Slightware November: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Poor Technology and User Errors Continue to Wreak Havoc on Brands

November is always a great time to look for Slightware, those pesky technology gaffes that end up giving brands a black eye. This November featured the always popular online holiday shopping headaches, nausea-inducing technical problems and brands stumbling with social media.

Image is Everything
The Google PR people spent the month working overtime when an offensive, retouched picture began to surface as the number one result for "Michele Obama." Google was trapped between an ugly racism controversy and their policy of limited, manual intervention in search results. The challenge was further complicated by their response (or lack of response) to the "Google bomb" problem that plagued George Bush during the last part of his administration: searching for "miserable failure" on Google returned his official Whitehouse bio as the first listing. If Google didn’t make a change for one, how could they make a change for the other? While unpleasant, they stuck to their principles. Other less notable celebrities had "image problems." An electronic billboard for a Gulf coast TV news team featured the smiling trio coupled with a live feed from Twitter. Unfortunately the feed said, "Three accused of rape." Rumors abound that several station personnel were suspended.

Unsociable Social Media
Social media problems ran the gamut from hacking to hack strategy. Early in the month over 200 Facebook groups were hijacked. In actuality this was not true hacking, rather the exploitation of group management options. The hackers made it clear that they could post damaging information if they wanted to. Other brands suffered self-inflicted Facebook wounds when they required users to become fans before they could see content. Most users had the same reaction, "well, how do I know if I WANT to become a fan?"

Government Technology: An Ongoing Oxymoron
Let's face it, government does not have the best track record when it comes to technology and the bureaucratic brand known across the country as "Election Board" got another black eye during the November elections. Optical scanners did not work, tabulation software was glitchy and electronic voting results were questioned. Throwing in the towel and fleeing your home district was not really an option. Later in the month, FAA computer problems grounded flights across a large portion of the eastern seaboard.

Type Ohs!
Word processing typos are always good for a laugh. A Midwest school district sent correspondence to the homes of students promising the most "irrelevant" learning experience possible. A California pizza place told customers that they would not be honoring an advertised deal because the word "each” had been omitted from the ad.

And Finally, Black Friday and Cyber Monday - Too Much of A Good Thing
No matter how well prepared major web sites claim to be, downtime, slow response rates and other glitches keep popping up on Black Friday and Cyber Monday under the crush of traffic. Even Twitter had a problem with too many people tweeting about great deals. EBay attempted to get out in front of the holiday crush the previous weekend, but upgrade complications caused a serious downtime problem.

Well, that's all the Slightware for November. And for brands, that was more than enough.


Kenneth J. Weiss is Director of E-Commerce for Hoover and author of the new book, Slightware – The Next Great Threat to Brands. Download the first chapter for free at www.Slightware.com

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