The Ethics of Terms of Service in Social Media

In October 2012, Facebook made a change to its news feed algorithm that appeared to dramatically reduce the number of posts a user would see from pages they had liked. At the same time, Facebook launched a new, for-pay, feature called "promoted posts."

Richard Metzger penned a widely read blog post on Dangerous Minds challenging the ethics of the change, which he argued in essence took a feature (post reach) that he and other pages had previously enjoyed as free...and turned it into a for-pay feature.

Twitter user Leonard Barshack who had gone by the Twitter handle @sunvalley for several years, sued the company when it suddenly seized the handle and gave it to the Sun Valley corporation. Twitter cited its terms of service as prohibiting anyone from "impersonating" a person or company. Barshack adamantly insisted he was never impersonating anyone, but Twitter's TOS allowed them to take back the handle without warning.

Instagram set off an even bigger firestorm in December 2012 after announcing a change to its TOS that suggested the company might claim ownership of images published to the social platform. After a social media furor, and the cancellation of accounts by some major users including National Geographic Magazine, the company withdrew the changes and reverted to its previous TOS.

Incidents like these have led to discussions about the need for a People's Terms of Service - something akin to a 'negotiated contract' between user and provider, a more equitable balance of terms between sharing and protecting data, consistent with the long history of contract law between parties. Has social media reached the stage where it is time for a negotiated exchange, a People's TOS?

For more on these examples, see Santa Clara University's excellent article: Clicking Through to the Ethics of Social Media Terms of Service

When Media Fail to Follow Legacy Ethics in Social Platforms

The media coverage and social media frenzy surrounding the Boston Marathon bombings of 2012 offer a poignant case study of the harm that can be done when an organization doesn't apply its traditional standards of ethics to the new social media platforms.

As this article in Ethicaljournalismnetwork.org painfully details, such failures can not only harm reputations but can also, ultimately, be deadly. Full story: http://ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/en/2013/how-tragedy-strikes-when-journalism-and-social-media-lack-ethics-and-humanity

Sadly, this not the only example. As details of the mass shooting of small schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 12, 2012 unfolded, initial media reports named the wrong person as the shooter. The speed of social media, and Twitter in particular, accelerated the spread of this falsehood.

In the ensuing debate over media ethics, an NPR journalist was soundly criticized for the practice of tweeting raw, unconfirmed information as a method for quickly 'crowdsourcing' what was true. Andy Carvin then used STORIFY to pen an extended defense of his re-tweeting and crowdsourcing approach, even though it involved 'publishing' significant information in social media that ultimately turned out to be false.

Social Media Ethics & Policy - Cisco

Here's Cisco's presentation of its views on its philosophy of employee use of social media, as well as a statement and an explanation of its social media policy.

Social Media: Ethics and Governance from Petra Neiger

Guest Lecturer tonight 11/12 (Prof M sick)

Hello DTC #338 students,

I'm very sorry that I'm not feeling well and will miss you all tonight. Dr. Grigar assures me you will be in good hands and will have another member of the excellent DTC faculty as your instructor tonight for our planned discussion of Social Privacy and Social Media Information Security.

I know you'll provide the same high level of engagement and participation that I enjoy with you each week.

Please turn in your peer review forms tonight, I'll have them left for me.

And note that next week's assignment, our final Exercise #6 on Social Media Ethics, is already posted to the class website.

Due to my absence tonight, I will be emailing out grades for the excellent Team Marketing Projects, and will return Ex 4/5 to you in class next week.

Final reminder that your Brand of You Project is ongoing, with your full Marketing Plan due tonight via email by 6p, and then after the Thanksgiving Break, you will submit your report and do a 5-minute presentation to the class at our final meeting on Tues Dec 3.

Regards,
Prof. M

Security and Privacy in Social Media

As the social persona of brands and individuals becomes increasingly important, protecting that persona also becomes more crucial.

Social tools, and by association our social personas, are 'protected' by passwords in the programs we use to update and manage our social profiles. 

However, most people already feel inundated by the demands of a digitally-driven, password-protected world. Annual surveys of the '10 Worst Passwords' continue to find that both individuals as well as major brands routinely use overly simply passwords, or use the SAME password for many different accounts, or allow many different users access via a single password to an account that can significantly affect the brand. A recent survey, for example, found that many people use the word "PASSWORD" for their password!

