Twitter is taking some heat this week for its alleged mishandling of accusations by Ariel Waldman that she was being stalked and harassed on Twitter, and that the popular site “refuses to uphold its terms of service.” (You can read the details of Ariel’s situation on her blog.)

According to the blog post, Ariel had an ongoing “dialogue” with Twitter dating back to 2007 concerning her allegations of inappropriate conduct by another Twitter user. She says “in 2008 it (the harassment) escalated to a level that could no longer be ignored,” and on March 14, she contacted Twitter asking for a resolution. She did not get a reply for three days, and she did not find it satisfactory. In later correspondence on April 9, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told Ariel:

“Ariel,

Apologies for the delay here. We’ve reviewed the matter and decided it’s not in our best interest to get involved. We’ve tasked our lawyers with a full review and update of our TOS.

Thank you for your patience and understanding and good luck with resolving the problem.

Best,
Jack.”

Ariel also posted her experience on Get Satisfaction, a site that enables consumers/users to engage directly with company representatives when they feel they have received bad customer service, or that a company has broken a promise, or violated an agreement.

Some questions pop up right away. What could Twitter have done better in its early conversations with Ariel to keep this situation from becoming a public embarrassment? Whether Twitter “bungled” this situation is unclear, but it is equally unclear that they handled it correctly.

Jack’s email above is dismissive. He offers no explanation for the decision. His recognition that Ariel is upset with this matter, and that he sympathizes, is less than superficial. Obviously he was advised by his lawyers to say very little. Had he had good communications counsel, he could have balanced the legal advice with some openness and authenticity, which would have been a very Web 2.0 thing to do. Instead, he comes across like a tobacco company CEO.

Bad communications counsel, or no communications counsel at all, will eventually lead to mistakes that will damage a company’s reputation. Most of these mistakes are avoidable, unless you’re too arrogant or too cool to seek professional advice. A public relations professional would have told Twitter’s executive management:

• Consider every negative customer interaction as an opportunity to build trust and rapport with your customers
• Be prepared that every bit of correspondence of any nature will become a matter of public record. Conduct yourself in all dealings as if you are writing for public consumption, and your communications will be more thoughtful and more strategic. (And they’ll make you look better when they are reproduced on a blog or on the front page of the morning paper.)
• Investigate allegations quickly, render a decision, and communicate that decision and its rationale clearly
• Respond to the aggrieved party with more than a cursory legal notice. Show some sympathy.

This situation is reminiscent of Facebook’s 2007 Beacon debacle, when consumers and privacy advocates railed against the company’s advertising platform, which shared private user information with third party sites, seemingly without the user’s consent. Facebook dragged its feet with a response, and even two weeks after the first public criticism, according to BusinessWeek, “a spokesperson for the site declined to elaborate on the information, stating, ‘Facebook is listening to feedback from its users and committed to evolving Beacon.’”

Anyone who watched the Mark Zuckerberg vs. Sarah Lacy title bout at this year’s South by Southwest knows that Zuckerberg is not a professional communicator. But it’s the obligation of a CEO to know how to communicate. Jack Welch knows how. Steve Jobs knows how. John Chambers knows how. But if you’re a Web 2.0 CEO, apparently it’s uncool.

For a Web 2.0 company, Facebook has done an awful job engaging users in genuine dialogue. I wrote last year about the company’s awful blog, which I called “little more than a marketing blog.” It was not hard to see then that the company clearly did not get it when it came to authentic user engagement, so I was not surprised when they mishandled the Beacon situation.

So did Twitter’s leadership seek other than legal advice on handling this incident? Not exactly. In fact, in a blog post Saturday, they boasted, “We do not employ public relations professionals. This accusation caught us by surprise.” No kidding on both counts. It’s highly speculative on my part to assume that such counsel would have been contrary to the course Twitter actually took, or, that having received such counsel, Twitter executives would have chosen to follow it. (Yeah, they’re executives. Sorry.)

Mindless rejection of the value of public relations counsel by the Web 2.0 illuminati is just that. It’s mindless and potentially damaging to a company’s reputation. I would argue that Facebook, from a reputation standpoint, has not fully recovered from the Beacon backlash.

