Samsung Turns Off ChatOn

Samsung's instant messaging app, ChatOn, will be discontinued starting February 1, 2015, and phasing out in the United States sometime after. The application has lost too much ground to What'sApp and Facebook Messenger. 

The company imitated BlackBerry Messenger in 2011 after seeing the success of the service, but it didn't last. Based on communications about the app ("Available on multiple platforms!") and the graphic, above, I'm guessing the company had an image problem. Did people think that, like BlackBerry Messenger, ChatOn worked only between Samsung phones?

Facebook's approach was clever. When people downloaded the Facebook app, they had to download Messenger, which now has more than 500 million users. 

Samsung issued this brief statement about the decision: 

"On February 1, 2015, ChatON will be discontinued in all markets except the United States, as we strive to meet evolving consumer needs by focusing on our core services. We remain committed to offering services that cater to our consumers' lifestyles and add value to their everyday lives."

If Samsung issued a news release, I can't find it. The last press release on the company's website is dated September 4. I guess nothing has happened since.

Discussion Starters: 

• What's your view of Samsung's statement? Does it sound cliché to you? 
• What app do you use for IM? Have you considered ChatOn? Why or why not?

Employees Can Use Company Email to Organize

Employees, now you can use your company's email to organize with other employees. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has reversed a decision from 2007. As long as the organizing activity is done on their own time or doesn't involve stopping their work, employees may send email to other employees in an effort to establish a union. 

The NLRB explained its turnaround: 

"By focusing too much on employers' property rights and too little on the importance of email as a means of workplace communication, the Board (in its earlier ruling) failed to adequately protect employees' rights...and abdicated its responsibility ‘to adapt the Act to the changing patterns of industrial life.'"

Although won by a narrow 3-2 margin, the ruling is considered a "great victory" for employees. Marshall B. Babson, counsel at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, questions the decision, saying, according to a Bloomberg report, that "the board's decision raises a 'very serious issue' about a 'compelled speech' violation of the First Amendment. The government should not be able to tell an employer that it has to allow use of its own systems to facilitate expression of a point of view that it does not share." 

Part of the decisions seems to hinge on employers' permitting email use for non-work communication. The board also said that email systems "are different in material respects from the types of workplace equipment the Board has considered in the past."

Image source. 

Discussion Starters: 

• What's your view of the NLRB's decision? Consider both the prevalence of email and employers' interests. 
• If you were the human resources director at a company, what, if anything, would you communicate about this ruling?

Social Media Insults

A New York Times blog post tries to make sense of insults on social media. The writer describes one situation:

"In one, Im-ani Gandy, a lawyer and legal analyst, describes the harassment she receives on Twitter this way: 'The hate-filled invective spewed by the dregs of society awaits you in your notifications. It's personal and there's no avoiding it.' In her five years on Twitter, she says, she has been called the N-word so many times that 'it barely registers as an insult anymore.'"

Apparently, few of us are safe. Forty-percent of people have experienced some type of harassment on social media. 

In a blog post, Twitter announced new ways to manage online abuse. The site is making reporting harassment easier and has implemented a blocking mechanism. The company also acknowledges there's more work to be done:

"We are nowhere near being done making changes in this area. In the coming months, you can expect to see additional user controls, further improvements to reporting and new enforcement procedures for abusive accounts. We'll continue to work hard on these changes in order to improve the experience of people who encounter abuse on Twitter." 

Sites such as Yik Yak aren't helping. With the tagline, "Share your thoughts and keep your privacy on Yik Yak," the site allows people to post anonymous comments about people around them. 

But a group of Colgate professors flooded the site with positive comments. Tired of reading insults that are dividing the campus, Geoff Holm, an associate professor of biology, said, "If we have opinions, it's important to own them." Rather than posting anonymously, professors sign their names. I must admit that some of the Yik Yak posts are quite clever. But the insulting ones are not funny at all. 

Discussion Starters:

• Do you post anonymously online? Why? How, if at all, does the anonymity affect your posts?
• What's your view of the Colgate professors' approach to Yik Yak? Will it make a difference?

