How To Destroy Your Reputation. Instantly
July 14, 2009 – 11:47 pm | by Daryl TayTonight I came home to discover that there was a little bit of a rant (to put it mildly) by @TweetSG, the person behind tweet.sg, which allows people in Singapore to update their Twitter statuses via sms. My understanding is there have been lag updates (from the time the sms is sent to the time it appears on the person’s profile) and the developer basically had enough.
Tweet.sg
So I don’t run a business or a service, but announcing to almost 8,000 followers on Twitter that you can just remove any of your service at users at will is a little bit much, as is throwing around the f-word.
So in one night, what has happened is:
- Lose many people who have used the service previously
- Get bad press out to many others (like me) who have never used it and never will
- Given a competitor (Sgbeat.com) a great opportunity to swipe some market share
Granted, service users might have been unreasonable (I don’t know if that is true), but doesn’t everyone face this in every market? Losing our cool is not the way to go.
Tags: reputation, reputation management, sgbeat, Singapore, tweetsg, twitter, twitter status, update twitter sms
23 Responses to “How To Destroy Your Reputation. Instantly”
By Vic on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
What market share are you talking about? He is not doing this for money and he has been asking people to just switch to the alternative if they are unhappy.
This is not a business to him and he doesn’t really care about it. From day I followed his tweets, he hasn’t been kind with his words anyway. Is that a surprise to you? Unless you are looking at his tweets like, now?
It’s the same with the spirit of twitter. There is technically no spam. If you are not happy, just unfollow.
By Jonathan Wong on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
I’m not a Tweet.sg user personally (with an iPhone and a data plan, one doesn’t really need it).
However, somehow I get the impression from going to the Tweet.sg home page and the creator’s Twitter account (http://twitter.com/jymster) that jymster (the creator) doesn’t really give a damn about this service nor does he intend to monetize it.
It seems like this service was treated like a hobby or pet project all along.
But still, you are right that this was a bad move, since when he does create a service one day that he actively wants to monetize, I for one will never use it.
Once bitten, twice shy.
By jr on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
Another side to look at is how the service/product performs and how reputation actually affects majority of users, which are usually silent. Case in point – the developers of 37signals (Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire) have been known to be arrogant and rude. They even admit to it. But it seems their reputation has not drastically affected the business they are running.
By XR on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
What you’ve pointed out is very true, from a business/ service POV. This is severely impair one’s chances of monetizing the service.
But I’m a tweet.sg user, and I’m choosing to look at it from a ‘someone’s doing me a favour’ perspective..at least then fewer wrinkles will line my forehead..
By Daryl Tay on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
@Vic: I don’t mean market share in terms of money, but in terms of user base. The average end user of Google and Yahoo don’t PAY money to use their service. But market share in terms of users is still important because it drives other things.
As I’ve said, I don’t use his service nor do I follow his tweets, but yes, it’s a surprise to me coming from a communicator’s point of view. Look, I run Social Media Breakfast and depending on the venue, schedule, event etc, people can be unhappy. Do I then turn around to tell them “Did you pay for this? No right? So you can screw off!” Or do I tell them to be patient and I’ll try to improve on it in the future.
It’s just the way of approaching customers and business. And at the end of the day, As Jonathan points out, the fact that it’s free can be looked upon and closed an eye on, but if the same person wants to charge for a future service, would people sign up knowing that this is the type of business approach that they will be dealing with?
@Jonathan Wong: Yes exactly. Personally if I was using the service I’d be willing to cut him some slack with the lag time. I mean come on, between that and sending 30c an sms to a foreign number, I can live with minutes of lag time. But not every customer is going to be reasonable/rational, and just because they’re not, doesn’t give him the right to behave this way. And yes, any future association with him and a real business would be surely tainted to some extent with some people online.
@JR: The difference I guess would be because the root of the issue with Tweetsg was that the service/product was NOT performing in the first place, which led to user dissatisfacion which in turn was not well dealt with. If 37signals didn’t have good-performing service/products like Backpack in the first place, it would be a different story.
@XR: Yes like I said in the reply to Jonathan, hell, it’s free, I’m sure people can live with the lag time. But the difference between replying back in a civil manner and replying back, and tweeting to almost 8,000 people that he can and will just remove users accounts at will for asking questions like why is there lag.
By Daphne Maia on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
that’s a good point, Daryl. most people don’t pay to use Google or Yahoo or even Twitter. but you don’t see their CEOs talking to users like that, even when Twitter was nicknamed fail whale and people criticized the service for it’s down time.
By Daryl Tay on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
@Daphne Maia: Yes okay maybe Google and Yahoo aren’t the best examples because they still get revenue indirectly, but take Twitter and Plurk or gothere.sg or Gmail or Skype. If there’s a customer problem, the reply is not “if you don’t like it you can unfollow” or “the next person to ask will be removed”. They’re all free products that don’t get revenue directly. Should they all act the same way? More importantly, would users stick with them very long if they acted in the same way?