How secure is your own social persona, or that of the brand you manage? 

Burger King found out the hard way how important it is to secure access to social accounts when its primary Twitter account @burgerking was hacked, and changed to...McDonalds!

As Gizmodo put it, if you are a burger company, you don't want to have "cheese" as your password.

Gizmodo: Burger King Twitter Hacked into McDonald's

Personal Branding Mistakes to Avoid

A KitchenAid employee with access to the company's public branded Twitter account took to social media to tweet about the death of Pres. Obama's grandmother, just days before his inauguration. The tweet, intended for the individual's personal account, was instead sent out as a Tweet from KitchenAid. 

The incident highlighted the hazards of today's social tech tools, which make it "easy" to manage personal and public persona posts within the same tool. 

ABC News: KitchenAid's Obama Tweet Shows Dangers of Multiple Twitter Accounts

These mistakes can have huge consequences for the individuals as well as the companies whose brand is damaged. At a Salt Lake City TV station, an employee who had access to the station's Twitter account sent out this tweet on the company account by mistake.

As a result of the mistake, which caused the TV station great embarrassment, the unnamed employee who authored the tweet was fired. 

The Myth of Privacy in a Social, Digital World

In our digital and wired world, we can no longer assume that our private actions will remain private. The long-assumed distinction between public and private life is under digital assault. It's not hard to argue that the notion of privacy as we've previously understood it is dead.

 Certainly in the area of Social Media, anything that is 'said' in any digital platform, whether intended to be private or not, can easily become public.

On crime stories, News outlets routinely are able to access the personal Facebook page of the suspect, and broadcast photos and details from those pages in the news media.

Then-Congressman Anthony Weiner famously tweeted a sexually suggestive picture to a 21-year-old Seattle woman. The picture was presumably intended to be sent as a private, Direct Message but instead went out on the Congressman's public account. The tweet was quickly deleted. But in this era, our digital actions leave digital footprints. A screengrab was made of the tweet before it was deleted, and was shared with a media blogger and quickly went viral.


In the early hours of this revelation, Weiner denied sending the photo, and suggested in interviews that his account must have been hacked by a political opponent. Eventually, he confessed to sending not only that photo but other similar messages to other women during the time he was married. The incident to Weiner's resignation from Congress.

Rachel Berry was crowned Miss Oregon 2012. But she relinquished her crown after a series of posts in by blogger Jack Bogdanski in bojack.org called into question her eligibility.



Berry would have represented Oregon at the Miss America pageant. But Bogdanski's reporting questioned whether she met the pageant's residency requirement that contestants live in Oregon for 6 months prior to competing in a qualifying contest.

Berry initially denied claims that she was ineligible, and quickly deactivated her Facebook and Twitter accounts when questions began to be raised. However, Bogdanski pointed to Tweets from "Sunny California" in December of 2011, and YouTube video clips showing her working at a California TV station in late 2011 to prove she had failed to meet the residency requirement.

It seems the category of beauty pageant is especially fraught with peril. There have been a number of cases of queens deposed after photos or videos surfaced from social media showing these 'representatives'  engaged in not-so-appropriate conduct. The latest was the resignation of the 2012 Miss Delaware Teen USA, after a pornographic video surfaced.

Gawker: Miss Delaware Teen USA resigns after porn video surfaces

All the above situations involve individuals who, through their own choices, have made their private lives and their private choices 'newsworthy' by entering into the public arena. So they are not entitled to the same expectation of privacy.

But all these lessons apply even to those of us not in the 'public eye.' The public/private distinction is increasingly  indistinct. Here's a typical example of an individual assuming a difference between their private and public life, making a critical comment about their boss on Facebook. And note, the punch line:

Many of our actions leave a digital footprint. Even actions we may think are private can easily become public in an age where we check in, photograph, and tag even our private activities.

Peer Review Form: Please complete and bring to class on 11/12

Since we used the full class time for project presentations last night, I've put the peer review form online here as a PDF (it's also available as a link under CLASS RESOURCES).

Please download and complete the form for each of your team members and I will collect these forms from everyone next Tuesday 11/12 in class, thanks!

