Canada’s technology champion, Research In Motion Ltd is scrambling to remedy back its reputation, as an extensive series of lingering service blackouts around the world left millions of BlackBerry owners in the dark without access to emails or instant messages. The international confidence in RIM plummeted.

Last week, blackouts that began Monday in Europe, Africa and the Middle East spread to North America, knocking BlackBerry users in the United States and Canada off-line. Service disruptions were also reported in South America, Hong Kong and Japan. The annoyed BlackBerry users around the world took to Twitter and Facebook to vent out their anger. This is an example oh how the reputation of one company can be spoiled within minutes with one mistake.

RIM is now working “night and day” to correct the problem, which was caused by a core switch failure within its own infrastructure. Making matters worse for the company, this week, RIM’s chief rival Apple Inc. is making the latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 5, available to iPhone users. The new software includes iMessage, an instant messaging technology that is exclusive to Apple devices and that duplicates many of the same features offered by RIM’s BlackBerry Messenger platform, a key differentiator for the company.

As the disruption hit North America, shares of the BlackBerry maker dropped more than 4% at one point in Toronto Stock Exchange trading.

We live by five star ratings to just about anything you can buy or do in the online world these days. To plan a holiday or buy a best-seller we go by ratings and reviews online on TripAdvisor or Amazon. Real people telling you their joyous experiences helping you decide it all. Or NOT! This New York Times article lifts the lid on fake rave reviews. Here is an excerpt…

“For $5, I will submit two great reviews for your business,” offered one entrepreneur on the help-for-hire site Fiverr, one of a multitude of similar pitches. On another forum, Digital Point, a poster wrote, “I will pay for positive feedback on TripAdvisor.” A Craigslist post proposed this: “If you have an active Yelp account and would like to make very easy money please respond.”

As Reputation Managers we are constantly approached by people, firms and other service industry people about negative reviews. Negative reviews are scary for anyone and usually or mostly always done with malicious intent in our experience. If you look at it really how many times have you written about a hotel experience you did not particularly like or restaurant not having met your expectation? Its usually the good experiences one blogs or writes about with a couple of constructive criticism thrown in.

However, 5-Star reviews that we see everywhere from Amazon to TripAdvisor and review sites are being fed by the growing need to provide rave reviews to attract more customers. It is not as easy as spotting spam and people tested could not identify the fakes. The NYT article talks about Cornell researchers trying to make an algorithm to sieve out the fake rave reviews from popular websites.

There are sites that now offer positive reviews and ratings on books to music to hotels and restaurants. The more credibility and value that can be converted into hard cash will soon find an industry to alleviate the demand for them.  It will be interesting to see what the hotel industry or online shopping sites do to tackle it when this problem gets rampant and loses credibility.

‘Yet another talent lost early’  as tributes to Amy Winehouse pour in, there are quite a few shameless self-promotions going on out to market her sudden death. This post is not to serve as an eulogy to Amy but to point out to companies how not to market on their official twitter accounts during the death of a celebrity.

‘Should Traffic Ever Trump Taste?‘  gives two examples of  such behaviour and we pick the Microsoft UK PR twitter handle post – and yes they were crass enough to post this…

Clearly their later apology and tribute did nothing to cover up the real intention of the tweet.

This is a great example of how not to be a PR handle on Twitter and clearly puts Microsoft UK  in a bad light, despite the opportunity of increased sales of Amy’s music. Definitely a big ‘thumbs down’ from us here at Reputation Management For.com.

Rep. Anthony Weiner was only a few days ago a Twitter celebrity  with a large following and also listed in Time Magazine’s top 140 Tweeps to follow. Politicians who do well on Twitter are rare and Weiner sure had his moments, he’s funny and is not afraid to speak his mind.

Anthony Weiner is of course now embroiled in a controversy.  His twitter account sent a lewd photo to a Seattle college student. He then screamed ‘his twitter was hacked’, and later said he cannot be sure if the picture was actually his. Democrats, Weiner’s party backers, have distanced themselves from him and comedians are having a field day punning his name.

