Alternative title: Are Facebook and LinkedIn the largest Twitter aggregators?

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all provide streams of content – the content can either be created on the service or the content can be posted automatically from outside sources – typically either RSS feeds or from one of these services to another. Both Facebook and LinkedIn have content outside of the stream while Twitter is completely based on the content stream.

What I’ve noticed more and more over the past few months is that the stream on both Facebook and LinkedIn is dominated by Twitter updates. And since I follow basically the same set of people on all 3 services, I see the same update over and over again. I understand that everyone is different but I have to assume that for many people, their overlap is somewhat similar.

This overlap of content creates several issues – I’ve discussed a few of them in years past when FriendFeed was still an active service.

The biggest issue I see with the mass sending of content updates to every possible social network is: where to comment to get a reaction from the status creator. As a basic example, if you look below, Anil Dash has posted an update on Twitter which was sucked into Facebook. Three people have commented on Anil’s content. Will Anil respond to these comments? Does he even know that these comments have been posted? And do the people commenting understand that Anil may not even know that these comments exist? While it might not be important for a typical status update, if I ask a question seeking help, then it is important that I see the replies.

There is always talk that some updates belong on Twitter, some on Facebook and some on LI. But the truth is that it seems like people just want to pass along their content to whatever service will take it (most of you know my view is that 99% of updates are not needed). I am hoping that in 2012 both Facebook and LinkedIn will offer the option to turn off third-party aggregation. Such an option would instantly clean up my streams on all three services. The downside from the company perspective is that they would lose the updates that are so important for monetization.

One note, I didn’t include Google+ in this post because they don’t currently support external aggregation. Once they do (and that will be soon I am sure), then my stream on Google+ will follow suit with Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here’s part of my Facebook stream — the highlighted pink sections are the Twitter updates (click the image to view the full stream):

And here is part of my LinkedIn stream:

Find more stories about: Facebook, LinkedIn, social media, Social Networking, Twitter

The big news in the social media expert camp from last week was the notification that all links that are posted on Twitter, both on the website and using a third-party app, will now automatically be converted to use Twitter’s official t.co URL shortener. You can read the Twitter help post and the developer guide to learn more about t.co and how it works. Part of the conversation around the t.co rollout reminds me of some of the discussion when Digg launched the Diggbar.

Short tl:dr version: Just because a t.co url appears in your referral log, it does not mean that all the traffic to that url has come from Twitter.

Sean at the analytics service Clicky posted about how the change to use t.co will make it appear that Twitter has zero influence because the referral logs will show t.co instead of twitter.com going forward. When I initially read the post, I thought there was something wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. Yesterday Zee at the Next Web (note: they are a Twitter default user) created a post titled, “Twitter Just Got the Respect it Deserves”. He continues along the same lines as Clicky and has several key points:

• Twitter is now influential in terms of traffic from an “eyes of the media” standpoint
• Facebook and Stumbleupon better watch out because now Twitter will appear really big as a social media traffic driver
• Brands and businesses will now take note of how influential Twitter is
• You can search to find out which tweet was the influential one because you can search on a specific t.co url

Unfortunately it looks like there are issues with both the Clicky post (and the very wrong change they made to their service) and Zee’s statements.

T.co and how it appears in the referral log

There are lots of times where a t.co URL gets copied OUTSIDE of Twitter. For example, yesterday Mashable reported about Gaddafi and the changes in Libya. When that story gets posted into the Mashable Twitter stream, it now takes on a t.co URL. But followers of the Mashable Twitter stream may copy the URL (which copies the t.co URL not the original URL) and place it into Facebook, Google+ or any other social network.

It is important to note that Twitter does appear to be changing the URL when a user copies a t.co url and posts it on Twitter – this will help with tracking back to a user assuming that the URL is never copied outside of Twitter. BUT, in my testing, if you retweet using the new retweet option, the URL stays the same – this will cause the same issue I discuss below.