Prof M

Melissa Barker: Personal Branding with LinkedIn

Here is a Slideshare copy of Melissa Barker's presentation on Personal Branding using LinkedIn:

LinkedIn Training: Branding yourself on LinkedIn presented by Melissa Barker from Lisa Peyton

Avoid these Deadly Presentation Mistakes

Improving your presentation skills is a great way to increase your effectiveness as a communicator.
We all have endured the opposite - bad presentations.

Here's comedian Don McMillan's take on PowerPoint Mistakes to Avoid.

Here's a creative use of "white-boarding" as a method of presenting the differences between traditional, boring presentations...and ways to make the presentation into a STORY.

 


When it comes comes to presenting Digital technology, there has arguably never been anyone better than Apple's Steve Jobs.

As this video makes clear, it is no accident that Jobs was a master of presentations. In fact, he followed a set of key principles, principles you can apply to make your own presentations more effective.

Tips for Effective Presentations

Here are some of the keys to making an effective presentation:

• Keep it simple: One idea per slide 
• Pick a presentation method that matches your message 
• Verbalize your outline so your audience can follow 
• Share a story, make an emotional connection
• Use props, do a demonstration, mix it up! 
• Know the 'one thing' you want to leave your audience with 
• Dress professionally! 
• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

This Twitter account shames big brands for bad tweets

"Engagement" tweets about Diarrhea? Inspirational posts from a soap brand?

And who can forget the array of poorly-considered "thematic tie-ins" on the anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks?

Well, now there's a twitter account devoted solely to outing the brands that commit shameful acts in social media. 

Your Tweets Are Bad, aka @urtweetsrbad: https://twitter.com/urtweetsrbad

Don't try this at home - or work!

http://www.fastcompany.com/3020851/fast-feed/this-twitter-account-shames-brands-for-lazy-awkward-and-awful-tweets

How Facebook's news feed algorithm works

Ever wondered how many of your friends see a typical Facebook post? Or how Facebook decides what content is displayed in your news feed? Or the relative reach of a personal page compared to a business / Fan page?

Here's a great webinar from the folks at SocialNewsDesk.com on the 'secret sauce' behind Facebook's news feed selection algorithm, formerly known as EdgeRank.

Worst Social Media Brand Meltdown - Ever?

The authors of GROUNDSWELL argue that in a world of easy social sharing, the customer defines what a company's brand stands for, not the company.

Put another way, today the conversation about your brand is already going on in social media, with or without a company's permission or participation. Far from being in control of that conversation, most companies simply must decide whether or not to participate.

So in the real world of Reddit and Yelp, here is a vivid example of how to do everything wrong in managing criticism of your brand.

In May 2013, a couple who owns an Arizona restaurant goes deeper and deeper, in a highly public social media name-calling contest.

Buzzfeed: This is the Most Epic Brand Meltdown on Facebook Ever 

And here, from ZDNET, a month later: 10 Social Media Lessons from Amy's Baking Company social media meltdown

Jenna Marbles, YouTube Social Star

Jenna Mourey - better known by her YouTube name "Jenna Marbles" - is the most popular female vlogger on YouTube. As of March 31, 2013 she had more than 11 million subscribers to her YouTube Channel and had just surpassed 1 billion videos viewed.

Who is Jenna Marbles, and how did she rise to become the most popular female blogger on YouTube?



Marbles posts a new video blog every Wednesday. She records them in her bedroom, direct to the camera. The 2-4 minute vlogs tackle the everyday issues of someone her age: boys, makeup, dating, jobs, texting and social media. In the videos, she displays a quirky-sexy-honest personality that has charmed her followers.
Here is one of the early videos that launched her YouTube persona: "How to trick people into thinking you're good-looking."


And then there are her two dogs, Kermit and Marbles Every video ends with a cameo from her little four-legged companions, and a call to subscribe to her video channel, or not!


What is the explanation for Jenna Marbles' extraordinary popularity? How did a girl with a Masters Degree from Boston University in Sports Psychology and Counseling become the #1 female blogger on YouTube.

In this interview with "What's Trending," she touches on some of the keys to her success: Her quirky-sexy personality is a big part. But her authenticity connects, especially with young teenage girls. Filming in her own bedroom, straight to the camera creates an intensely personal, honest feeling to her videos. Her everyday topics and blunt candor help as well. And Marbles herself notes one of the most important keys to her success: "You have to start. Just jump, just do it and don't turn back." She has made a new video every Wednesday since she started, and that regularity has given her fans something to follow and look forward to.

