Tale of two posts (on social media) - 13/06/13

Two recent incidents on the social media caught my attention for the disparate source of origin but both becoming ‘trending’ topics immediately

One was the blog written by anonymous group of people regarding a bad experience in a pub (Lemp Brewpub & Kitchen, Gurgaon) & the other about a POV article written by Mahesh Murthy (popular figure in the social media space and digital marketing circles) regarding the circumstances that led to the suicide of a bollywood actress, Jiah Khan.

One thing for sure, both became trending topics, the Lemp incident becoming viral on Facebook and Twitter (was trending topic for few hours) and soon mainstream media picking it up and publishing on their sites.... the other, post by Mahesh, was being liked, shared and commented upon in hordes... (which also included disappearance of the original post). The post evoked strong reaction - for & against, from the readers a personal opinion

While the buzz around Mahesh’s post was not surprising, for it had the ‘critical’ ingredients for making a ‘viral’ success: critical mass and critical message (evocative). Mahesh has about 25K followers on Facebook and close to 60K on Twitter which will give enough initial coverage for any of the message/post he puts up... And when the message is evocative talking about a touchy topic like suicide (with a backdrop of failed love, sex, torture, etc) it is bound to opinion-ate readers...who will further spread the message in their own network seeking approval of their action/thoughts. (the latest update is that an article of this appeared in Firstpost.com, this will only add on to the popularity of this post)

On the other hand, was a customer lament about a bad experience in a eat/drink joint. It has the regular dose of bad food, unfriendly staff, inflated bill, and a resultant argument (that too an aggressive one, from the post) involving cops, owners, staff, and the aggrieved party. And it did not clearly have the classic ‘critical’ ingredients to make it ‘viral’ (No critical mass - a newly created blog, and critical message - regular bad customer service).. Then, how did it become popular? I think the outcome has dependence on initial (repressed) conditions

Some of the ‘wrong’ reasons that would have helped make this post popular:
Wrong place: For sometime now, Gurgaon & DT Mall has been in the news for wrong reasons. This incident reaffirms the same and hence a lot of people would have found a reason to broadcast this.
Wrong people: The management claims the group of people to be social media ‘gurus’. Hmm, if it is true, then they would have enough and more reasons to be worried as these people would have reach to enough and more people within their network to propagate their message, including journos
Wrong timing: The management response was totally wrong. A counter response blog?? Who gave them this stupid idea? They are now doing an OK job of putting CCTV grabs on their Facebook page, but then it is still not helping...the video footage would have been a better idea

The reality of social media is that if you have a huge number of followers, and then give an opinionated view contrary to the reason why people follow you...will create enough buzz.. It is similar to a queen bee showing a bit of agitation, which soon spreads across the bee-hive and suddenly that entire world becomes active. At the other end, if there is a latent reason, even an ordinary incident could trigger a buzz in the social space. This could be similar to the ‘butterfly effect’ as mentioned in chaos theory, where minor value difference in the initial stages could majorly impact the final outcome

Cheers,

Santosh

Image source: http://www.siteiq.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/F1-Portfolio-Main-SM-fingers-tie-930x300.png

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