By XR on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
@daryl I know many who insist on dining at a particular place, even though the service is hardly commendable – and one risks getting reprimmanded for small gestures unknown to the ‘offender’. Consumer behaviour does appear irrational at times.
Not sure if there’s a difference between physical and virtual outlets (I would think there are), but it appears to me that some think that if they’ve got differentiation, they can act that way. Admittedly tweet.sg is hardly unique, but who knows.. the service provider might think otherwise?
By Daryl Tay on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
@XR: Right as JR said, there are businesses that can apparently do that and win. If you’re the best in that category or very much superior from your competitor, sure, you can do that because your product/service speaks for itself.
And again, if tweet.sg indeed had no downtimes and no lagtime etc, he might have gotten away with it. But the combination of a seemingly inferior product AND bad approach to customers is a killer combination.
By Miccheng on Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
I think in his mind, its not a product he’s selling anyways (in fact he’s giving it away FREE!), so he doesn’t need to provide any service level agreement (or customer support for that matter). But problem here is that the site / service is packaged & presented with all the trappings of an online service. And i don’t think he’ll mind his users going elsewhere – cos he’s not making any money off them ANYWAYS! Zero of zero is still ZERO!
By Miccheng on Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
But unfortunately he’s also working in another commercial entity. A tidal wave of users who know of this service and by connection the founder AND his company will have to think carefully before using that company’s service in the future. If this is how he treats his free-loading users when frustrated, he wouldn’t suddenly change his spots when dealing with paying customers. So from that perspective, he has really ruined the reputation of his company. His nasty reputation is still intact though…
By Daryl Tay on Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
@Miccheng: Thanks for weighing in Mic! There are quite a few people who have approached it from the “It’s open and free and not a business” platform and I think that is totally, totally valid.
I don’t know about his other commercial entity nor the connection, but as you pointed out, those who do, will definitely be wary of it because I also don’t think behavior will suddenly change when monetary transactions are involved.
I’m not unsympathetic to his situation, I just think he could have handled it better. As someone commented on someone else’s shared link on Facebook “yet another entrepreneurial endeavour failed because of bad anger management” (rough quote).
Again, doesn’t matter whether that is *really* true or not. It’s just how the public perceives it.
By Brenda on Jul 16, 2009 | Reply
He seems to have written a blog post in response to this:
http://tweet.sg/blog/2009/07/this-is-a-private-system/
By Jonathan Wong on Jul 17, 2009 | Reply
@Brenda – Yup. Just read his blog post. While I am a neutral observer in this whole affair, it’s pretty apparent he doesn’t really give a damn. Which is perfectly fine, since it’s his prerogative.
I suppose people who are classified as his type-2 and type-3 users shouldn’t give a damn about him or his commercial SMSPerks service either.
By Nabilah Said on Jul 17, 2009 | Reply
Frankly speaking, I’ve been using tweet.sg but was generally happy with it, though I’ve heard some complaints.
After reading your post I was so turned off that I informed him via twitter that I wouldn’t be using his services because I found his behaviour off-putting.
While I do think that it’s his prerogative to run his service (or whatever he calls it) whichever way he wants, I personally don’t like dealing with/putting up with people that are just not nice.
His responses via twitter to me confirmed that I had made the right decision. I thought my tweet to him was very civil and I meant it as a kind of constructive feedback, but apparently he didn’t think so.
Oh well. Whatever it is, I’m done with him and his service.
By Brenda on Jul 17, 2009 | Reply
@Jonathan Haha, likewise. I have used TweetSG once – tested a post … which appeared only a month later, and sworn off the service altogether. I didn’t realize that this was going on until I read this entry. (And out of curiosity, visited the profile page and viewed a couple of other entries on the issue.)
I can see the viewpoints of both the frustrated users and the (equally frustrated) owner. However, frustrating as maintaining the system can be – he could have been a lot nicer about it. IQ should come with EQ, after all.
By Sharon Isabella Lee on Jan 5, 2010 | Reply
Classic example of why the saying “???????” stays true a virtue =) If he’s so tired of maintaining it, why don’t he just shut it down. For the fame or lack of it, I guess.
By Sharon Isabella Lee on Jan 5, 2010 | Reply
Arh, the Chinese characters can’t be seen. It’s ‘Ren Yi Shi Hai Kuo Tian Kong’
By Daryl Tay on Jan 5, 2010 | Reply
@Sharon Isabella Lee: Thanks for the comment! Sorry my blog isn’t too Chinese character friendly but I agree. And as mentioned in the comments by others – the gap between who you are online and who you are in reality is closing quickly and it’s not going to be easy to maintain that facade over a long period of time.