More than anything, the success of Jenna Marbles on YouTube shows the power of being yourself.

Class field trip to KGW

Intro to Personal Branding

Companies large and small have begun to make significant investments in social media as a means of marketing their products and services.

But social tools can be used equally well to market the Brand of You. Creating, managing and maintaining a Social Persona is essential in our increasingly wired world, where recruitment and hiring happens online as often as in real life, and where your choices - good and bad - leave digital footprints.

Public figures like Alyssa Milano (Twitter) and George Takei (Facebook) have used social media to leverage their brand far beyond the influence they had in their original medium. In the world of politics, President Obama is credited with his use of Social Media for his fundraising and campaigning success. The same is true of athletes, entertainers, and experts who have used social media to enhance their "brand."

Here are several great articles to introduce the concept of creating and maintaining a Personal Brand. We will read a number of blog posts by Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success (Kaplan, April 09), and publisher of the Personal Branding Blog, and is on Twitter via @DanSchawbel.


CLASS READINGS FOR 4/2:

Students - How to kick-start your personal brand online (Mashable)

Personal Branding 101: How to discover and create your brand (Dan Schawbel - Mashable)

7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media (Mashable blog)

Personal Branding 102: How to communicate and maintain your brand (Dan Schawbel - Mashable)

Clay Shirky TED Talk on Power of Social Media

Please watch before Field Trip to KGW: Live @ 7 sample episode

Please watch this sample episode of "Live @ 7" before our KGW Field Trip.
 

Class Field Trip to KGW on Tuesday October 22

On Tuesday, Oct. 22, our DTC 338 class will be a field trip to KGW-TV studios to watch a live broadcast of the 7 pm program LIVE @ 7.

Class will meet KGW at 6:30 p.m. sharp. The studios are located at 1501 SW Jefferson St., Portland, OR 97201. Car-pooling is encouraged and time will be set aside in class on 10/22 to coordinate carpools. Plan on being at KGW until 8:00 p.m. Free "visitor" parking is available at the main entrance off Jefferson St.

During the visit, students will have the opportunity to meet and ask questions of our show anchors, producer and director and see how social media is handled at a network affiliate TV station.
Please prepare at least 1 anchor question in advance of class. Here is a map to the studio.


View Larger Map

Red Bull: Creating social, sharable content

Go big, or go home.

A survey of the top brands in the category of social video found that the bold are rewarded.

Red Bull tops for Social Video in 2012

In 2012 no one was more bold than Red Bull, sponsor of Felix Baumgartner's supersonic freefall from 128,000 feet up in space.

As of October 2013, the video had tallied more than 35 million views on YouTube.



You know you've scored a social hit when you get user comments like: "An energy drink has a better space program than your country."

Social ROI: Know Your KPI's!

Source: http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/measuring-social-roi_b30794

Using FB & Twitter to market non-profits

Here are some excellent resources for using Facebook and Twitter, especially for non-profit marketing.

Facebook provides an excellent step by step guide on how to set up and 'operate' a Facebook 'business' page, which can be for a non-profit or a cause or even an event:

Creating a Facebook PAGE for your Business or Cause


There are numerous articles on how to use Twitter for non-profit causes.

Here's a Mashable article that reviews 25 of the top non-profits and their use of Twitter. Lots of examples of best practices from these large non-profits that can be 'scaled' to the local level for smaller organizations.

And here's an article with 11 tips for non-profits for how to optimize their use of Twitter. Among the key tips:

• Completely fill out your 'profile' to optimize search, and increase follow-backs
• Create and tweet content and links that will make "following" you worthwhile to your target audience (make it relevant, make it timely, make it interesting).
• Include click-through links
• Don't just promote your own links, retweet and share links from other org's
• Follow back everyone who follows you (then organize your followers with lists)
• Respond to people who engage with you
• Be conversational!

Social Media #fail of the week

Siouxsie's presentation has been emailed to students

Wednesday evening I emailed a personal-use only copy of the slides from Siouxsie Jennett's class presentation. Please let me know if you did not receive it!

