Wide Horizons in Social Media
von Mark Howells-Mead
I wrote an article about a month ago on the subject of online communication and how people tend to forget the reach and visibility of messages posted to such services as Twitter and Facebook. Unlike a home computer, where unwanted or irrelevant messages can be deleted at will, messages sent in haste are quickly dispersed and copied by a hundred, a thousand, a million databases. They’re automatically emailed on to friends and strangers; a momentary lapse in concentration can send a private message into the waiting inboxes of a thousand recipients. Worse still, a message passed to a friend in the open can be read by the world and picked up by pretty much anyone with internet access.
So much is evident in the case which has hit the headlines over the past few days of Twitter user Amanda Bonnen, who posted a sarcastic remark to a contact via her account and is now finding herself being sued for posting the “false and defamatory” message by the letting agent Horizon Management Group. This kind of legal action brings into sharp relief the danger of bad-mouthing companies in public, where the laws of slander and libel are just as much applicable to 140-character messages as to longer articles. Many modern technology-aware companies are adapting to the modern world and huge popularity of Twitter, using pretty simple, instant and free technological solutions to keep an eye on what people are saying about them online.
I myself was contacted last year by a well-known and troubled communications company here in Switzerland, within days of publishing a blog post in which I wrote of a negative issue with their customer service department. Although my particular issue remained unsolved due to a mass of complicated reasons, the fact that I was contacted directly left me with a much better impression of the company. Where I had only heard and experienced bad things, the actions of staff in taking a pro-active role to try and answer my questions showed me that even the most afflicted companies are learning to use social networks to their benefit. By actively monitoring online discussion, stepping in and joining conversation, a negative feeling can easily and quickly turn into a positive result.
The case at hand, between Horizon and the dissatisfied resident who had assumed anonymity due to the low number of people actively subscribing to her account, shows another side to the immediacy of the internet. Where my experience was a positive one, this case has shown that the opposite may be true. Frustration let out on the spur of the moment can have a much wider effect than a regular internet user can imagine.
The ease with which one can share information these days isn’t just a bonus of high-speed connections and instant visibility: it can be a danger too. With an audience comes responsibility. Use it wisely and carefully, and remember that more people may be listening to you than you’d imagined.
Geschrieben von Mark Howells-Mead am 3. August 2009 um 14:48 | Permalink
Tags (Schlagworte): america, communication, customer service, english, horizon event management, legal, online communication, Twitter
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