Thoughts On Teachersday.sg And #tday09
Monday, August 31st, 2009Today Coleman tweeted that the Ministry of Education’s teachers’ day website was a risky move, and coincidentally at the time when I clicked on the link the one and only “careless” tweet appeared (screenshot courtesy of Coleman):
Teachersday.sg
Yes, I give MOE credit for trying something new and for experimenting, but there are still points to be made/lessons to learn:
1) It may have been the only negative tweet, but I think we need to think about these things. Who else will see these tweets besides the teachers? Other kids? Parents of kids? It’s entirely possible to get on to a service like Pheed.me and remove foul language in advance. And I think we need to be keenly aware of our target audience.
2) I understand that the purpose of keeping it uncensored was to maintain authenticity, but looking at the tweets that came out.. I’m not sure how many were just set up for the sole purpose of tweeting this one hashtag.
3) As Daphne points out, this web portal wasn’t largely publicised and therein lies why this was the only “careless” tweet. If more of the general public got to know about it, I bet it wouldn’t be long before tweets like “Miss Lim from [whatever] school I remember you for being such a b!tc# 20 years ago and I hope you’re still single #tday09” start appearing, and this turns into a #skittles fiasco – where people tagged on racist/malicious comments to the #skittles hashtag for everyone to see.
So for a moment, let’s forget this is the Ministry of Education (MOE), let’s forget that the people tweeting are predominantly kids, and let’s think about it in the real world:
First, while I don’t think the people who are involved are inexperienced or ignorant of social media, I think they jumped on the shiny object bandwagon without thinking it through. From their blog post:
If Facebook was the vehicle that brought social media to the mainstream, Twitter is the shiny new Ferrari F70 of the online space
Accurately said. I shiny new Ferrari isn’t an everyday, run-of-the-mill car. It’s like re-taking your drivers’ licence test again and making sure you understand the vehicle and can control it under all sorts of conditions, sunny or stormy.
Second, I know I’ll get some flak by being critical of something like this where there’s one negative post in a sea of hundreds. But that’s not where I’m coming from. It’s not specific to the case. It’s specific to the understanding, usage and application of social media that I think we have to be aware of. Those of us who are fortunate enough to work in this space really have to be conscious of this. If you did this for a client, or your CEO of an MNC and they saw this happen. What do you think are the odds you’d get budget for your next “social media experiment”? Slim to none?
Basically, I think you have to be careful how much risk you take with your brand. It’s great to hand over control to the consumers, but you gotta know your audience. Have you already been in the community cultivating “antibodies” for awhile who will come to your defence when someone steps out of line? Or are you jumping in cold? Just because you introduce a platform for one, noble purpose, doesn’t mean it will be used that way by everyone. And you have to take the good and the bad.
Back to the specific case, although the boy managed to delete his tweet and seemed quite embarrassed afterwards, I really hope he doesn’t get punished or anything because of this. It was a conscious decision to make this platform public, and therefore consequences that arise of it being public comes from that choice to be public, not the user.
After all, he just served as a reminder to us that anybody can be made aware of anyone’s social media efforts at any one time, and they’re not always going to be in sync with your organisation.
Tags: know your audience, metacole, ministry of education, teachers' day website, teachersday.sg, twitter