There are many notions underlying the predictions that PR is a dying industry. One of these is that PR is spin, that it is inauthentic, that it is contradictory to transparency and authenticity. A good PR person won’t “put words in the mouth” of an executive, but might be able to step back and look at the broader communications landscape and offer some advice. What if, instead of sending a CEO e-mail drafted by the legal department and hoping the situation would go away like an annoying rash, someone inside Twitter had said, “Do you really want people to think that strict enforcement of the TOS is our only concern? Ariel Waldman is an influential blogger, and she would be a good ally. She’s knowledgeable about this. Let’s invite her in for a conversation.”

Tags: arial waldman, beacon, Facebook, jack dorsey, mark zuckeberg, PR, Public Relations, sarah lacy, terms of service, tos, Twitter

One of the great things about social media is not only that I’ve met some great people, but that I’ve had an opportunity to help many of them, and many of them have helped me.

I like helping people. I’ve been very fortunate in my life and career, and I’m glad to give something back. If I’ve learned something that would be useful to someone else, if I can make things easier for them, I’m glad to share what I know.

Social networking makes it easier to help people. Both Facebook and LinkedIn feature the ability to ask questions of your network, but this is superficial, and while possibly useful, isn’t what I’m talking about. Used properly, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter create environments of trust in which genuine relationships develop, and from these relationships come opportunities to help each other. By virtue of the fact that you are in my network, you are “pre-qualified” to ask me for help, and if I have anything to offer, I will.

I don’t believe that I am some kind of guru, or that I have magical answers for all people in all situations. But I do know that I have a lot of experience in a variety of things, and there’s a good chance someone can benefit from my experience. And it costs me nothing to give it away.

Here are some ideas that I’ve put to work:

• Comment and link to blogs. There are all kinds of opportunities to help someone who blogs, or to simply extend them a kindness. When reading, commenting on, and sharing blogs, skip the “A-list” blogs. Everyone is “reading” them already, either directly, or through RSS, and when these bloggers post something interesting or controversial, they can get hundreds of comments and links. Instead, read your friends’ blogs, and comment freely. Give a new blogger some encouragement. Add them to your blogroll or news reader. Compliments, kind words, and links are free, and can be priceless to the recipient.
• Give things away. If, for example, someone mentions they are doing their first event plan, offer to send them one of your best examples as a template. If you’ve done past research on a topic that would be useful to someone, as long as it doesn’t violate any contractual agreements to do so, give it to them.
• Offer career coaching. Volunteer to review a new graduate’s resume, or to help someone in need of a tune-up. Send them your resume as an example. Rehearse interview questions. (I’ve done this often through instant messaging and by phone.) Make referrals to recruiters, and career and employment web sites.
• Volunteer. Help out at events like meet-ups and conferences. It’s a great way to help a good cause while doing something you enjoy.

Why help people? I like to help people because it feels good. I like making things easier for others. It doesn’t motivate me to hope that if I help people out, that it will come back to me somehow. I believe helping should be its own reward. Your motivations may be different. And while I never expect something in return when I offer assistance, I almost always receive an offer.

Conversely, and this one can be hard to do, it’s OK to ask others for help. Recently, being more whiny than anything else, I announced on Twitter “I hate GIFs.” Immediately, at least five people jumped in and asked why, and then offered either to fix the graphic I was having trouble with, or to tutor me in how to fix it. That’s the amazing thing about the spirit on Twitter, or at least among the people in my network. Where else could you get free, around-the-clock software technical support and training? Not from the manufacturer, who has your $800, but from your friends, and from a community of smart people who have most likely already solved the problem you are having.

Twitter is a great place for seeking help with almost anything. Many social media, marketing and public relations people use Twitter to sound out a community of peers on strategic and ethical issues. Twitter is also useful for finding people with the skills you need to help with a project, on either a formal or informal basis. I found a great web developer, and an awesome research associate on Twitter.

Of course these are paid relationships, but they need not be. I’m writing a book, and dozens of people have volunteered to contribute to the book and help me with research.

I’m not suggesting that people aren’t doing these things already. In fact, one of the things I find most appealing about Twitter is that it is a true community for me. I see this kind of behavior every day. I just think everyone, including me, needs to be reminded of how far a little kindness can go.

