Cloud IT formerly On-Site Technical Solutions: Twitter Is All in Good Fun, Until It Isn’t

The post below from the NY Times reflects on the suspension of Roland Martin at CNN for tweeting, on his personal account, disparaging items about gay men during the Super Bowl. If employees are tweeting for your company, let's hope you don't get caught up in anything this public.

This may be unique in the sense that this employee is paid to give his opinions and not simply promoting a brand, but it's still a very good cautionary tale for companies using personal accounts to promote their brands. CNN apparently thought their brand was damaged by this employee's tweets.

Roland Martin

I'm not attempting to address whether or not Martin has a right to post whatever he wants on his personal account, but that brands must be careful not to damage themselves with social media.

Specifically, Martin tweeted on his personal account

If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him! #superbowl

and then replied to criticism on Twitter

@DrMChatelain @notjustsexuality well that shows how ignorant you are. I rip on soccer all of the time. Learn to pay attention!

The problem for Martin is that his tweet said nothing about soccer but could be and of course was interpreted as encouraging anti-gay violence.

Twitter Is All in Good Fun, Until It Isn’t - NYTimes.com

David Carr ends his article with these paragraphs:

But I also asked around among my friends — something I would never do as a precursor to tweeting — and got this response from Simon Dumenco, a longtime media observer and a Twitter savant.

He wrote in an e-mail: “The idea of joking that a ‘dude’ expressing a positive opinion about a David Beckham ad — which was really not about David Beckham the soccer star, but David Beckham the half-naked sex god — merits a smack-down? That’s actually not hilarious to me. It’s actually scary to me because it reminds me of social situations in my life where I’ve felt like it would be literally unsafe for people to learn I’m gay.”

Obviously, what seemed like harmless knuckleheaded banter to me landed very differently with people who generally share my values about free and unfettered discourse. I heard the same thing from other smart people who spend a lot of time on both reporting and Twitter.

So while I’m all for letting the tweets fall where they may, I’ve come to understand that just because a thought is tapped out on Twitter doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take it seriously. Complicated, I know, and just the kind of nuanced conclusion that would never fit into 140 characters.

I don't follow David Carr, but I do follow Simon Dumenco. The fact that a writer for the NY Times couldn't see that this might blow up tells us how easy it can be to damage a brand on Twitter and in social media in general.

One hint: any references to violence will almost always offend someone. Social media is a powerful tool - be careful how it's wielded.

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