“I can’t say with certitude,” … “My system was hacked. Pictures can be manipulated.”

Weiner on reputation damage control mode made quite a few errors…

1. He has not reported the hacking and that has not helped. This suggests that perhaps he did send the photo himself.

2. He tried taking ownership of the picture.

3. He deleted the photo and the Yfrog account and  stopped following the recipient etc. Again very suspicious.

4. He kept talking about it, made a quip tweet soon after,  tweeted about live tweeting a game with the time included, etc and this created the buzz he did not need.

5. He finally stopped talking about it and now people want the dirt.

Meanwhile, the college student claims to have lost all her reputation and now says the photo was meant for a porn star.  ’Weinergate’ as its being called is a great example of how not to go about doing social networking.  This case yet again highlights how the US politicians get skewered for every improper thing they do while the likes of Berlusconi enjoy or enjoyed popularity just for their shenanigans.

10 things to not share on Facebook and Twitter is a post we did earlier and Anthony Weiner shared something we listed modestly as ‘ludicrous’.  ;)

[Updated 13/06/2011] I don’t envy the work of a TV Network President. I envy the salary, sure – but trying to ensure that television continues to make money at the cost of quality, principles and a core fanbase can’t be easy. That’s probably not the way the job should work, but just try telling that to Dave Howe, President of NBC Universal’s ‘SyFy’ television network. Hordes of fans are turning their backs on the cable channel, and it’s primarily down to the decision to cancel fans’ favourite: Stargate Universe.

The decision to cancel the show affectionately known as ‘SGU’ (or, to be more specific, ‘not renew it’) was made back in December 2010 at a time when the show’s ratings were already dwindling. Again, not being involved in the television industry, it’s probably not for me to observe that messing about with timeslots and airdates (read as: total inconsistency) is going to mess up viewing figures. What I can tell you is that by alienating your fans, Dave, you’ll lose out in the long run. And when you alienate fans (and lose out in the long run), be prepared for the backlash that comes with it.

For reasons that go beyond the scope of this article, there is a correlation that exists between people who spend a lot of time on their computers/the internet, and people who are fans of either comics or science fiction (or both). Yeah, I’m one of them. I hate the stereotype, but I don’t deny it. Either way, it’s the people who spend more of their time on the internet that are most likely to use it to voice their opinions and speak out against perceived injustice. And this particular instance of SyFy vs Sci-Fi Fans is the perfect example of all the things that can go wrong for a company on the internet, going wrong.

Part of my job is to identify different forms of negative content on the internet, and observe and measure the effects and implications it can have on and for the company it’s directed at. There’s been a huge surge of late in the utilization of social network sites (such as Facebook and Twitter) to not only voice discontent but also organize groups at a level of efficiency previously impossible. You can reach out to people all over the world with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks to advertise your cause, and gain rapid awareness and amass followers in an extremely short space of time.

This is exactly what’s happened with SGU. One guy, not content to sit back and take the disregard being afforded to him and other Stargate Universe fans over the globe, set up a Facebook group called “Save Stargate Universe”. Simple and straight to the point. I’d normally suggest searching for the group rather than me spoon-feeding people everything, but I’m going to break a personal habit and link you directly to them: http://www.facebook.com/SaveSGU by way of using them an example. Led by social networking socialite Dean Bairaktaris, this group has amassed over 54,000 members before and since the ending of the show. Using this Facebook group as a platform for protest, several individuals have strategized and formalized plans to convey their feelings to the SyFy network.