As we discussed in class, her slides contain great information to use as a guide for your projects, but they also contain proprietary Mambo Media competitive information.

Please do not share or publish this content, which is for personal student use only. Thanks!

Prof M.

Storify: Siouxsie Jennett social media presentation

Marketing Project Clients

1. Vancouver Business Journal 

John McDonagh, Publisher

Social Project Team Contact:

Nathan Kulmac

360.448.6019 

nkulmac@vbjusa.com

2. Dream Big

www.dreambigcc.org/‎

500 W 8th St #260  Vancouver, WA 98660

Nathan Webster 360-904-5539

nathan.webster@dreambigcc.org  

3. Public Affairs Lecture Series

(Author, journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning Nicholas Kristof  will speak at 7 p.m. Nov. 4 about sex trafficking based the book he co-authored “Half the Sky")

Contact:

Michelle McIlvoy, M.Ed.

Manager, Office of Student Involvement, WSU-V

mmcilvoy@vancouver.wsu.edu, 360.546.9530

4. Clark County Food Bank

Alan Hamilton

Executive Director

 360-693-0939

alan.hamilton@clarkcountyfoodbank.org

5. NW Public Power Assoc. 

Scott Lindsay

http://www.nwppa.org/

SML@nwppa.org

360-254-0109

BACK UP PROJECTS

NW Assn for Blind Athletes

Bill Henry

Bhenry@nawaba.org

360-448-7254

SHARE (hungry/homeless)

Jessica Lightheart 360-448-2121

commreldir@sharevamcouver.org

WSU Diversity Month

Bila majekobaje 360-546-9568

Majekoba@vancouver.wsu.edu

10/23 & 10/30 perspectives on disability Dana baker phd

360-546-9125

Bakerdl@vamcouver.wsu.edu

Storifying the Social Response to Govt. Shutdown

Project Syllabus, Teams Updated

I have updated the Marketing Project Syllabus to adjust the extended deadline for the final project report and presentation, and the self-reflection paper due date.

I've also edited the Project Teams list to correct KYLE's name :)

Prof M

Power of Social 'Listening'

Here is an IGNITE presentation I gave at the 2013 Portland Digital Marketing Conference (PDX DMC).

IGNITE is a specific format where each speaker has 5 minutes, and 20 slides, which automatically advance every 15 seconds.

Teens break in to NFL player's house, post party pics

On Labor Day weekend of this year, that scenario played out again. A former lineman in the NFL was away for the weekend and kids broke into his house and about 300 of them had a huge party with all kinds of drugs and alcohol, and did $20,000-$40,000 in damage.

But they also posted liberally on social media, including countless photos of themselves partying at his house.

Brian Holloway, the ex-NFL lineman, was alerted to the social media posts by his son. He made a website HelpMeSave300.com where he republished their (public) media. He hoped to shame them and their into helping repair the extensive damage. Instead, guess what happened? He says a number of their parents have threatened to sue him.

The player retorted that after his years in the NFL lining up against the likes of Lawrence Taylor, he won't be intimidated. TheGothamist picked up the story which has now gone viral nationally. For his part, Holloway is holding a BYO BBQ party in honor of Vets at his house, and is still hoping some of the kids will step forward to help out with the repairs.

It's not the first highly public attempt to use social media to shame wrong-doers. The New York Times reported on the case of the Stolen Sidekick to illustrate how social media can be used by individuals to empower themselves in situations where traditional, large organizational sotluions did not help.

The friend of the woman whose sidekick was stolen effectively used social media to identify and, in a very public way, shame the thief. Ultimately, the thief was arrested and the phone returned.

Brian Holloway just hopes he gets his house fixed.

Super Bowl of Social Media

Coke - "Chase"  (You choose the winner at www.cokechase.com) and website #fail



OREO - "Whisper" (Join the Fight on Instagram) - and Breaking Down Oreo's Four Million Dollar Instagram Super Bowl (SocialFresh)



GoPro Hero - Homemade Video



Doritos - Fashionista Daddy - Crash the Super Bowl fan-made winner 2013 and Ranking Crash the Super Bowl 2013 Finalists / Bleacherreport.com

Social Case Study: Will It Blend?

