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Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter 147

Posted by samzenpus from the type-slower dept.
tsamsoniw writes "California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman's campaign team attempted to share with her Twitter followers an endorsement from a police association. Unfortunately, the campaign press secretary entered an incorrect or incomplete Bit.ly URL in the Tweet, which took clickers to a YouTube video featuring a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar. And for whatever reason, the Tweet, which went out on the 18th, has remained active through today."
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Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter More

Meg Whitman Campaign Shows How Not To Use Twitter

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  • Wow... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:39PM (#33968184)

    Awesome guitaring...

    Sorry, what were we discussing?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z34107 ( 925136 )

      I thought we were discussing a pretty epic Mio cover, who just happened to be poorly covered.

  • It's not "for whatever reason" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara,hudson&barbara-hudson,com> on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:42PM (#33968218) Journal
    > "And for whatever reason, the Tweet, which went out on the 18th, has remained active through today."

    It remained active because nobody reads tweets. Just like nobody reads facebook.

    All you "internet marketers", forget it - people's eyes glaze over after the 1,000th message - it doesn't even stay in short-term memory.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:It's not "for whatever reason" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:09PM (#33968444) Journal

        The vastness of that opportunity has to be compared in size with the vastness of the negative wave of press this has already gotten her.

        Her staff are incompetent. They proved it not once, but twice. First by posting the link without double-checking it after pasting it, and second by not deleting the tweet and posting the correct link.

        I'm sure they will probably prove that they are incompetent a third time, by taking your advice to use spin instead of action to resolve their failure.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Arthur Grumbine ( 1086397 )

        I know nothing of her campaign team, so I don't know if they would be this smart, but the fact stands that we're now reading a story about Meg Whitman.

        Trust me, if you live in California and spend any time: watching TV, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, visiting websites of California news media, or even just going outside, you are already sick of hearing about Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by BobMcD ( 601576 )

          Trust me, if you live in California and spend any time: watching TV, listening to the radio, reading the newspaper, visiting websites of California news media, or even just going outside, you are already sick of hearing about Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.

          I'm sick of it, and I haven't even visited California for years.

        • Or, for that matter, if you own a mailbox. The bright side of all the campaigning, of course, is that Jerry Brown's fliers are made of a type of tag board that is great for creating acoustic cones [weebly.com] (you're damn right I'm inserting a shameless self-plug, Cali politicians aren't the only ones that can campaign!) and Meg Whitman's letters are great at cleaning up spilled juice off of a hardwood floor!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by blair1q ( 305137 )

      Yuh-huh. That's why things posted to Twitter never become top tweets or escape the bounds of Twitter to become memes in other forums, like /.

      And people definitely remember clicking on a link for a candidate's PR and getting a nipponese cross-dresser with an axe.

    • Re:It's not "for whatever reason" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dahamma ( 304068 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:31PM (#33968604)

      Really?

      A YouTube video of a cross-dressing Japanese man playing the guitar now has over 950,000 views.

      I think people have been reading this one.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by oursland ( 1898514 )
        Not really. Since this error has gone through the net I've seen it go from about 85k to your 950k views. No one is paying attention to her, people are paying attention to these news articles.

        • Well unless the slashdotters stick around and watch most of his videos it seems this guy is pretty popular. Many of his videos hit several hundred thousand hit. Pretty impressive I say.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Dahamma ( 304068 )

            Slashdotters??

            This story hit the mainstream long before it made it to slashdot (as usual). I'm sure with ~1M people hitting the linked video, at least 10-20% were curious enough to check out a few others.

          • Just clicked on it, Gave me a very good laugh after a very hard day. Go Meg! :)

        • No one is paying attention to her

          She's easy not to pay attention to.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Dahamma ( 304068 )

          Yes, that's kind of the point. I don't have a Twitter account and hate the entire concept, but I can't go 20 minutes online without someone referencing, quoting, re-sending, etc a "tweet".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fishexe ( 168879 )

        Really?

        A YouTube video of a cross-dressing Japanese man playing the guitar now has over 950,000 views.

        I think people have been reading this one.

        I dunno man, the numa numa guy got way more than thought on his own.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Symbha ( 679466 )

      > All you "internet marketers", forget it - people's eyes glaze over after the 1,000th message - it doesn't even stay in short-term memory.

      Yep, because twitter and facebook are not about reading (or information gathering) they are about self expression.
      Everyone's a writer nowadays, nobody is reading...

    • Given all the publicity it's received, maybe this was a net win for the campaign then? :)

    • My wife would beg to disagree with you.... she's on Facebook all the time reading what crap her friends have to spew.

      I on the other hand wish you were correct.

      • Ask her ONE buying decision she made because of a post from an internet marketer on facebook. Just ONE.

        All this money being poured into "social media marketing", and it's become a vast echo chamber of companies doing it because they see other companies doing it, and figure "it must be working for them, we don't dare miss the train."

        But that's all it is. A vast echo chamber, with everyone mimicking everyone else. If you want to do something original, you don't do it on facebook or twitter, where it will

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lawpoop ( 604919 )
      Yeah, sure, advertising doesn't work. You see several Coke ads a day. Do you really look at any of them?

      In the 1920s, their main rival, Moxie, decided to put their money into buying more sugar, which was becoming more expensive, and cut their advertising budget. Which soda do you drink today?

  • Missing Character (Score:5, Informative)

    by Reason58 ( 775044 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:43PM (#33968242)
    This resulted from missing the last character when she was copying. From the reddit article 13 hours ago:

    Intended link:

    http://bit.ly/bNCAVr [bit.ly]

    Posted link by the retweeter:

    http://bit.ly/bNCAV [bit.ly]

    What a difference a character can make.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 )

      What a difference a character can make.

      While a really talented cross-dressing Japanese 8-string bass player is a pretty good result, it could have been much, much worse.

      • Re:Missing Character (Score:5, Insightful)

        by EdIII ( 1114411 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:33PM (#33968622)

        What a difference a character can make.

        While a really talented cross-dressing Japanese 8-string bass player is a pretty good result, it could have been much, much worse.

        Are you kidding? Considering how unbelievably perverted the Japanese can be with what they put online (not trolling, but sincere admiration) the fact they linked to a video from Japan with just cross-dressing involved and no pixelated areas was like winning the lottery.

    • Re:Missing Character (Score:5, Funny)

      by Arthur Grumbine ( 1086397 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:39PM (#33968664) Journal

      What a difference a character can make.

      Especially when that character is wearing a tutu!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by snookums ( 48954 )

      Most likely the final character was chopped by the 140 character limit. The published message appears to have only 137 characters, but perhaps there were some double spaces or something in the original that were lost. I know of another instance of exactly this happening recently (to a high-profile online media company).

      The collision rate on bit.ly links appears to be quite high. In addition to the truncated URL being valid, running through all 52 possibilities appending a single letter to bNCAV, about two t

    • Are we talking about politicians? You could have just said "What a difference character can make."
  • are Californians stuck with the guvernator, then? (i.e. for the lack of credible candidates?)
    I mean, while he's up there, we can't hope for another movie, can we?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by MrEricSir ( 398214 )

      No, Arnold can't run again. It's basically between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.

      • No, Arnold can't run again.

        Without a time machine I suppose.

        • He'll be back.

          Sorry.

          Actually, that sucks because I already sent in my remote control ballot and I would like to change my Gobernador vote to the Japanese guy with the bass guitar. I'll bet he can get a budget in on time!

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by zill ( 1690130 )

        No, Arnold can't run again.

        But he's the running man!

      • No, Arnold can't run again. It's basically between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown.

        But... but... He's the RUNNING MAN [wikipedia.org]!

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) *

      I mean, while he's up there, we can't hope for another movie

      Is that a Hobson's choice or what? The good news is that he's no longer governor. The bad news is that he'll make another movie.

      The only celebrity ex-governor who went out with class was Jesse "the Body" Ventura.

      • You mean the 9/11 troofer?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by c0lo ( 1497653 )

        I mean, while he's up there, we can't hope for another movie

        The bad news is that he'll make another movie.

        Why is this bad news?

        I think that the world would be poorer (more boring) without Rickrolling, LOLcats and Schwartzy's movies. You may not like them, even you may consider them silly or stoopeed, but how the world would be without "Ach'll be back" and "Hasta la vista, baby"?

  • If I was a Politician (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Basehart ( 633304 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:46PM (#33968266)
    I'd rather be endorsed by a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar than a police association any day.

    • I'd rather be endorsed by a bespectacled, long-haired Japanese man in a tutu and leggings rocking out on a bass guitar than a police association any day.

      Well, this is California...

      We are far friendlier to alternative lifestyles than most. Heck, that isn't really all that "alternative" around here... its more like friday night at the coffee shop.

  • twitter auto-shortened the url.

    "OMG u haz to c www.reallylongurlfornoapparentreason.net/content.html" to "OMG u haz to c www.bit.ly/content"

    Oh well, i dont use twitter enough to know

    Cluelessly posted ?from=twitter

  • In terms of possible web pages you could have linked to via a misspelled http://bit.ly/ [bit.ly] address, a man in a tutu is pretty tame in comparison.

    • Basically this *shudder*

      On the other hand, Meg has accidently introduced us to a great Bass player that I probably would have never experienced.
      Props for that :)

  • Computer illiterate? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MrEricSir ( 398214 )

    Could it be that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is computer illiterate?

    • Is the sky blue? (checks) Yes it is!

    • Re:Computer illiterate? (Score:4, Funny)

      by Nocuous ( 1567933 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:27PM (#33968576)

      Could it be that former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is computer illiterate?

      Yes, because she of course typed in the url. And was responsible for QA, and for fixing any problems that show up.

      She does all her own technical and scut work. Yesterday, she got her own coffee and collated those new defamatory fliers. Tomorrow she's going to run the cabling under the server room floor in her campaign headquarters.

  • Seems like the best thing that could have happened (Score:5, Interesting)

    by h4rr4r ( 612664 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:50PM (#33968304)

    Seems like the best thing that could have happened, if the police support them you know they are scumbags.

  • Libya (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by MichaelSmith ( 789609 )

    I am surprised that the Japanese guy in the tutu isn't banned by Sharia law.

  • Wrong country? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Etrigoth ( 1119741 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:03PM (#33968404)

    According to his You-tube profile, this guy is from South Korea, not Japan ?

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      He's playing Japanese music so it's an understandable mistake.

  • Not Japanese! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    According to his own YouTube page he's South Korean, not Japanese! The Far East is not one country you know.

  • Perhaps an anti-Greg Whitman person on staff at bit.ly changed where the URL redirects to?

    Or performed a MITM attack, when the tweet was being sent, to rewrite the URL.

    Cue twilight zone music

  • You think it was an accident? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LoudMusic ( 199347 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:15PM (#33968490)

    You think it was an accident? Shit, they've even got Slashdot putting her name in lights. Looks like a rather well played marketing tactic to me.

    And probably picked up thousands of new Twitter followers in the process.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      No politician want's to be associated with a joke where they are the tutu clad butt of it. The reality is, it is popular because of the negative connotations associated with it and a lot of people want to see her in a bad light. A popularity poll certainly but a negative one.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BobMcD ( 601576 )

        No politician want's to be associated with a joke where they are the tutu clad butt of it. The reality is, it is popular because of the negative connotations associated with it and a lot of people want to see her in a bad light. A popularity poll certainly but a negative one.

        Is it really THAT negative, though? Some intern screwed up on his grunt work. It happens all the time. It could, possibly be used to construe her as being 'more human'. She makes mistakes. Remember Gloria Allred recently accusing her of having a photographic memory which included things her husband did without her involvement? Tutu-man kinda flies in the face of that argument, doesn't it?

      • Exactly; that any publicity is good publicity only works for artists.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fishexe ( 168879 )

      And probably picked up thousands of new Twitter followers in the process.

      Yeah, all the tutu-bass music fans are now following her campaign, anxiously awaiting the next video. They'll be really disappointed to see a link to some stupid political endorsement.

  • Yes, he titles his videos in Japanese, and plays a awesome slap bass line to Japanese pop songs.

    But he is actually a Korean. Check out his YouTube page: H.J.Freaks [youtube.com]

    He can also shred a Strat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQShZ2Tnshk [youtube.com]

  • Prop 19? (Score:5, Funny)

    by krray ( 605395 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:18PM (#33968508)

    Looks more like an endorsement for proposition 19.
    I want what he's smoking!

  • . . . example of the foreign influence in American government politics.

  • When I read the description I was all like "Oh please oh please oh please oh please let it be the one I think it is!"

    Mio Akiyama has nothing on that bass player, that's an excellent rendition of Fuwa Fuwa time.

  • I'm just going to quote djdavetrouble... (Score:5, Funny)

    by seyyah ( 986027 ) on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @08:56PM (#33968802)

    ... word for word:

    I want to thank fairy bassist, Meg Whitman and the rest of the whole fucking internet for making my day over 9000 times more awesome. I'd also like to thank Japan for mastering how to take some regular ass shit and make it bizarre. also 8 string bass ftw!

  • this wasn't on purpose. I could get behind a candidate that has a sense of humor.

  • slashdot just can't stay out of politics. must find some dirt on the whore. she is a whore, of course.

  • You are tweeting it wrong!

  • Ow ow ow! Soda through my nose! OW OW OW!!!

    I want all of my fellow Slashdotters to know that this is, in fact, the first time I have EVER used the following acronym:

    ROTFLMAO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Seriously. But this deserved it.

  • At least this is really just a typo (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm waiting for the day that bit.ly or one of those other services like them, fucks up. Imagine someone uses the bit.ly API to automatically send all their links through redirect hell, then for some reason bit.ly malfunctions (or decides they don't like that user), and all the links go elsewhere (nambla, cult of scientology, neo-nazi party, porn, whatever -- use your imagination). Pure chaos and hilarity.

  • I'd love to see if her opponent pulls the trigger on an ad making light of this. "Jerry Brown is ready to make the tough choices. He's ready to fix the broken state government. His opponent, on the other hand... (cue tutu guitar man)"

  • This is what happens when you don't double-check your clipboard contents. (The URLs being similar apart from one missing character is just coincidence)

  • People may believe that this person cares about public perceptions, there is no evidence to support this statement. My wish to my fellow Republicans is that we find a gubernatorial candidate who believes in less government that has NOT conducted business guided by short sited blind ambition.

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