That’s just one group. There’s an entire website dedicated to campaigning against SyFy’s decision to cancel Stargate Universe, with ‘live chat’ coming in from thousands of fans via a Twitter feed and in the 60 seconds or so I was watching, over 20 posts came up complaining about SyFy and the network’s apparent ‘loss of identity’. The network is being lambasted on forums all over the internet, both on dedicated science-fiction based forums and general community-based forums covering a whole range of usually unrelated topics. There have been picture-campaigns in which people have taken their time to create (although admittedly not always from scratch) images promoting the “Save SGU” sentiment (as well as other comments made at the expense of certain networks and network presidents too explicit for me to share here). Multiple petitions have been signed (and repeated), mailing campaigns have seen people send letters and postcards in to SyFy telling of their discontent and there doesn’t appear to be any signs of letting up. I’ve even seen a YouTube video of a guy cancelling his cable contract and returning his equipment to his local cable company in outrage. Oh, and you can also (allegedly) do your part by buying episodes of SGU on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Since the cancellation of the show and the airing of the final episode, MGM have further angered fans by stubbornly releasing the 2nd season on DVD (but not Blu-Ray) billing it as ‘The Final Season’. Still this hasn’t deterred fans nor has it hindered their progress as renewed campaigns are starting up all the time, with a greater emphasis on the international audience being considered (enter ‘Save Stargate Universe UK‘).

Whilst serving as a blatantly obvious example of the dangers of turning your back on your core market in favour of advertising revenue, it also highlights all the potential types of negative media a company can expect from the internet should they give people cause. Dave Howe has incurred the wrath of hundreds of thousands angry viewers who are annoyed with the identity crisis his network is suffering. As the last genuinely decent Science Fiction show coming out of America at the moment (we still have Dr. Who in the UK, which is clearly much lower budget, but adored by millions [which in itself is a bigger thing for us, given comparative populations of UK vs US]), Stargate Universe marks the end of what was a great era of television.

The clearest lesson to be learnt here is “don’t do anything so stupid as to offend your core market”. Still, you can’t please everybody, and you certainly can’t expect them not to “Rush“ to the internet with lists of reasons why you’re the devil incarnate. There are ways of handling negative media, but that’s another topic for another time.

Dialing out,

Ken

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2011 is seeing its first great celebrity meltdown with Charlie Sheen; and as reputations went, he clearly was the highest paid TV actor, and all this is changing.  Charlie joined Twitter in the middle of it all and in 24 hours @charliesheen has amassed a following of  1077386 and counting.

His tweeting fascinates one and all, from his ‘goddesses’ and twin boys’ pictures to his polygamous life its all in the headlines. Talk shows are increasing viewership with a Sheen appearance like Piers Morgan did or ABC did. Hugh Hefner may soon have a successor in Charlie Sheen, but Two and a Half Men is cancelled and his soon to be ex-wife has managed to get their twin boys out of the house and away from their dad.

The celebrity meltdown paradox: However, the thing about celebrities’ reputation is that they almost always manage a comeback professionally and otherwise a la Robert Downey Jr, Mickey Rourke, Brittney Spears, George Michael and Martha Stewart. Even Mel Gibson could make a U-turn and be the toast of Hollywood in the years to come.

For now, the Charlie Sheen reputation as a professional has taken its biggest blow, but strangely his tweets are not as bizarre as one would expect them to be. He’s actually quite funny in the pictures he tweeted and let’s hope this twitter avatar gets him back on track. But as all public meltdowns go this could be a painful watch.

By the way, Lindsay Lohan, are you watching the Sheen saga?

Over-sharing on Facebook is getting contagious by the minute, and this spikes when you go through a personal upheaval. Death in the family is one of those vulnerable moments when you dig up old family pictures and post onFacebook and Twitter. On the flip side a wedding – happy event has you posting your happy pictures in a similar way. But all these lead to oversharing at a later date as things change in your life.

Over-sharing is perhaps up to one’s personal boundaries and can be different from person to person. However, there are a few things you should never share on social media. At Reputation Management For.com these are the top 10 things to never share on social media.