When the URL is clicked, it seems to appear on most analytics tools that the traffic is coming via t.co and not from the source network (i.e. Facebook, etc.). If we use the theory that Zee posted, this will make t.co and Twitter itself appear more influential than it is because to his team, it now looks like Twitter sent all the traffic when it was another network. Additionally this would make the Twitter user who originally posted the link appear to have driven traffic that might have come from other sources.

And it’s not just an issue for social network postings – if I copy a t.co URL from another user and send it via email, why should that appear as influence from Twitter?

Additionally, if you use the search technique that Zee suggests, it may make a Twitter user appear more influential than they are because when the link is clicked 500 times on Facebook, now it will look like that user sent the traffic to your site when in fact it was shared by a popular user on Facebook.

Clicky’s URL change and why it needs to be reversed

I like Clicky and their team – I’ve used their service since the early days and they are one of the few services I will recommend when someone asks about analytics tools (note: there is an ad on the right bar but none of the links in this post carry any referral links). In their blog post, they note, “We just updated Clicky to convert t.co referrers into “twitter.com” automatically. Knowing the specific t.co link someone came from has no value, but knowing someone came from Twitter does.”

Update: Clicky has reversed the change!

Example of user copying t.co URL into Google+:

Zee and several other Clicky customers note in the comments that this change is a huge mistake – that it is important to be able to see the t.co referral to direct posts. I agree with the commenters here that changing any t.co referral to twitter.com is a huge mistake and one that needs to be reversed asap.

Oddly, in my Clicky testing today, it appears that clicking a t.co url from Facebook shows up as a referral from Facebook and clicking a t.co url from Google+ shows up as “plus.google.com/search”.

But when I copy the t.co URL and paste it into a Skype chat or into an email or Gtalk chat, the referral shows up as Twitter.com. These referrals should either show up as direct or as a t.co/xxxxxx referral.

Summary

Just because you see t.co in your referral log, don’t assume that all the traffic came from Twitter – it may have come from any number of social services and/or traditional sources (e.g. email, direct sharing, etc.). It looks like those of us who study analytics will need to sharpen our pencils as we try to figure out exactly where our traffic originates from and the path it took to get to us. And it looks like Twitter has some work to do on how and when they change URLs when a t.co URL is shared on their service.

Find more stories about: analytics, Clicky, Google Analytics, Twitter, url shortener

Last week paid blog post network Izea went public with a stock on the OTC board. Jason Calacanis has his explanation of the transaction on the Launch blog calling the transaction a, “back door IPO”. Izea CEO Ted Murphy created a video to demonstrate why Izea is a good investment.

Today Izea has announced the acquisition of Berlin-based Magpie. The press release notes the transaction was a cash and stock transaction but no acquisition amount was noted. The release explains that the reason for the acquisition was to help Izea grow their base in Europe.

I haven’t heard from Magpie in what feels like years. I think Magpie was the first paid ad network to pay Twitter users to post content into their streams. Since their launch, a number of other paid tweet ad networks have launched. Customers of Magpie will be transitioned into the Izea SponsoredTweets product. It should be interesting to see what happens to paid tweets once Twitter launches their own paid in-stream advertising product later this year.

Find more stories about: acquisition, IZEA, online advertising, Twitter

It appears that Twitter is currently down for most users – I was first unable to access the site around 3am Eastern time. As of the time of this post, 8:30am Eastern time, I am still unable to access Twitter.com. The Twitter status site notes, “Currently experiencing elevated error rates — You may experience some problems loading twitter.com and with Twitter clients.  We are aware of the problem and are taking action.”

Based on some searches on Google, it does appear that some people are able to post messages — it does look like if you use a third-party client (Seesmic, HooterSuite, TweetDeck) you might still be able to get in.

This is the first time for an extended Twitter outage in quite a long time. In the old days of Twitter outages, we would all hop on the bus to Friendfeed but that is no longer an option since many have left that service.

Update 9:45am Eastern – Several of my undercover sources tell me this might have to do with the snow in San Francisco.

