Mobile Blunders, Facebook Announcements and Tourism Disasters

  • PR
  • Social Media

1. A large amount of o2 users were hit by the network failure this week due to unspecified IT errors. Left with no explanation or real technical advice, it’s safe to say they were annoyed! In usual manner, they turned to twitter to share their frustration in hope to get some kind of response from the company, but also to gain attention and support from online observers. o2 showed their humanly side by responding to most tweets with an emoticon, informal language, and the odd light-hearted humour.

 

Although there wasn’t a plan to their public crises management, they took to twitter to address all queries, and in a few cases – some may say insensitively, some may say heroically. An o2 spokesperson said: “Clearly we’re not happy that we’ve disappointed our customers over the last 24 hours, but it’s good to hear that some have enjoyed our tweets.”

 

2. In an attempt to build online support from users, Blackberry sent out a tweet that said: “Fill in the blank: BlackBerry helps me ________.” Instead of their hopeful positive response, the desperate looking RIM received quite the opposite. Most of the tweets were either really negative, promoting competitors, or stating that their BlackBerry helps keeping papers from flying off their desk – just the outcome they hoped for…!

3. It has been announced that Facebook Groups will now allow you to see who has read your posts. Whenever an update is posted on a Facebook group it will now show a running count of how many views it’s had below.

 

Anyone with permission to view the post will be able to hover over the counter and see a drop down list with exactly who has seen the update. This is either going to cause arguments, expose ‘Facebook stalking’ or improve efficiency (especially for businesses). But God help the world if it’s implemented into the general News Feed!

4. A recent campaign created by VisitMaldives.com was launched this week, with the hope of driving tourism to the country. When tourism accounts for over 32% of GDP for Maldives, their ambitious plan of increasing this number was not only prevented but could be in fact be worsened.

 

Launching the #SunnySideOfLife hashtag trend this week drew attention from pro-democracy campaigners from the UK who hijacked the campaign to highlight the illegitimate government.