The Impact of Poor Social Media Management on Individuals and Organizations

MGMT598

Managerial Skills Workshop II

The Impact of Poor Social Media Management on Individuals and Organizations

Mustafa Sirin Kahyaoglu

14696

Submitted to

V. Lynn Baucom

SABANCI UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

03/27/2012

1. French company fined 25,000 Euros for altering Wikipedia entry

Date: 07/06/2011

The French company Hi-Media was fined €36,000 for damages after deleting a mention of their competitor, Rentabiliweb, in Wikipedia found through IP tracing.

Hi-Media removed the mention of its competitor from a list of vendors in the French Wikipedia’s article on micropayment. Although the edit was done anonymously, the IP address used to make the revision was traced back to a device belonging to Hi-Media.

Source: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/yana/2011/07/07/company-sanctioned-for-editing-wikipedia-to-its-advantage/

2. Greenpeace versus Mattel: A social media battle over rain forest

Date: 06/08/2011

Mattel was attacked by Greenpeace for deforestation of rain forests by turning their own assets of Ken and Barbie against them. Greenpeace dubbed Ken and Barbie as Barbaric in elaborate videos and pushed them to the official Mattel Facebook page. As a response, Mattel shut down all commenting on their Facebook page to end the discussion. Later, they did a few post responding directly to the issue, and announced a change in supply chain.

This was an example of the continued trend of NGOs using social media to make statements over brands harming the nature.

Source: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2011/06/mattel-rainforest-greenpeace-social-media.html

3. GoDaddy CEO's graphic elephant hunt video sends his clients flocking to competitors, and helps raise $20,000 for elephant charity

Date: 04/08/2011

GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons took a video of him on a hunt in Africa and then proudly tweeted about killing problematic elephants. NGOs like PETA responded swiftly requesting customers shift...