Social Media Infographic

The Evolution of Social Media infographic by Digital Marketing Agency MediaVision is getting some play. As a good infographic should, this one tells a story by combining text and graphics at-a-glance. 

 

This reminds me of one of my favorite (early) infographics of all time, The Conversation Prism. Brian Solis has been updating this summary of sites and tools since 2008. Now in its four rendition, the infographic puts "You" in the middle of social media.

 Discussion Starters: 

• Which principles for creating infographics discussed in Chapter 9 do these two graphics follow? 
• Compare the first version of the Conversation Prism to the current one. What has changed? 
• What, if anything, surprises you about the Evolution infographic choices? 

Twitter's Twitter Fail

It happened to Anthony Weiner; now it happened to Twitter CFO Anthony Noto. No, not sexting, but both posted tweets they thought were sent as direct messages. 

Speculation about which company Twitter is planning to acquire abounds, but spokesperson Jim Prosser confirmed only that Noto intended to send the message privately. As a Twitter executive since only July, maybe Noto is still learning the system. He deleted the tweet.

Discussion Starters:

• Explain to a novice the difference between a tweet and a DM. 
• What else, if anything, should Twitter say about the situation? In addition to deleting the errant tweet, should Noto comment on the mistake?

Educause's Technology Research

Educause Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) has published its findings about students' use of technology. The survey instrument asked undergraduates about their experience with individual devices, school technologies, learning environments, and personal preferences. More than 75,000 students and 1,700 faculty members in 13 countries participated.

ECAR produced several resources to explain the findings:

• A 50-page report
• An infographic
• A PPT presentation

 Discussion Starters:

• Which of the three resources (report, infographic, and PPT) do you find most accessible? Easiest to understand? Most comprehensive? Best organized?
• Of the survey results, what do you find most and interesting? Most and least surprising?
• Analyze the report. Consider the audience, organization, writing style, graphics, and so on. What works well, and what could be improved?

NFL on Social Media

NFL teams have to be as tough on social media as they are on the field. Jerry Knaak, the Oakland Raiders' director of digital media says, "You're getting instant feedback, which is invaluable. But you have to have a very thick skin and have to understand that that's part of it. It's sports. People are going to vent."

When the Raiders tweeted, "An 0-8 record isn't good, but many positives have come out of the first half of the season," the team got several negative responses. But that's expected on social media.

Experienced sports media people offer sound advice for organizations tweeting on game day, particularly when games aren't going well. Kevin Griffin, the Cleveland Browns' vice president of fan experience and marketing says, "You had to be very, very conscious that you weren't trying to make it look better than it actually was. People can see right through you. There's a level of credibility that you have to maintain."

Griffin suggests what we discuss in Chapter 3 of the textbook-social media is about the conversation: "Not that we hide or run from it, but we don't want to be negative. The default is always: You don't have to do it. It's not like it's going to cripple your business. It has to be a natural conversation." 

Discussion Starters: 

• Read some of the Raiders' tweets during the game. How do you see the team engaging followers and fans?
• Now read some of the responses. How would you characterize them? How should the organization respond to negative tweets?

Republicans Use Technology for the Election

Catching up to Democrats' use of technoloy in previous elections, the G.O.P. is making inroads this time.  

In the 2012 presidential election, the Obama campaign had far more digital staffers and people analyzing voter data than did the Romney campaign. Since then, Republicans have been investing in analytics and a "Comms College" for social media interactions with the press.  

The G.O.P. is also using mobile and web technologies to reach voters. With display ads, the campaign is sending pop-up messages to users on YourTube and browsing news.

With this mobile approach, the campaign is skirting issues of privacy and invasiveness. Catherine Tucker, a professor from the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The New York Times. "If you're going to do this incredibly specific and intrusive form of advertising, the way you can make it successful is by making it feel less like advertising. You're sacrificing the pushiness. It has to feel like a conversation." 

Image source.

