As the pieces we’ve read today try to grasp the birth, metamorphosis, staying power, and cultural impact popular micro-blogging site Twitter has had on the world, public relations and marketing divisions also vie for that precious feed real-estate broadcasted through browser or smartphone. Tracey Hayes’ “#MyNYPD: Transforming Twitter into a Public Place for Protest” recounts the self-flagellation of a hashtag campaign for the New York Police Department, just one of the numerous online marketing gaffes featured on Twitter. In a similar vein, other businesses have also looked toward injecting their advertisements through currently trending hashtags, eager to reach an already established broad audience of Tweeters. Business’ commodification of current events and hashtags has led to inappropriately hijacking tragedies and users forever enshrining these tweets by sharing screenshots of the now deleted tweet. Ultimately, it is these users that have such an important online role in cataloguing and recording even faux-pas such as these due to the fact that a tweet can disappear just as fast as it was written.
In 2014, a video campaign showcasing the horrors of domestic abuse spawned, finding a way to spread its message on the Twitter platform. Victims and survivors of domestic abuse were able to offer what living through domestic abuse truly entails, an unexperienced reality to those that are not familiar with abusive relationships, using @bevtgooden’s viral hashtag #WhyIStayed. However, one business in particular did not recognize the context of the hashtag they tried to capitalize on; DiGoiorno pizza’s tweet read “#WhyIStayed You had pizza.” As author for Crowdbabble, Katie Meyer, describes Twitverse’s reaction in “Crisis Management 101,” “judgement of the brand was swift, widespread, and brutal. DiGiorno later claimed its social media manager was not aware of #WhyIStayed’s meaning.” In an attempt to stay current without researching the hashtag’s loaded meaning, DiGiorno’s tweet was forever saved due to the community’s quick thinking, fear, and ability to save the tweet for future reference.
Fossilizing DiGiorno’s twitter mishap is not in a vacuum; Kenneth Cole misappropriated the #Cairo hashtag stemming from users sharing information about the 2011 Egyptian protests, the #Aurora theatre hashtag was used by Celeb Boutique to promote their new dress, and Gap commandeered the 2012 #Sandy hashtag and “checked in” to the Frankenstorm to plug their online shopping. All of these instances have something in common: such tweets were swiftly taken down from Twitter, but not before users could capture. Despite the screenshots not being the entire reason for these business to apologize for their callousness, having multiple records of the offensive tweets forced these businesses to recognize the impact of their tweets. Without these saved tweets, these companies could have not been as inclined to reach out to their followers with condolences. Research completed by Almuhimedi et al. suggests in “Tweets Are Forever” there exists a link between the motivation for deleting tweets and regret (906). However, feeling the regret that culminates in deleting without saving the original tweet could be detrimental in ensuring this practice is not repeated.
As a platform that suffers from user-experienced regret combined with the ability to obliterate previously recorded content, the community as a collective must recognize their grave responsibility to keep erasure at bay. While businesses continue to interact with, shock, and intrigue their fanbase through the website, these companies ought to rest assured that a nanosecond is enough time for someone to record and save content. And rather than view this ability to concretize the company’s interactions as anti-business, both parties can relish in the fact that such a practice exists in order to expound on various parts of a tweet’s rhetorical situation. More often than not, this offshoot of dialogue would be more likely to attract more followers than just sending the trendy tweet sans discussion.
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