Tell Tale Twitter

The Internet retailer Amazon found itself in hot water recently when a cataloging error resulted in thousands of books, including many gay and lesbian themed titles, being removed from sales rankings and product searches. What was social media's impact in this story though?

The story broke on Twitter and continued to evolve on the social networking site. New tags like '#amazonfail', '#glitchmyass' and '#amazonsorry' were the top ranking tags on Twitter for a two day period, and all were directly related to the Amazon story. The tags continued to pull people in and helped to keep the story publicised at a time when Amazon wanted to keep the outcry to a minimum.

Although the company issued press releases to the media, the Amazon response strategy did not include using the channel that was fuelling the fire. Around the time the story was gathering pace, the Tweet offered by Amazon via its Twitter stream was an advert for Nutella Frosted Cupcakes. The company also opted against publishing a YouTube video offering apology as Domino's Pizza did when they suffered a similar PR setback recently.

Amazon seem to have adopted a 'this will blow over strategy' and it largely has, but was this simply a Pyrrhic victory? The online retailer seemed to be comfortable with having words like 'fail' synonymous its brand for a few days. The perceived lack of transparency also led to an online petition and weeks worth of blog posts criticising the company.

Most titles have now been reinstated leading to a dying down of the backlash, but the company continue to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blow up, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

Time will tell if this changes customer perception of the Amazon brand or if '#amazonfail' should be Amazon wins.

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