Discussion Starters: 

• How would you react if you saw a pop-up ad for a political candidate?
• How could you further expand on and explain Professor Tucker's advice?

Teens Continue to Dismiss Facebook

The slide continues: In a new report cited in the Washington Post, only 45% of teens between 13 and 19 years of age use Facebook. The article warns that "teen whims are as volatile as Twitter's trending hashtags," but this trend is not new. Use has been rather steadily declining long before Facebook executives admitted the phenomenon in November 2013.

Are teens reading more books? Of course not. They are flocking to newer sites, such as Twitter and Instagram, which can both now claim a higher percentage of teen usages than can Facebook.

Discussion Starters:

• Should the trend worry Facebook executives? Why or why not?
• How does the changing demographic affect companies' presence on Facebook. What would you advise a company such as Abercrombie on its social media use?

SeaWorld Twitter Fail

SeaWorld's PR team may be too optimistic. Why would they think this promotional tweet would turn out differently?

Has SeaWorld not yet understood how inextricably the company is associated with orca whale  captivity? The response tweets, such as this one, shamed SeaWord for its attempt to associate with saving whales: "@SeaWorld Those wild caught beluga calves you are trying to import - how did they get captured? Did they volunteer and jump into the nets?" (Louise ‏@MissBrightside9 Sep 15.)

Other tweets reflected similar sentiment:

Discussion Starters:

• Should SeaWorld have known better than to promote this tweet, or am I too harsh? Maybe people should move on and accept that the company is trying to turn around?
• Imagine that you're a consultant for SeaWorld. What types of tweets would you recommend they post to try to rebuild the brand?
• Sam Berg, one of SeaWorld's former trainers interviewed in the movie Blackfish, said that possibly only one of the current whales at the park would be successful in the wild. Should people stop using the hashtag #emptythetanks?

Facebook Apologizes to LGBT Community

Facebook has always had a policy preventing aliases, insisting that people use their real names as their profiles. Recently, one user reported several hundred profiles that violated this rule. As a result, Facebook suspended pages of many gay and transgender people. 

After meeting with people affected in San Francisco, Facebook officials understood that drag queens and others use aliases to protect themselves-to stay anonymous to friends, families, and employers.

Product Officer Chief Christopher Cox wrote this apology: 

"I want to apologize to the affected community of drag queens, drag kings, transgender, and extensive community of our friends, neighbors, and members of the LGBT community for the hardship that we've put you through in dealing with your Facebook accounts over the past few weeks.

"In the two weeks since the real-name policy issues surfaced, we've had the chance to hear from many of you in these communities and understand the policy more clearly as you experience it. We've also come to understand how painful this has been. We owe you a better service and a better experience using Facebook, and we're going to fix the way this policy gets handled so everyone affected here can go back to using Facebook as you were.

"The way this happened took us off guard. An individual on Facebook decided to report several hundred of these accounts as fake. These reports were among the several hundred thousand fake name reports we process every single week, 99 percent of which are bad actors doing bad things: impersonation, bullying, trolling, domestic violence, scams, hate speech, and more - so we didn't notice the pattern. The process we follow has been to ask the flagged accounts to verify they are using real names by submitting some form of ID - gym membership, library card, or piece of mail. We've had this policy for over 10 years, and until recently it's done a good job of creating a safe community without inadvertently harming groups like what happened here.

"Our policy has never been to require everyone on Facebook to use their legal name. The spirit of our policy is that everyone on Facebook uses the authentic name they use in real life. For Sister Roma, that's Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that's Lil Miss Hot Mess. Part of what's been so difficult about this conversation is that we support both of these individuals, and so many others affected by this, completely and utterly in how they use Facebook.

"We believe this is the right policy for Facebook for two reasons. First, it's part of what made Facebook special in the first place, by differentiating the service from the rest of the internet where pseudonymity, anonymity, or often random names were the social norm. Second, it's the primary mechanism we have to protect millions of people every day, all around the world, from real harm. The stories of mass impersonation, trolling, domestic abuse, and higher rates of bullying and intolerance are oftentimes the result of people hiding behind fake names, and it's both terrifying and sad. Our ability to successfully protect against them with this policy has borne out the reality that this policy, on balance, and when applied carefully, is a very powerful force for good.