Update 2 – 10:15am Eastern – Twitter is back – now go post all the things you would have posted if Twitter was up and running.

If you are a social media ninja, social media rockstar and are really upset or need someone to talk to because of this outage, please call 867-5309.

As always, please report in if Twitter is down for you – include your location, whether you use a client tool or the main Twitter.com site and what you are doing to occupy your time during this outage.

Of course, the outage gives me a chance to share Twitter Come Back one more time!

Find more stories about: social media, Social Networking, Twitter, Twitter Down

Have you ever wondered what you had for lunch 19 days ago? What about how many times you “released some gas” on November 12, 2008? What about how many times your followers said the phrase “Justin Bieber” the day after the Grammy Awards? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, I have found a service that can help!

In all seriousness, there is always a good reason to backup your contributed content on all social services. Last night at the Austin Co-Founders Wanted meetup, BackupMyTweets (BMT) co-founder Joshua Baer provided an overview of how his Twitter backup service works. The basic concept is simple…you enter your Twitter username and BackupMyTweets will create a backup of all of your posted messages on Twitter from the day you created your account. Apparently Twitter will only display the last 3,200 messages you have posted.

The service is free to use if (I believe) you allow BMT to send out a message into your Twitter stream letting your followers know you are using BMT. You can pay $5/year to grab the BMT premium edition which doesn’t send out the auto-message and it also will backup all of your followers tweets too so you can create a timeline back to the day you created your Twitter account.

Over 20,000 people have signed up for the service so far and there are paying customers as well. Joshua is looking for someone to run the business. He said that with someone working on the management full-time, he expects they could increase their userbase 10x without much work. If you are interested in this position, you can contact Joshua on Twitter.

Here’s the video overview of BackupMyTweets and what Joshua is looking for.

Find more stories about: Austin, backup, BackupMyTweets, startups, Twitter, Video

Television shopping channel QVC has been working to integrate the latest technology into their offerings for a few years. Last year they hired Courtney Cason, their first “multi-media host”. From what I can tell, Cason created a bunch of holiday videos where she interviewed the on-air salespeople and she also provides live chats during some of the fashion shows. The network has also created mobile apps for all of the major platforms so you can look for and order items anytime. Overall I think QVC has done a good job in the online space and certainly a better job than their competitor HSN.

I’ve been following a thread on the QVC community forums for the last week. The subject of the popular thread is, “Get rid of the Tweets, Blogs, FB’s and the F.F.”

The gist of the thread is that the on-air hosts are spending too much time pimping their Facebook pages and Twitter accounts instead of talking about and explaining the actual products. As I noted above, Courtney (along with a few of the other junior hosts) appears to be hosting many of the live chats and she appears on air to read some of the comments and to get other shoppers to participate.

Here are a couple of the interesting comments from the discussion thread:

• I also have no interest in FB or any other social networking site, and it’s especially aggravating on a shopping channel. Seemed even more disruptive last night on PMS. It reminds me of Romper Room when they start reading off the names of those supposedly participating with Tweets, etc.
• QVC is a TV HOME SHOPPING CHANNEL…..We can’t actually see, touch, etc the items we are buying so its QVC’s job to give us as much detail/information about the item for the customer to make a decision. I don’t care about what people I don’t know are doing, buying, etc etc. Just give informative presentations without the nonsense.

QVC pushes their Facebook pages heavy during on-air presentations. The hosts tell you to “like” the page – either the hosts page or the main QVC page. Is their push working? The main QVC Facebook page has over 275,000 fans. The one thing the hosts don’t explain is that the real reason they want their shoppers to Like their pages is so that marketing messages can be streamed to them whenever QVC wants. And then those marketing messages can be pushed out to the customer’s network.  Also, shoppers grow to like certain hosts and this gives the shopper a belief that they can actually chat with their favorite hosts. Lastly, I believe this push is an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic to expand their customer base.

