Last night, Seattle’s 107.7 The End’s twitter account stepped into what I’d consider unforgiveable territory, they profiled and discriminated.
But it wasn’t just that tweet. They argued back and forth with their followers about their beliefs. Here’s more of the conversation:
The station claims their account was hacked, and they do not agree with the sentiments, and have since removed the tweets. Not sure I believe that claim, but as a PR professional that runs client twitter accounts, that scares the hell out of me. Could something like this destroy a brand? What impact will it have on the radio station? What can brands do to protect themselves, or how would you react if the same happened to you?
Thoughts?
Holy cow, that’s bad.
To be fair to whoever was making those Tweets, I don’t think they were supporting profiling so much as opening the door to talking about whether it’s an option.
I’m not saying that was the correct forum to do it in at all, but they say right there several times that “profiling isn’t right”. They were looking to discuss the reality that it may start to happen regardless of the moral and ethical implications.
In any case, I always feel it’s vital that a brand’s Twitter account makes it clear exactly who is running it at all times – it’d make the clean-up on stuff like this a lot simpler.
Okay I’ve already filled my 2010 quota for political discussions – thanks for that – great post.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by JessicaRandazza: New post with pictures from last night’s @1077theend convo: Should it be the end of the end? http://bit.ly/5NzqMj...
I think it’s only buzz worthy within Seattle SM circles and will blow over by the new year. People who listen will still listen and those who didn’t won’t anyway. I think the tone of the original post and subsequent replies were not very smart.
That said, profiling isn’t inherently racist. They should not have just called out Muslims as a religion, but profiling is an effective measure to scrutinize more likely people based on data and behavioral characteristics such as country of origin, travel destination, nature of dress, the way the look at you when you ask questions, etc. By treating everyone the same for the sake of being PC, you stretch the limited resources out so much that they become ineffective. You don’t do an email campaign for maternity clothes targeting men over 50 because that’s just not a good use of your money. Same thing IMHO.
There’s PC, then there’s just common sense that can be implemented respectfully. People in Seattle tend to jump on the PC wagon too quickly w/o looking deeper into the issue…as long as we’re PC, we’re OK is not an intelligent conversation.
Wow !
Great post and interesting topics on many levels.
My big concern isn’t the opinion of the person doing the tweets or the stations opinion, its the fear things like this put in the businesses on the fence about ’social media’/ social engagement. A twitter account is an extension of the company, however it is usually just one persons ‘voice’. Remove the offender and move forward, using the same tools to recover from such a situation.
Great post.
I don’t see this as the end of theEnd. that day should have come a long time ago….but that’s a debate for a totally different day.
What bugs me, is that they are claiming this was a hack….which tells me that they are a 24/7 station and don’t keep eyes on there media accounts after the sun has set? And even if it was an attack – I didn’t hear anyone mention it on the radio? Maybe they did say something and missed it – if so please feel free to correct me.
To answer your other question, “Could something like this destroy a brand?”…of course it can. But it probably won’t. So long as theEnd sticks to this moronic “hack” story that so far no one is buying they’ll be ok. The worst thing they can do is flip and say it was intentional. If it stays in “hack” territory then it’s just another thing that happened on twitter like the Bill O’ Riley attack.
I followed the conversation on Twitter last night and participated in it to an extent. What struck me is that the tweeter, whoever it was, seemed to back off their initial blanket statement that America should accept religious profiling and tried to reframe it as merely a topic of discussion. That doesn’t smack of the way a hacker — someone with nothing to lose — would conduct a conversation, and that is why I doubt the hacker theory and believe this was a staffer of some sort who went out on a limb and tried to crawl back from the ledge. As usual, the company’s attempt at damage control only raises more questions. This won’t be the end of the The End but it may be the end of their “personalized” Twitter account and lead to a shakeup in the PR department.
Well of course profiling is wrong but we dont just have MUSLIM terriost Or just because we are arab doesnt mean we are muslim. I am an Arab yet i am not muslim and 90 percent of the time i fly i get extra screening and its very annoying ! we arnt the only ones with terroists….AMERICANS ATTACK AMERICA EVERY DAY ! OKLAHOMA CITY …. white ppl to car bomings in our own country…white ppl have shot up post offices….we have haters of all kinds white black asian latino…. EVERY ONE ! IF WE GET SEARCHED WE ALL GET SEARCHED ITS ONLY FAIR ! i mean whats to say its some one they dont expect and something happens if ppl get extra screening we all get extra screening take no chances …
While we’re talking about profiling, I want to take a second to mention that the activity last night was extremely atypical of the @1077theend account.
Taking a look at their stats at http://tweetstats.com/graphs/1077TheEnd we can see that this account barely ever tweeted after 8pm (which is when most of the conversation happened) and they very rarely reply to people or carry on a conversation. During December (http://tweetstats.com/graphs/1077TheEnd/zoom/2009/Dec ), they only directly replied to somebody once.
Based on that, it seems like their hacking claim is valid, or they have a very stupid employee. The fact that the anomalous tweets came from Tweetie is definitely a little suspicious, though, and claiming to be hacked is always an easy way out.
That said, there was a “howto” of sorts on how to hijack a Twitter account posted the day before the initial errant tweet was sent out. Twitter is not a secure channel and there are a ridiculous number of ways account credentials could be compromised. And during the holidays is a very opportune time to do so when people aren’t paying attention to their own accounts.
I wonder if this was a person who normally tweets for the station, but mistakenly thought they were tweeting from their own account.
It happened with a politician during the State of the Union Address: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/19284.html
With multiple Twitter accounts open in TweetDeck or Seesmic, I’ve made the mistake of tweeting stuff from my dog’s account (@ReeseTheDog) and even mistakenly followed people from that account instead of my own.
I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but it’s possible — and it’s definitely something to be very careful of.
Hi Mike,
I’ve tweeted and followed from the wrong account, sure. But this person actively participated in conversations, so they would have seen the @mention name. And they referenced the station and “getting their own show.” No, I think what happened here is they pushed social media off onto some intern or allowed too many hands in. They’re a 24/7 station. This should have been better monitored, and regardless of the “hack” or whatever the heck happened they’ll need to be accountable, which I don’t think they’re doing right now.
Wow, that’s crazy. I suspect it may have been hacked. Unless it’s not that far from the “norm” for that account, something so inflammatory suggests someone got hold of it and decided to broadcast beliefs to a larger audience. Scary for anyone who runs client social media profiles.
The best way to react is in the same stream that it happened. Jump in and reassure people that the proceeding messages were not sent from anyone at the station, apologize and move on. Also it’s probably wise to delete all of the offending messages. There *may* be some value in leaving a statement on the WWW site explaining the hack.
Nice post. It wasn’t hacked, though corporate passwords are SUPER lame and are easly hacked but really, who cares about the End’s Twitter account – really, are they going to wreck their brand with this? No, will get more followers, probably. Here’s another really good one: http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/413647_morford27.html – a guy writes that Tiger Woods should die (he wasn’t saying that he’s going to kill him). I’m waiting for the backlash of people who don’t really care if they offend someone for saying what they think. Enjoy NYC. They’re hard and offensive and I love it.