"All that said, we see through this event that there's lots of room for improvement in the reporting and enforcement mechanisms, tools for understanding who's real and who's not, and the customer service for anyone who's affected. These have not worked flawlessly and we need to fix that. With this input, we're already underway building better tools for authenticating the Sister Romas of the world while not opening up Facebook to bad actors. And we're taking measures to provide much more deliberate customer service to those accounts that get flagged so that we can manage these in a less abrupt and more thoughtful way. To everyone affected by this, thank you for working through this with us and helping us to improve the safety and authenticity of the Facebook experience for everyone."

Discussion Starters: 

• What was the rationale for Facebook's real name policy? 
• Was changing the policy in this case the right decision? 
• Assess Facebook's apology. What works well in terms of the message, organization, tone, and so on, and what could be improved?

DiGiorno Apologizes for Misused Hashtag

DiGiorno's Twitter manager posted too quickly and apologized profusely. Like many Twitter users, the manager didn't check the meaning behind a hashtag and used it to promote the frozen pizza. #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft were trending about domestic violence-a topic related to the Ray Rice incident.

After a predictable onslaught of criticism, DiGiorno's rep did an admiral job of apologizing. The rep sent individual, customized emails to critics.

The response strategy is a great contrast to Progressive Insurance's approach a couple of years ago. In that situation, the company repeated tweets, inspiring the "robo-tweet" criticism.

Discussion Starters:

• Find other examples of misused hashtags. (You'll see plenty of them.) In each case, what was the failing, and how well did the company recover?
• Evaluate each DiGiorno tweet. Why were these considered successful by AdAge and others?

NLRB Ruling on "Likes"

The National Labor Relations Board has ruled on another social media case in which employees were terminated for posting about their employer in social media. In this case, the NLRB upheld the court decision that Triple Play Sports Bar and Grille wrongfully terminated two employees.

The employees had responded to this Facebook post by a former employee:

"Maybe someone should do the owners of Triple Play a favor and buy it from them. They can't even do the tax paperwork correctly!!! Now I OWE money…Wtf!!!"

One current employee "liked" the post and another commented, "I owe too.  Such an a**hole." Both were fired. 

The NLRB protects employees' rights to concerted activity, meaning they can discuss issues, such as pay and working conditions, with other employees. "Mere griping" or simply bad-mouthing an employer or customers typically is not protected.

What's significant about this case is it's the first NLRB ruling that addresses and protects simply "liking" a post.

The NLRB also ruled that Triple Play's Internet/blogging policy was too broad. Employers cannot prevent employees from making any negative comments about a company online.

Discussion Starters:

• Research other cases when the the NLRB has ruled for or against an employer when an employee has posted online. What themes emerge?
• Why do you think "concerted activity" is protected? What does that mean?

Racist Email Causes Hawks Owner to Sell

An email from Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson surfaced after a related investigation, causing him to sell his controlling stake in the team. The email is an assessment of operations written to General Manager Danny Ferry, and it includes pointed comments about the numbers of black people at games:

"Before we bought the hawks and for those couple years immediately after in an effort to make the arena look full (at the nba's urging) thousands and thousands of tickets were being giving away, predominantly in the black community, adding to the overwhelming black audience.

"My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant season ticket base. Please dont get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean back then. i never felt uncomfortable, but i think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around philips yet in our 9 years, i don't know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games.

"I have been open with our executive team about these concerns. I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while i don't care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that's our season tixs demo. i have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black. . . ."

Levenson is particularly criticized because he was so adamant that Donald Sterling should sell his stake in the team after he made racial comments, which were audio taped by his girlfriend. At the time, Levenson said, "I think I speak for all of my partners when I say we were all deeply offended. We all quickly spoke out against the words we heard on that tape."