Even though these shoppers want QVC to stop with the constant push of social media during on-air presentations, as long as it generates revenue or builds counts on the social media sites, I highly doubt QVC will change course in the near future.

Find more stories about: Facebook, qvc, social media, Social Shopping, Twitter

This morning I noticed that if you mouseover a short URL in Twitter, it displays the full URL. I have never noticed this before today. I did some searching to see if this was already reported by the Twitter blogs but came up empty.

I love this new (or new to me) feature because it prevents me from ever clicking on a short link that will take me to somewhere evil. The URL mouseover works in IE, Firefox and Chrome and appears to work about 90% of the time. It worked for me using all of the popular URL shorteners including: Bit.ly, Facebook, Foursquare, Google, TinyURL, etc. I am sure there are ways to “trick” the expanded URL but it’s a good malicious link prevention technique.

Previously, I would use the “+” option on a bit.ly link to see the info page with the final link destination for any links I considered suspect. I have always preferred the TinyURL preview page and wish all of the URL shorteners would offer this service.

In speaking with a few colleagues, it appears Twitter is using the 301 redirect on the short URL to provide the mouseover with the full URL. I’ve also heard that the Brizzly Twitter client has always provided this functionality.

In my searches I found a variety of extensions and plugins that will expand the short URLs found in tweets but now Twitter is doing this for us by default. If this is old news, please leave a comment so I can update the post with any original sources.

Here’s an example of an expanded link by placing my mouse over the link in a Louis Gray and CloudContacts tweet:

Find more stories about: social media, Twitter, url shortener

So by now you probably know that Skype took some time off earlier this week. Now it appears popular marketing service Twitter is also acting all down, over capacity and/or acting funky – as if the service drank some big cups of spiked egg nog. I also noticed that Twitter widgets are not loading any content.

It’s really a horrible time for Twitter to be down – I mean people are just waiting to run to Twitter to tell the world what gifts Santa brought!

The Twitter status blog notes, “Site Availability Issues – We’re currently experiencing some site availability issues; we’re looking into it now and will update when we have more information.”

Update 2:10pm Eastern – it does appear Twitter is back…you may resume telling the world what gifts you have received and if you celebrate Festivus, you may now air your grievances.

When I try to load Twitter, I see one of the following:

• error message – Something is technically wrong. Thanks for noticing—we’re going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.
• fail whale – “over capacity message”
• sometimes Twitter loads but the timeline doesn’t load any gift messages

Please report in if you are having issues telling the world what you are doing on Twitter – make sure to include your location in your comment. Since I know it’s important, you can also leave your received gifts in the comments as well.

Find more stories about: social media, Twitter, Twitter Down

Amazon is offering a free $5 in video credit if you click their special follow button. I say special because not only does the button do a typical follow function, it also sends the following tweet automatically, “I just got a $5 credit for instant movies and TV shows @amazonvideo. Click (url) to get yours. #get5″. Go here to get the credit.

If you search for the term get5 on Twitter,  you can see that a large number of Amazon customers are clicking the button to get their $5 video credit. Funny points go to Twitter user Mobile Jones who clicked the Amazon button and when I questioned him, he replied, “Yeah, but then I immediately revoked the connection to my acct. ;-)”

I think this type of deal works is a much stronger way to build a Twitter user base than buying a “promoted” ad on Twitter. The deal has already spread to all of the deal boards. What’s smart with Amazon’s offer is that it gets people who probably aren’t using Twitter on a regular basis to follow their Amazon Video account. This is different than buying an ad on Twitter for an account on Twitter when you are already on Twitter.

If you aren’t sure what movies to use the $5 Amazon video credit on, here’s a big list of movies and television shows for $2.99 or less.

Find more stories about: Amazon, social media, Twitter, Video

A month ago, CNN fired reporter Rick Sanchez after some comments he made – you can read the story here and here. The big story to tech bloggers including Marshall Kirkpatrick was how the Twitter account run by Sanchez would be handled. I spoke with a friend at length in general around ownership of social media accounts. I believe that much like a corporate cell phone, the Twitter account belongs to CNN. But both my friend and I agreed that, “there is really very little value in the RSCNN account for CNN.”