How do you compete with massive, established kitchen appliance manufacturers when you are a 'little guy'?

willitblend.com unleashed the power of social sharing by creating innovative and compelling content that was highly "sharable" while, at the same time, vividly depicting their product's advantages.

The video that put the company on the map was a short clip of its product being used to "blenderize" an iPhone.



The company's YouTube Channel has tallied more than 217 million video views for its series of "Will it Blend?" challenges.

Willitblend also incorporated LISTENING into its social strategy. Visitors to the site suggest things they'd like to be subjected to the "Will It Blend" test.

Of course, the content is entertaining. But it also demonstrates the key feature of the product - it is a powerful blender. So the humorous videos lead consumers back to the willitblend.com website where visitors can be converted into costumers who willingly pay $399 for this super-charged blender.

Social Success Case Study: Old Spice

Arguably the most creative and effective social marketing campaign is the Old Spice campaign executed by Portland's own creative agency Wieden + Kennedy.

Among the amazing results achieved by the campaign:

• More people watched its response videos in the first 24 hours than watched Obama's victory speech
• 40 million video views in one week
• 1.4 billion total impressions
• Massive "free media" coverage including network news outlets, Oprah and Ellen
• Significant boost in sales of the Old Spice Bodywash product, and Old Spice #1 in male bodywash market

Here's the ad that launched it all: "Old Spice: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like." (2010)




Here's a nice case study deconstructing why the campaign was so successful:

Social Media case study: Old Spice from josephine lipp

And here is W + K's own "case study" story of the making of the Old Spice campaign, and why it was so successful.



@Mashable compiled its own "Top 10" list of the best 'response videos' churned out by Mustafa and the W + K creative team over that long but memorable weekend.

Mashable's Top 10 Old Spice Response Videos


Here's just one example of the "response videos" - made in response to a tweet by celeb / Twitter pro Alyssa Milano:



And Milano creates her own YouTube response video:

Social #Fail: OKCupid 'thematic tie-in' to Colorado Floods

There's a difference between being topical, and being inappropriate.

Here's a post pushed to OK Cupid subscribers in Colorado during the flooding that killed more than a dozen and still has hundreds unaccounted for.

Social Media Gaffes on the Anniversary of 9/11

There's a saying that a little bit of information can be dangerous. Somewhere between knowing you don't know...and knowing you do know...is that dangerous middle ground where we think we know more than we do.

This advice applies to Social Media. Everyone from individuals to large, global brands realize the need to be "in" social media, and "do" social media. Doing social media well, however, takes time. 

Here's a vivid example from last week. September 11, 2013 as the anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center towers in NY.

The anniversary also provided ample examples of misused Social Media tie-ins. This Wisconsin golf course drew ire for its 9/11 tie-in.

A surprising number of large sports brands posted questionably appropriate social media "tie-ins" to the anniversary.

Here's a tweet from the Los Angeles Lakers, using the remembrance hashtag #neverforget. But fans didn't agree the post was in good taste, and the Lakers deleted the tweet and then publicly apologized.

Other large sports brands made similar gaffes, prompting Sports commentator Keith Oberman of ESPN to pose the question: "Too soon?" - and answer, "yes!"

Social Media Humor

Affordances of Social Platforms

Don't Mess with Social Musicians: 'United Breaks Guitars'

Traditionally powerful companies can easily underestimate the potential consequences to their own businesses from the power shift enabled by today's Social Technologies.

One of the most vivid examples is the story of Dave Carroll, a pop-folk musician toiling without any particular reknown until a now-infamous incident while traveling on United Airlines on march 31, 2008.

While transferring flights in Chicago during a journey from Halifax, Canada to Omaha, Nebraska Carroll heard a woman behind him yell that baggage handlers were 'throwing guitars'. The band members watched horrified as they recognized their instruments being tossed about by the airline's bag handlers. Among the instruments was Carroll's $3,500 Taylor guitar. When he finally got his guitar back, its base was smashed.

What followed was a run-around from the arline that countless individual customers have experienced at the hands of large corporations. The difference was Social Media.

When Carroll finally despaired of getting a positive response from the airline, he decided to make three songs instead, and post them to YouTube.

That first video cost him $150 to make. It was posted on July 6, 2009 and the results were immediate.