Levenson apologized in a statement posted on the Hawks' website: 

"I trivialized our fans by making clichéd assumptions about their interests (i.e. hip hop vs. country, white vs. black cheerleaders, etc.) and by stereotyping their perceptions of one another (i.e. that white fans might be afraid of our black fans). By focusing on race, I also sent the unintentional and hurtful message that our white fans are more valuable than our black fans."

Additional statements were posted from CEO Steve Koonin and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. Read Silver's full statement.

Download Bruce Levenson's email.

Discussion Starters:

• Why would Levenson make such comments in an email? What assumptions did he make? 
• Should Levenson have sold his stake when Donald Sterling sold his, back in May?

Latest Email Stats

The Radicati Group has published its annual email statistics report. The executive summary highlights these survey findings:

• Email is still "the most pervasive form of communication in the business world." Social networking and mobile IM, particularly, are increasing, but "email remains the most ubiquitous form of business communication."
• Most email traffic is from business; consumer email is slowing.
• Business users send and receive an average of 121 emails per day, and this number is expected to increase through 2018.

Discussion Starters:

• What, if anything, about these figures surprise you?
• How can business users manage the number of emails they send and receive? What other tools are available to them?

Hotel Fines Guests for Negative Reviews

So much for embracing feedback. The Union Street Guest House in Hudson, NY, implemented a policy of fining wedding bookers $500 for negative reviews. 

The Guest House seems to miss the point about social media, and the policy itself is silly: couples are responsible for each negative review posted by their guests. Imagine a wedding gone bad, which could, theoretically, inspire hundreds of guests to post to TripAdvisor or Yelp. There goes the new house fund. 

The policy was as follows: 

"If you have booked the Inn for a wedding or other type of event anywhere in the region and given us a deposit of any kind for guests to stay at USGH there will be a $500 fine that will be deducted from your deposit for every negative review of USGH placed on any internet site by anyone in your party and/or attending your wedding or event. If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any internet site you agree to a $500. fine for each negative review."

A scan of the Guest House's Yelp reviews indicates a service issue, with an average of 2 stars out of 5.

The owners haven't handled these reviews very well, on one occasion replying, "I know you guys wanted to hang out and get drunk for 2 days and that is fine. I was really really sorry that you showed up in the summer when it was 105 degrees . . . I was so so so sorry that our ice maker and fridge were not working and not accessible."

The Guest House fares better on TripAdvisor (4 out of 5), but the reviews are still spotty.

After some backlash about the policy, the owners posted on Facebook (since removed) that the policy was a "tongue-in-cheek response to a wedding many years ago." This is almost as good as Amy's Baking Company claiming that its Facebook page was hacked and was being investigated by the FBI.  

Discussion Starters: 

• What advice would you give the owners of the Guest House about managing social media and, specifically, about responding to negative online reviews? (See Chapter 7 for tips.) 
• Practice responding to reviews on behalf of the owner. Choose two or three on Yelp and draft responses.

Fake Facebook Accounts of MH17 Victims

If the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 and the looting of victims' belongings at the crash site didn't depress you enough, here's more news. Several fake Facebook pages were set up in the names of Australian victims of the crash.

Among the accounts were three pages created in the names of children who died in the crash. When clicked, video images open external pop-up ads for gambling, sex, and counterfeit drug sites.

Although early reports said Facebook wasn't taking action and couldn't until the sites were proven illegal, the company has since taken them down. A Facebook spokesperson said, "We are disabling these profiles as soon as we are made aware of them. We encourage people to block those responsible and report suspicious behaviour to our team of experts via our reporting buttons so that we can quickly take the appropriate action."

Image source.

Discussion Starters:

• What are the potential consequences of Facebook's decision to remove these pages? Why would the company not act immediately?
• If the creators of these pages were caught, what would be appropriate action against them?

