By Elena Zanone
On the morning after bombs rocked the city of Boston during the Boston Marathon, Condé Nast site Epicurious became the poster child for how not to use social media around this latest tragedy. It only took two tasteless tweets from the recipe site.
The first tweet read, “In honor of Boston and New England, may we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones! epi.us/TKTK.”
There seemed to be a moment of calm afterwards, which some later attributed to assuming the site had accidentally overlooked a scheduled post. The unforgivable moment came with the second tweet.
“Boston, our hearts are with you. Here’s a bowl of breakfast energy we could all use to start today: epi.us/TKTK.”
The tweets went to more than 385,000 of Epicurious’ followers. After backfire from users and, as the tweets went viral, from writers and bloggers, Epicurious responded by copy and pasting the same apologetic tweet 17 times.
“We truly regret that our earlier food tweets seemed insensitive. Our hearts and prayers are with the people of Boston,” Epicurious tweeted.
Still flustered followers of the thread remained unsatisfied, pointing to how the word “seemed insensitive” meant the site still didn’t get how egregious their action had been in the wake of the fatal bombings. Epicurious carefully copy edited its apology.
“Our food tweets this morning were, frankly, insensitive. Our deepest, sincere apologies,” it sent out.
Epicurious has not tweeted since.
On the other hand, and unrelated to Epicurious’ fiasco, Twitter showed that outside of enabling communication and information during a tragedy like this, a social media site can also step it up and facilitate recovery. Twitter donated its “promoted trend,” one of its main sources of ad revenue, to hashtag #OneBoston help keep information about the bombings and its aftermath top of mind. It’s worth noting that a “promoted trend” on Twitter can cost upwards of $200,000.
The hashtag has since been used to rally support for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s The One Fund {link no longer active}. The charity helps affected Bostonians cope with Monday’s devastating tragedy.
People have taken to #OneBoston {link no longer active} to share stories as they cope with the tragedy and mourn the loss three lives and more than 170 injured people, many critically.
The hashtag has also become the platform through which professional athletes “both those who play for Boston as well as other teams – have circulated messages of support. In one of the most moving sports tributes, Boston Red Sox rivals the New York Yankees played Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” during a pause in play at their game on Tuesday. The song is a Fenway Park tradition, played during the seventh inning stretch at Red Sox home games. Among those thanking the Yankees for their support were Neil himself.
“Thank you NY Yankees for playing ‘Sweet Caroline’ for the people of Boston. You scored a home run in my heart. With respect, Neil #OneBoston,” he tweeted . {link no longer active}
Source: Mr. Media Training