It appears that about a week ago, the @ricksanchezcnn account was moved to a new Twitter account, @ricksancheznews. Based on his counts, it looks like everything was transferred over to the new account. The old Twitter account points to the new account although I am unsure who “owns” the @ricksanchezcnn account at this time. Sanchez does appear to be actively using the new Twitter account. It’s a good deal for Sanchez as he gets to start with a Twitter account with a base of followers rather than starting from scratch.

Perhaps eventually social media accounts will be considered part of severance packages.

Find more stories about: social media, Twitter

We broke the news last week regarding the launch of Twitter’s in-stream advertising offering. Just as we expected, Twitter did officially announce and launch their in-stream ads service yesterday with Hootsuite as their first partner.

Below is a screenshot of my Twitter feed inside Hootsuite — as you can see, Sprout Social has “promoted a tweet” (aka advertisement) into my twitter feed. Viewing my Twitter feed inside of twitter.com does not display the advertisement. The ad behaves in the same manner as the promoted tweets ads currently visible in search results. The link “promoted by Sprout Social” takes you to the Twitter promotions overview page. You can perform the normal functions on the ad – reply, retweet and/or favorite the ad.

I am not following SproutSocial and am unsure at this point what targeting was used to send that ad to my stream. My @AllenStern account follows very few accounts (less than 60). If I can gather any info on the targeting, I will update this post.

A note regarding the screenshot below: the highlighted color of the ad was based on my rollover on the ad – the ad is not highlighted in yellow by default although my guess is that if the ads don’t receive the expected response rates, highlighting as seen below may be the next step is gaining a higher response rate.

Thanks to RWW for linking to us yesterday when Twitter posted their official announcement.

Find more stories about: Hootsuite, online advertising, social advertising, social media, Twitter

Last month, Jeff Cormier from Next Web reported that promoted tweets (aka ads) would be coming soon to third-party Twitter clients including Hootsuite and Tweetdeck. AdAge reporter Michael Learmonth noted, “Twitter’s ads will travel wherever tweets go — particularly third-party apps and search. This will bring a source of ad revenue into the ecosystem of Twitter-based apps, and increase the audience for the ads themselves.”

A source has shared with me that the promoted Twitter in-stream ads will begin a beta launch on Monday. These new ads will appear in-stream and are NOT the same as what I noted above regarding promoted tweets in search results.

We’ve heard that at least one third-party Twitter client will be part of the initial launch — when we can confirm who the initial launch partners are, we will update the post. Cormier spoke with Hootsuite last month who confirmed that the promoted in-stream ads will be coming to their third-party Twitter client. I’ve been digging but as of yet have been unable to find out the revenue-share between Twitter and Hootsuite (and the other client tools). Hootsuite discussed their promoted integration earlier this month – but the source tells us that Monday’s launch is for in-stream ads not for the search results promotion.

I have to assume that the promoted in-stream ads will also be pushed to twitter.com. These in-stream ads should help with visability and clickthru rates as they don’t require a stop at the search results for a promoted trend- you would go direct to the advertisers website.

It’s also interesting to note that in-stream ads will be very difficult (if not impossible) to block  similar to ad blocking tools. Over time, I believe we will see more and more content providers offering in-stream ads to make sure they can’t be blocked.

Find more stories about: advertising, social media, SocialAds, Twitter

I have to admit – I was not a regular viewer of the Rick Sanchez show on CNN. One of my experiences watching the show resulted in a post titled, “shame on you Rick Sanchez” which looked at how Mr. Sanchez dealt with Twitter being down and a story about a plane crash killing 15 people. In general I am not a fan of shows that just read content from Twitter and Facebook.

Apparently Rick Sanchez was fired from CNN today based on some comments he made. You can read the story here and here.

Blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick immediately wondered what will happen to the “RickSanchezCNN” (RSCNN) account. My comment on Marshall’s post was short, the account belongs to CNN. The reason is simple…the RSCNN account is the same property as a corporate cell phone or laptop. Sure it’s in the “virtual” computer space but the account belongs to CNN. If Sanchez gave out the number to his corporate cell phone to his family and friends, should he be able to keep that as well?

The RSCNN account isn’t alone – any of these accounts that are pushed by the corporation belong to the corporation. For example, QVC pushes their hosts to use hostnameQVC as their Facebook accounts – these belong to QVC.

Where it gets much more tricky is when the employee is using their own name/identiy for the online accounts. Headline News on-air anchor Robin Meade’s web page notes that you should follow her on Twitter with the user name “RobinMeade”. Should the same rule I just created above apply here as well?

I had a very lengthy (and awesome) conversation with a friend about this topic tonight. What we both agreed to is that there is really very little value in the RSCNN account for CNN.

My friend also notes:

• His tweets, to the point of termination, are the property of CNN
• The username is questionable but neither can use it without the consent of the other which won’t happen
• The username will probably be renamed
• The followers are hard to guess what will happen to them but they are irrelevant and of no use to CNN
  

The assumption is that most of the people who followed the RSCNN account also follow the CNN account. Will CNN allow Sanchez to keep the account without the CNN as Marshall notes? (side note, someone already has RickSanchez on Twitter). What value is there in Sanchez’s Twitter account? Assuming CNN allowed Sanchez to keep the Twitter account, would competing news organizations like Fox News or MSNBC want Sanchez just to get access to the account? Doubt it.

Let’s assume Sanchez wanted to create his own media outlet. Naturally starting with a rich Twitter account would be better than starting from scratch (without the free default user bonus). So there is some value for Sanchez but again very little (if any) value for CNN.

My guess is that CNN will let Sanchez keep the Twitter account sans CNN.

In my opinion I think we will see more talent+brand usernames in the future as brands want to make sure all communications are clear.

Will we see cases hit the courts around the ownership of an online account? Sure, this is America!

Find more stories about: CNN, readwriteweb, TV, Twitter

Over the past couple of days I watched all of the demos at the TCDisrupt conference in blazing hot San Francisco. One of the more popular startups was GameCrush. Sebastian Anthony from Download Squad explains what GameCrush is, “…just like prostitution, but with boys buying game time rather than sexy time from a dizzying array of cute, gamer girls…Just like prostitution, some of the girls are cuter than others — and some are better at what they do, too — but they’re all available as potential PlayDates (seriously). All you have to do is whip out your credit card (it’s $0.60 per minute), grab your joystick and game.”

So basically you can play hangman, pac man, tron, spy hunter, galaga, doom, wolfenstein 3d, or the coming soon duke nukem with a cute girl for $36/hour. Apparently GameCrush shares the revenue with the girl although the split wasn’t shared on the Techcrunch stage. (They do accept men as well as playdates, ladies signup for a session of Ms. Pac Man with me!)

I started to think that gaming is just the beginning here! Just like there are clones of all the popular apps, I am excited to announce the launch of SNCrush – the first service to allow you to pay to chat with the person of your dreams and needs on the social networks. But haters, this ain’t a clone!

The concept of SNCrush is simple — pay a fee and you can chat with the person or animal of your dreams!  Imagine how awesome it would be if the person or animal of your dreams tweeted with you and everyone in your network saw it? Like I would totally lose it if singer Rachel Stevens tweeted with me! And with SNCrush, I am one step closer to making that dream a reality!

The first network we have decided to launch SNCrush with is Twitter.

SNCrush charges a monthly participation fee of $11.95 – this gets you into the SNCrush network. Then you pay a variable annuity fee depending on the person/animal you want to tweet with. We have some fish Twitter accounts starting at $0.10/tweet. The people accounts start at $0.50/tweet and “verified models” begin at $17.50/tweet. You can just imagine what it costs to chat with a celeb – simply put, you best rob a bank.

Once you are in the SNCrush network, you select the accounts you want to tweet with. You can use our interface to select just the right user to message with. The selected account is notified and once they approve you, you can begin to send tweets to the selected account. The selected account holder has 4 hours to respond to your tweet. The limit is 25 tweets per selected account per day. So you can send 25 and they will reply to 25 as long as you have cash in your SNCrush account. Everything is controlled via the SNCrush control panel where you can drop in more cash and pick additional accounts to access.

There are additional services that can be added-on:

• have the desired tweeter follow you
• have the desired tweeter retweet one of your tweets using the new retweet system
• have the desired tweeter retweet one of your tweets using the old system and they will add a sexy comment to make your friends really get jealous!
• have the desired tweeter send you a photo via Twitter – this will make your friends know how much of a player you are! (this service not available for fish, cats and other non-human accounts)

As a new member bonus – if you signup today, we will give you one free photo tweet with all new accounts.

If SNCrush appeals to you, get in today into our beta. Just signup today – remember for just a few dollars a month, you can live like a star with your friends, enhance that special part of your social network and maximize your pleasure using Twitter!

Find more stories about: Social Networking, Twitter

I’ve often wondered when (or if) companies will start to fight back when people complain online about the service they receive.  For example, when a blogger complains about a hotel not having a room for him when he probably should have confirmed everything before leaving home, should the company go on record to explain their side or just hand out some vouchers to remedy the situation. My belief is that you should try to work with the company first before posting any emotional-reactions to make sure the company has a chance to respond and take any corrective measures. And after you continuing reading this story, the same advice goes for companies that want to respond without a full investigation.

I am guessing we will see more stories similar to the one below as employees from companies respond to user’s questions and complaints online.

Here’s a social media story that is almost too hard to believe – a user on Twitter posted some comments about the upstate-NY supermarket chain Price Chopper. Here’s the tweet in question (I’ve left the name of the user off the tweet):

This is a pretty mild-mannered message- no swearing, just basically stating that PriceChopper isn’t as good as rival supermarket Wegmans. I’ve often written that I wish x was more like y.

You can read the full details of what happened next on the PriceChopperFail blog. From the blog post, “After receiving this complaint, Price Chopper’s public relations team did the unthinkable — they contacted the customer’s employer (which was mentioned in the individual’s twitter bio) requesting disciplinary action be taken against the individual for their negative post!”

Apparently a Price Chopper employee obtained the user’s employer info from the user’s Twitter profile.

Heidi Reale, director of consumer insights at Price Chopper, posted on the PriceChopperFail blog, “This associate (the Price Chopper employee) had no responsibility for, or permission from, Price Chopper to address customer complaints or the customer’s employer. This is why we knew nothing about it when it was tweeted at us today. We are sorry for this unfortunate incident, and we are working to take the appropriate actions to repair the trust that has been compromised by this associate.”

The actual Price Chopper employee who contacted the man’s employer commented on the Price Chopper Fail blog, “I want to take this opportunity to accept full responsibility for this situation. I am the Price Chopper employee who triggered this chain of events. I’ve worked in the public relations department at the company for the last two months and I saw the negative tweets and responded through my personal twitter account. This is not the way that Price Chopper normally handles critical comments on Twitter or other social media. What should have happened is that our consumer insights team (the team headed by Heidi Reale) would have directly contacted the customer who had an issue or concern through a Price Chopper twitter account and worked to either resolve it or provide some explanation.
I took matters into my own hands. And though well-intentioned, I clearly went over the line – without the knowledge of our consumer insights people or my direct supervisor, the Vice President of Public Relations and Consumer and Marketing Services. I was trying to understand and engage a disgruntled customer and clearly lost sight of my goal.”

Additional commentary on this misuse of social media: Consumerist, All Over Albany and Syracuse.com.

Find more stories about: jobs, social media, Twitter