NPR Tweets DO Reflect on the Organization

A National Public Radio employee got her hand slapped after tweeting from @npr_ed (NPR's Education Team):

Anya Kamenetz apologized, saying that her tweets don't reflect on the public radio station. But NPR executives don't agree. In response, NPR Standards & Practices supervising editor sent this email to employees:

From: Mark Memmott
Sent: Tuesday, July 08, 2014 2:24 PM
To: News-All Staff
Subject: Reminder: There Is No Privacy On The Web, And ‘Personal' Pages Are Not Safe Zones

"If you wouldn't say it on the air, don't say it on the Web."

That's been the basic guidance for quite a few years.

In reality, Twitter and other social media sites allow us to show more of our personalities than we might on the air or in a blog post.

BUT, though the words may be on "personal" Twitter or Facebook accounts, what we say can reflect on NPR and raise questions about our ability to be objective.

Matt Thompson offers a test. Before posting something about your work or a news event or an issue, even if you're putting it on what you think of as a personal page, ask this question: "Is it helping my journalism, or is it hurting my journalism?"

Here's a bit more from the Ethics Handbook:

"We acknowledge that nothing on the Web is truly private. Even on purely recreational or cultural sites and even if what we're doing is personal and not identified as coming from someone at NPR, we understand that what we say and do could still reflect on NPR. So we do nothing that could undermine our credibility with the public, damage NPR's standing as an impartial source of news, or otherwise jeopardize NPR's reputation. In other words, we don't behave any differently than we would in any public setting or on an NPR broadcast."

Also, despite what many say, retweets should be viewed AS endorsements. Again, from the handbook:

"Tweet and retweet as if what you're saying or passing along is information that you would put on the air or in a ‘traditional' NPR.org news story. If it needs context, attribution, clarification or ‘knocking down,' provide it."

The email provides sound advice for people representing the organization, perhaps even when they're not representing the organization. 

Discussion Starters:

• PR Daily asks readers good questions for business communication students: "Do tweets, even from personal accounts, reflect on employers? Do retweets equal endorsements?"
• @NPR is another Twitter handle, but there are no tweets about this incident. Should the account holder have written something? If so, what?

#WorldCup Twitter Records

Forget the games, the real World Cup action is on Twitter, where 580,000 tweets traveled per minute during Germany's fifth goal against Brazil. #BRAvGER was the most popular hashtag, and #WorldCup had been consistently trending.

The game also was the most highly tweeted in sports history, with 35.6 million tweets-significantly more than the Super Bowl's 24.9 million. A heat map shows Twitter traffic around the world during the game.

Twitter activity had its consequences. Rumors about riots in Brazil had some traction, and I wonder whether all of the negative posts hurt an already depressed nation. Here's a sampling: 

• Russell Brand (@Rusty Rockets): "It's gone from might win the World Cup to maybe we should get other jobs. It's like watching an accident."
• Brick Tamland (@BrickCh4News): "Brazil, where'd you learn to play defense? At the toilet store?"
• Rob Burnett (@RobBurnett): "Yeah but they're *really* good at singing their anthem."

I tried to encourage more positive tweets and did get a response from the Ministry of Tourism.

Discussion Starters:

• What, if anything, is the significance of this news? How do numbers of tweets compare to, say, TV viewers? 
• What is @VisitBrasil saying in its response tweet? What's your view of how the organization handled the #BeautifulBrazil tweet?

Google Intercepted a Goldman Email

A Goldman Sachs contractor accidentally sent a confidential email to a Gmail address instead of the "GS.com" domain. Unlike most of us who have mistyped an address (and who hasn't), the contractor, client, and company will suffer no humiliation.

Goldman asked Google to intercept the email. The appeal to Google was simply that it's an easy action for Google to take compared to the potential damage of the client's data being revealed. (I'm nosy: Who's the client, and just how much are we talking about?)

Google complied with the court order, and it's a happy ending, sort-of. Critics say Goldman's legal machine made this happen, and some wonder whether we could see a legal precedent, but this is unlikely because Google didn't fight the request, so there's no court decision to ponder.

Goldman Sachs v. Google

Discussion Starters:

• Did Google do the right thing? What are the potential pros and cons of the company's decision to comply with Goldman's request?
• What are the potential implications of this situation?