Within 24 hours had over 50,000 views. After repeated refusals by United to pay for the guitar repairs, suddenly the airline called offering to pay the $1,200 in repairs and give Carroll more than $1000 in flight vouchers.

In less than a month, the video had received more than 4 million views on YouTube and more than 19,000 comments had been posted to the video.

The incident was a public relations disaster for United, and the song title "United Breaks Guitars" hung like an albatross around the company's PR neck for years to come. By the start of 2013, the video had been played more than 12 million times.

Jet Blue: Being Human in Social as a Business

Companies can damage themselves by behaving inhumanely toward their customers. They can also use social media to behave 'socially,' and turn potential PR disasters into opportunities to create better relations with their customers.

The airline JetBlue faced just such a potential PR disaster after an incident on February 14, 2007 caused about 1,000 flight cancellations within a five-day period, stranding many customers on the Valentine's holiday travel.  Case study: Jet Blue

In a bold move, the company's CEO created a very personal apology message and posted it on YouTube in which he took responsibility for the incident, and also pledged a retroactive "Customer Bill of Rights."



The CEO's approach drew praise from The Church of the Customer Blog and was well-received by customers. Jet Blue turned what could have been a PR disaster into an opportunity to connect honestly with its customers. 

Storify: Curating the 'Social Buzz', Social Narratives

STORIFY is a social curation tool that enables the user to aggregate and curate content posted across a wide variety of social media - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc. -- and then weave that already-published content from diverse social platforms into a new story.

The user adds value through their curation of existing social content, by selecting the best from each of the other social platforms, and then by using the sequencing/ordering features of Storify to create a new 'narrative' that tells a story of its own.

College student's story of bus driver harassment is one of the most-read Storify examples ever, and illustrates how it can be used.



KGW News uses Storify frequently to curate the 'Social Buzz' around the news, and to aggregate reporting on major national news and sports events.

Most recently, we curated the reaction to the selection of Ben Affleck as the new 'Batman.'

Best Social Media Response - Miley Cyrus VMAs?

#DreamDay social media #fail

On the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights march on Washington, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stirring "I have a dream..." speech, people gathered in social spaces using the hashtag #DreamDay to honor the anniversary and update the message.

Public figures and private citizens alike tweeted their own endings to:  "I have a dream that..."

I have a dream that young girls everywhere will know their worth and importance. #DreamDay http://t.co/G6DiVlqpkr
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) August 28, 2013

I have a dream that… http://t.co/MmFTXFxIxd #DreamDay
— Steve Harvey (@IAmSteveHarvey) August 28, 2013

The hashtag facilitated a virtual community rallying around a message and a shared vision.

And then there was this tweet by the Golf Channel, a classic social media #fail by taking something noble and selfishly co-opting it:

nope. RT @GolfChannel Tweet your ‘golf’ dream on the 50th anniversary of MLK’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech using: #DreamDay: I have a dream that
— Megan Lubin (@msarahl) August 28, 2013

Affordances of Social Platforms

Twitter buzz for Miley Cyrus VMA performance tops Super Bowl

Miley Cyrus' performance at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday created massive buzz in social media, and at one point generated more Twitter traffic than seen during the most recent Super Bowl.

Here's the Wall Street Journal story on her performance and the buzz it generated.

How much buzz? 306,100 tweets per minute during her performance, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Did Cyrus help or hurt her image? It depends who you ask. Cyrus herself seemed pleased with the furor, based on her own tweets afterwards.

Smilers! My VMA performance had 306.000 tweets per minute. That's more than the blackout or Superbowl! #fact.
— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) August 26, 2013

Miley Cyrus on Twitter.

Social Tools - What We Use

TUMBLR: Social Microblogging

Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform that enables easy combining of text, images and video; it also makes it easy for multiple users to contribute content to a topic or thread, where the content 'tumbles'...

One of many Ryan Gosling 'Hey Girl' TUMBLR threads, this one for runners:
http://heyrunnergirl.tumblr.com/



Another example of a TUMBLR blog: Awesome people hanging out together




And one more, I Love Charts, a TUMBLR blog devoted to all kinds of charts:



And here's an example of how a storyteller can combine content types (text, images, video) in a TUMBLR blog. This is my TUMBL blog of the KGW -TV Hood to Coast Relay team, posted in real time as we ran from Mt. Hood to the Oregon Coast: