From the ‘know your audience’ files…
I’m torqued about a tweet! Seriously. I checked in using FourSquare today at Urban Bean in central Phoenix and moments later I received a tweet from a certain political candidate asking me to help him “STOP” Nancy Pelosi and Harry Mitchell. The tweet came from a service called TwitHawk, which I find quite ironic.
One of the first rules of PR is to know your audience. What makes this particular candidate think sending a divisive political message like this to random tweeps based on geo-location or keywords is a smart idea? Why, it might even backfire if you send said tweet to someone on the opposite side of the political spectrum who has a large following of his own…
I hadn’t heard of TwitHawk, but I went to the site and found that it’s a paid service that is “a real time targeted marketing engine that will find people talking on twitter now by your chosen topic and location, allowing you to really hit your target mid conversation with ease.” Methinks you missed the target Mr. Schweikert!
As a marketer I can see how a service like this could be useful, but it’s one thing to try to sell me a slice of pizza and another to try to sell me an ideology. Given 60 percent of Arizona voters are independents or Democrats, this approach has a huge failure rate — and worse a more than 40 percent chance of backfiring. Additionally, just because I was physically in his district at the time does not necessarily mean I live in his district, so it’s not really very well targeted at all.
Politics aside, I feel a little violated by TwitHawk. I struggle with the nature of social media a lot, and I realize by using social media I am accepting some level of exposure, and of course FourSquare is built on the idea that people know where you are…but I still think TwitHawk violates some sort of social contract. At the very least, it turned me off. Am I overreacting because it was a political message?
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Comments
July 27th, 2010 at 11:01 am
You are not overreacting! These politicos have gone too far and it needs to stop! Especially with the folks on the right. I am sick and tired of their dirty antics. People who play dirty like that are not the kind of people I want running my country!!! Long Live Obama!!!
July 28th, 2010 at 3:47 am
TwitHawk has been around for a while. I don’t think his methods are well thought out at all, however I think it’s at least a little cool they’re looking at location-based marketing techniques…. concept is there, just horrible (lazy) implementation?
Also… Your retweet button isn’t configured right – posts links as “http://bit.ly/undefined” – FYI
July 28th, 2010 at 7:39 am
Nice work, Len.
July 28th, 2010 at 10:10 am
Privacy or any sense of being “fairly targeted” is dead and social media holds the smoking gun. I’m shocked you are schocked.
July 28th, 2010 at 10:13 am
Linda, I’m not shocked. I simply think this particular tool for this particular application doesn’t work. I agree with you on the privacy piece and even mentioned that in my post. I do think, however, that there is a difference between targeted messages and SPAM and this was SPAM.
July 28th, 2010 at 11:18 am
Great comments! I cannot even tell you the amount of times someone targets me and/or the dealership with a specific political message assuming we share the same sentiment. Did something change recently, where we have all become like-minded because we like coffee, amazon.com or pizza?
July 28th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Frankly, Foursquare scares me as well. I signed up about a month ago, started adding friends and thought it was so much fun. But then, a friend brought up a very good point that scared the you know what out of me. It seems that thieves are using Foursquare to find out when people are out and if they know where they are, they know how long it would take someone to get home…and they are robbing people. Never thought of that but makes perfect sense. Since having the conversation I haven’t used FS once but people are still continually trying to add me as a friend. I’m torn on what to do because I want to keep up on social media and participate but I also have been robbed before and it’s not fun! As for TwitHawk, that is very intrusive and frankly doesn’t seem right.
July 28th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
I feel the same way about polarizing e-mails sent out by acquaintances who seem to think that everyone they know needs to hear their latest Teabaggery. And I feel the same way about people at mixed dinner parties or other social events who decide to hold court and simply blast the opposition party without any regard for the possibility that others might disagree.
TwitHawk “Developers Doin’ it Right?” Maybe… – Textifying Says:
September 12th, 2010 at 2:41 am
[...] TwitHawk when he received a very political message via this new engine. Gutman said in his blog, “From the ‘know your audience’ files…” that he felt “a little violated by TwitHalk.” He said that just because he was in the [...]
October 25th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Maybe a no-tweet list is in order?