1. Your address and street locations and even the addresses of your parents in your hometowns.
2. Never mention you’re off on a holiday and will not be tweeting or posting for a certain period of time.
3. Posting pictures of your children and home videos should be a resounding  ’NO’.
4. Never talk about how you hate your job or colleagues or boss.
5. Talking about your personal affairs both personal and professional.
6. Never post your daily routine, you’re letting out crucial info when it comes to safety by doing so.
7. Fights in the family should not be mentioned.
8. Never mention that you’re having a party, you’re sure to be inundated with uninvited guests or riled by those who did not get an invite.
9. Don’t link a friendly site like a Facebook to your professional one like LinkedIn for eg.
10. If it feels like oversharing, even a tad bit, don’t do it. Instincts are usually right about such things and stay away from social media during personal highs and lows as they peak, ‘cos when it all comes back to normalcy you’re bound to regret oversharing.

These 10 are of course not including the ones like not sharing your passwords, pet names, bank balance, thoughts on racism etc. and other ludicrous info that should not be mentioned.

Write in to us examples of oversharing that you’ve noticed on Facebook or Twitter…

In an era whereby the mainstream media is overpopulated by nerds in their mothers basements writing up scandals on blogs and forums, it’s sometimes easy forget that normal people use the internet too. But nothing carries itself faster over the internet than a celebrity being lambasted on a social networking site by another celebrity. Cesc Fabregas found this out recently as he and thousands of others read on Huddersfield Town’s Anthony Pilkington some disparaging comments about the Arsenal captain’s antics after the 2-1 victory over Huddersfield in the FA Cup.

It was reported on Twitter that Cesc Fabregas had been less than courteous upon being approached by two opposing players after the match had finished. Anthony Pilkington Tweeted:

“2 lads asked him for his shirt and he told them to f*ck off!! Sick player but what a tit!”

Having a direct line to the thoughts and ponderments of celebrities and sports stars is proving to be a huge hit, and Twitter certainly seems to be leading the charge in some respects. But with everyone having access to these public outbursts, it places an even greater emphasis on managing one’s online presence to ensure that any negativity is kept as far out of the spotlight as possible. And it’s not just Cesc Fabregas that’s landing himself in trouble because of posts made on social networking sites.

Recently Liverpool’s Ryan Babel made all kinds of mistakes, earning him the honour of becoming the first player to face an improper conduct charge from the FA after he made his ‘opinions’ known. Making some very ill-advised comments about a referee and posting a picture of said ref in a rival’s strip are enough to get a footballer into trouble, it seems. But it just goes to show how seriously a celebrity’s actions can be taken, and demonstrates a clear example as to why people should take care to manage their image and reputation online. One wrong move can see you in a whole lot of bother, and it can take time and expertise to make it go away.

The electronics retailer Bing Lee  found itself in  deep waters after being slammed by social media experts for setting up a  facebook campaign for the Queensland flood victims through which it pledged to donate $1 to the Queensland flood appeal for every user who became its fan!

Bing Lee raised a few eyebrows as it tried to cash in on the sentimental factor associated with the floods to notch up the popularity of its site.  The opportunistic marketing tactic was attacked bluntly on twitter by its users who adopted the hashtag #charityfail to drive home the message.

Social media like Facebook are great tools to get connected with people in times of need and natural calamities as in the case of the Queensland floods. However, Bing Lee failed to keep up the basic sensitivity while handling such an unfortunate  topic. Though many customers found this as a manipulative sales tactic of Bing Lee, the company defended its move, posting another update on its Facebook page saying…

“The $1 donated from Bing Lee is not from us, but from your effort to support the cause… If in the process we have also inspired other people and businesses to take action, which it looks like we have, then this has been a good outcome.”

Social media watchers  feel that the Bing Lee episode serves as a lesson to other businesses using social media that gaining members need not be  appropriate in every event. At the end of it all, this  unsavoury media campaign has done more damage than good to the retailer. Probably Bing Lee would have netted more FaceBook fans and a better reputation if they had opted to donate the money in the first place and then post about it on the facebook page. A case of bad reputation management, it was a botched up social media campaign on a devastating incident, which didn’t go down well with its customers and the media.