Several hours ago, the @paypaluk Twitter account was hacked. Whoever took control of it had fun, and Tweeted PayPal criticism and promoted that most critical (and frankly blind and obsessively anti-PayPal site that I’ve known for years whilst only feeling utter pity for the craziness of its contributors) PayPalsucks.com for a while.
Those tweets made for amusing reading in some ways. Everyone loves knocking a corporate giant. Changing the logo to show flies buzzing around a turd was amusingly diverting for a moment. Anyone with half a brain knows that such a stunt did not compromise security at PayPal. No PayPal user’s credit/debit card details were ever at risk. This was a Twitter hack.
But I must spare a thought for the community manager, the social media bod, whoever was in the chair tonight. That person is the gatekeeper on that Twitter account. They had a shit evening. They may well have had senior staff bellowing at them down the phone as they tried to make good on the problem. Trust me. I’ve been there.
I want to show solidarity with whoever that was. Won’t anyone think of the social media manager?
Thanks Dan, that bod was me! It’s not the best evening I’ve had I must admit but on the bright side, the Twitter community really pulled through for me, there are some great learnings from the experience and it developed some cool blog posts like this.
cheers!
Jon @jonin60seconds
Nice post. It’s really easy to forget, while you’re slating the big (or even small) company, that there are only human beings working there.