 17,000 new videos were uploaded with the tag “Inauguration” in the last five days. Furthermore, there are 175,000 news results filed under “Inauguration” according to Google and Technorati reports nearly 18,000 blogs mention this week’s event.

Key learning: People aren’t just watching the TV anymore. When you have a newsworthy story, consider every medium that people are communicating in – and join the conversation.

If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it over Twitter

The news: James Andrews, a PR executive from Ketchum in the States flew to Memphis to discuss social media with one of the agency’s biggest clients, FedEx. Once Andrews landed in Memphis, he posted the below message on Twitter:

“True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I hade to live here.’”

An employee of FedEx followed Andrews on Twitter (on Twitter, you have “followers” which are people who have chosen to see your updates) and saw Andrews' comment and shared it with FedEx’s corporate communications team. The below response was sent to Andrews on behalf of FedEx prior to his arrival:

“Mr. Andrews, If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith. Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write. Not knowing exactly what prompted your comments, I will admit the area around our airport is a bit of an eyesore, not without crime, prostitution, commercial decay, and a few potholes. But there is a major political, community, religious, and business effort underway, that includes FedEx, to transform that area. We’re hopeful that over time, our city will have a better “face” to present to visitors. James, everyone participating in today’s event, including those in the auditorium with you this morning, just received their first paycheck of 2009 containing a 5% pay cut … which we wholeheartedly support because it continued the tradition established by Mr. Smith of doing whatever it takes to protect jobs. Considering that we just entered the second year of a U.S. recession, and we are experiencing significant business loss due to the global economic downturn, many of my peers and I question the expense of paying Ketchum to produce the video open for today’s event; work that could have been achieved by internal, award-winning professionals with decades of experience in television production. Additionally Mr. Andrews, with all due respect, to continue the context of your post; true confession: many of my peers and I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do in Employee Communications.”

Key learning: If you are using the online space (whether on behalf of a client or representing yourself), never say anything you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Social media is public and always accessible.

Facebook De-Friends Burger King Application

The news: In the States last week, Burger King launched a free application over Facebook that encouraged users to “sacrifice” 10 of their Facebook friends in exchange for a free Whopper. The application convinced users to dump over 200,000 of their friends. This week, Facebook put pressure on Burger King to make some changes to the application that more closely aligned it with Facebook’s philosophy. Facebook did not take a liking to the messages that were being sent to the “sacrificed” friends stating that their friends dumped them for a beef patty. Burger King concluded the application rather than making any changes.

Key learning: Sometimes social media is an end in itself. Sometimes it drives a PR campaign. Burger King’s decision to drop the campaign rather than modify it suggests this was one of the latter.