Twitter, in Deep Trouble, Lacks Leadership
By David on Jan 5, 2009 in Blog Strategies, Blogging, Featured, Image & Reputation, Leadership
Twitter, the popular online mini-blogging service, is in serious, deep PR trouble that has the potential of cratering the online company’s value. It is all self-inflicted, I believe, due to its own arrogance and lack of respect or understanding for transparency and openness.
I just returned home to D.C. after a series of lectures and consultations in Europe where I spoke of the value of using Twitter to, among other things, openly exchange news and information with people in countries that impose press restrictions. And, what do I find when the planes lands?!
Twitter users are being bombarded by malicious phishing messages enticing them to enter their @IDs so they can innocently be used to post more phony messages. I didn’t realize the magnitude of the problem until getting an email early today from David Meerman Scott, and reading his blog. Here’s an excerpt:
In my opinion, Twitter has not been communicating as well as it should be during this crisis. As I look at my friends feeds, nearly everyone is talking about this issue. Yet, Twitter has three feeble communications as of this writing.
1) Three tweets from the @twitter ID providing a bit of information.
2) A short post on the Twitter blog
3) A warning on the Twitter home page.
David also wrote about reading an interview with Biz Stone, head of Twitter, who turned down a $500 million offer to buy Twitter from Facebook. By a humorously cruel twist of fate, the interview appeared this past weekend, when the phishing problem began:
Stone’s interview seems a bit arrogant based on what was happening this weekend.
Many people rely on the Twitter service. Sure, it’s free and we get what we pay for. But if Biz Stone and his colleagues (and the VC firms backing the company) want a bigger payday than a half a billion, then they’ll need to manage this crisis better. Much better. Starting now.
I think Twitter should be doing more to inform users.
I’d suggest hourly updates on the Twitter blog. Maybe set up a new Twitter ID that can be the official place where people go. A YouTube video that you put on the Twitter homepage to inform people. Whatever. But you’ve got to do more than you’re doing.
The Design for Users blog has an excellent post on this subject called Communicate, Inform, Address Users When Things Go Wrong Online.
What do I believe Twitter should do to handle this crisis?
- Seek the help and counsel of Twitter’s most frequent and skilled users, who also happen to be very smart people.
- Openly and prominently warn Twitter users of the problem, and ask users to send solutions to a special email address (Twitter, the company, is currently very insular).
- List what Twitter users can do to avoid phishing.
- Publicly and opening admit the problem and list steps being taken to find a fix.
- Not hire a big PR company because, chances are, they don’t know what Twitter is and will only make matters worse … in the interest of maximizing billable hours.
- Humbly ask Facebook for help.
CathyWebSavvyPR | Jan 5, 2009 | Reply
I think that the notice on the twitter homepage is not a bad way to alert folks to the problem. However, I think there are two things that would take time and effort, but would reap better rewards, and enhance the brand: An e-mail to all users from twitter(or a direct message?) warning them about the bogus/phishing Direct Messages in their e-mail, with link to blog explanation.
As many people are getting pulled in from their e-mail alerts, before they even log onto Twitter.
The other thing might be to collect the names of those affected, and contact them, alerting them that their account has been compromised. Also, is there a way to fix how the phishing scam started; is there a security feature that could be tightened, or was this just a scam that played on human trust and gullibility (sorry to use a harsh word.) I’m just lucky that a company I worked for was hit with a Phishing scam several years ago. So I have a bit of radar that made the DM messages, sound Phishy to me; so I did not get pulled in.
Your headline seems a bit strong for the nature of the problem, but I haven’t read your interview with Twitter’s CEO yet, so I’ll reserve judgment. Have a great New Year David!
Jamie Turner | Jan 17, 2009 | Reply
Hey, David — I’m in agreement with you. I think Twitter might have a big problem on their hands. It’s also surprising that they have no revenue generating model (at least that I’ve heard of, anyway). Could they be the 21st century version of Pets.com or any of the internet bombs of the late 90s? Who knows?