From time to time, there are gut wrenching cries for help on Twitter. A while back, Chris Wilson a Twitter friend, used a blog and Twitter in the search for a missing girl. Susan Reynolds has been talking about cancer and doing fund raising on Twitter. I have made donations several times when solicited on Twitter, because I trust the people asking and I care about them, and it’s not going to break me to send in a few dollars.

It’s hard to write a piece like this without sounding preachy or sanctimonious. But I’m totally sincere in this. It’s OK to be helpful just because it feels good and it’s the right thing to do. There’s plenty of aggression and name calling online. We can all step up and counterbalance it with kindness.

Like most busy people, I start every work day with a to-do list, and one of the most important items for me is, “how can I help someone today?”

A blog is a tool. There is no such thing as “a blogger,” or someone who can be rationally defined by their ability to use a blog, no more so than there are “wordists,” people who define themselves based on their ability to use MS Word. The number of people who blog is now so large, and the things they blog about and the reasons they use blogs so diverse, that classifying someone as a blogger doesn’t makes sense.

This wasn’t always the case. When things are new, early adopters may refer to themselves as users of a certain communications tool or medium, though this phenomenon has been quite pronounced in social media. Witness “I am a blogger.” “I am a podcaster,” etc.

A-List blogger? Who are the A-List Wordists? There are none. There are obviously thousands of important and influential writers throughout history, and there continue to be, but they are not known as tabletists, papyrists, typewriterists, etc. And there’s the rub. The maniacal focus on mastering the tool is a distraction from the larger obligation of using the tool to express something useful, informative, inspiring or amusing.

To test whether a statement is mere toolery, try a simple word substitution. For “What is your blogging strategy?” substitute any established communications tool. “What is your MS Word strategy?” or better still, throw in a household object. “What is your spatula strategy?”

An interesting relationship soon becomes clear. The more commonplace and widely adopted something is, the sillier it sounds in that construct. When a communications tool is new, or not widely used and understood, we talk about it as if it were a strategy. Later, it becomes a tactic or a tool.

In other words, during the early phases of adoption, we talk about things in irrational terms.

So, for a communications tool, what is early adoption? Microsoft estimates there are “500 million Office users worldwide.” Presumably, all of them use Word. That’s a half billion people, or with a global population of around 6.6B, around 13% of people on the planet. In the early adoption stage? Nope.

What about blogs? Technorati’s April, 2007 State of the Blogosphere (the latest I could find) says there were 70 million blogs, growing at 120,000 a day. At a constant growth rate, there would be around 114 million today.

And TwitDir estimates there are 1,639,607 Twitter users. Much as many of us on Twitter would like to think we are early adopters (read: elite, ahead of the game, cool geeks, the in crowd, technologists), it’s probably no longer true.

Is there really any point, anymore, to referring to someone as a blogger? Or are bloggers perhaps better referred to as business people, musicians, artists, students, writers, poets, critics, or whatever else they actually are, as opposed to what communications tool they have chosen to use?

Ophelia Chong inked up her printing press and printed our cool Socialized patches Saturday. Here’s a look at the two hand-carved woodblocks Ophelia made, as they appeared in the bed of the press.

And here’s a glimpse of some printed patches:

I know you’re probably used to reading this blog for insights (hopefully) into social media and public relations, but I’m so excited about this project and so privileged to have Ophelia doing such excellent creative work for Socialized. How many other comms consultancies have “schwag” this awesome?

Tags: letterpress, ophelia chong, Socialized

What I will be doing for Socialized is to go back a century. The Vandercook letterpress I will be using is the offspring of the Gutenberg press (1450).

I believe that the internet is bringing information to the public the same way Gutenberg did with his press. Like the communications media which preceded it, the best use of the Internet is that which is bespoke, or handcrafted, for a particular purpose, audience, aesthetic and objective.

Before Gutenberg, the bible was hand written and only available to the few who could afford one. Once he started printing, the bible and other books were then made available at an affordable price, and the golden age of publicly available information was born.

Now with the internet, we have the same revolution where all information is available. Bad, good, wrong, right, everything. There will be a day when there will be someone like me who will resurrect the Archaic form of the “internet” as an artform.

Tags: socialized, ophelia chong, gutenberg, vandercook, letterpress, artforms