In late July, Chipotle garnered kudos after CEO Steve Ells called up a fan who had been Tweeting his displeasure at discovering that Chipotle’s pinto beans were cooked with pork. Ells pledged that the burrito chain would change all its menu boards to reflect the pork content. A few months later I walked into a Chipotle in Midtown and noticed their sign hadn’t changed. [More]
Apple Allegedly Kicks "The Situation" Out For Trying To Cut iPhone 4S Line
By 10.17.11
The Situation’s six-pack was allegedly sent packing after the Jersey Shore star tried to cut an iPhone 4S line at an Apple store this weekend. [More]
'Hunger Games' Viral Site Requires You To Give Marketers Control Of Your Facebook Or Twitter Account
By 10.14.11
The Hunger Games is a wildly popular series of books about a dystopian future where the government spies on your every move and teenagers square off in a to-the-death tournament for the amusement of the upper-class residents of the capitol city. The books are soon to become a big-time Hollywood franchise and as part of the much-hyped countdown to that release, millions of people are getting in on the viral marketing by logging onto a website that creates a unique badge for each user. But are these people looking at the permissions they’re signing away when they log in? [More]
Tweet Gets Citi To Stop Junk Mail Deluge
By 9.27.11
Dan and his wife were getting hit by two pieces of junk mail from Citi almost every day. One to him, and one to his wife. He couldn’t figure out how to tell Citi to stop, until he remembered the online service with the little blue bird that goes “Tweet, tweet.” [More]
Oops: Pot-Smoking Elmo Already Claimed @Qwikster On Twitter
By 9.19.11
Netflix might have flubbed on its due diligence when checking out if there were any a priori uses of the name “Qwikster.” (Whether or not just picking that name itself is a flub is another discussion.) It seems there was already an entity out there using Qwikster, and it’ll make it hard for the DVD by mail service to have a good Twitter profile. Yep, @Qwikster is a joint-smoking Elmo who gets bored in English class, harbors negative feelings about his ex-girlfriend, and recently attained level 25 in the Original Gangstaz game for iPhone. [More]
Alec Baldwin Tweets Rant About Starbucks Employee By Name And Store Address
By 9.8.11
Maybe he was riding the high of Ben & Jerry’s launching the “Schweddy Balls” flavored ice cream named after the famous SNL sketch he was in? Whatever the reason, Alec Baldwin turned his 100,000 megawatt star power and 323,235 Twitter followers on a Starbucks barrista Wednesday who apparently left him with a burnt taste in his mouth, tweeting that the guy was “uptight” and had “an attitude problem.” The tweet named the coffee worker by name and gave the cross streets of the Starbucks location he was at. Kind of like killing a gnat with a RPG, no? [More]
If You Followed @Irene On Twitter, You Reached An Ad Agency
By 8.30.11
If you’re one of the 11,000 people who decided to follow @Irene on Twitter to keep up with hurricane news, you may want to unfollow, now that the account has reverted to its pre-hurricane status as an “agency soapbox” for a product strategist (named Irene, of course) at marketing agency Huge Inc. [More]
Morton's Delivers Man Steak At Airport After He Jokingly Asks For One In A Tweet
By 8.18.11
Before boarding his plane from Tampa to Newark, Peter Shankman jokingly asked Morton’s Steakhouse over Twitter if they could meet him with a porterhouse steak when he landed. Lo and behold, they did. [More]
Insulting Restaurant Staff On Twitter While You're Still In The Restaurant Might Get You Kicked Out Of Restaurant
By 8.17.11
Think of this as the counter-point to the earlier Twitter-related post. A diner at a Houston restaurant was given the boot after she decided to Tweet her opinion of the staff while she was still at the eatery. [More]
Tweets Get Chipotle To Change Menus To Show Pinto Beans Cooked With Bacon
By 8.17.11
Both a diehard Chipotle fan and a person who doesn’t eat pork, Seth Porges was surprised to discover recently that the pinto beans he’d been eating for years from there are actually cooked with a little bit of bacon. Within two hours of emailing top execs and tweeting about it, he received a personal phonecall from Steve Ells, CEO of Chipotle. [More]
Pizza Place Learns To Not Call Customer "Dumbass" On Twitter
By 8.15.11
There are some very good reasons why many traditional publicists hate Twitter and other social media outlets that give businesses unfettered access to immediately address their customers. Because it’s amazing how quickly you can anger your entire customer base in 140 or fewer characters. [More]
NYPD Forms New Unit To Monitor Facebook And Twitter For Signs Of Criminal Activity
By 8.10.11
Be careful the next time you’re planning a bank heist on Facebook or send out a Tweet that reads “there were only supposed to be two alarm systems wtf???” As we’ve already reported, cops around the country have begun using social media to track down criminals, and now comes the news that the New York City Police Department has actually created a unit that monitors Facebook updates, Twitter feeds and the like to detect the planning of, or bragging about, illegal goings-on. [More]
NYC Deputizes All Citizens As Secret Shoppers
By 7.28.11
Inspections by New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs found that two-thirds of the supermarkets they visited were overcharging customers at the checkout counter. That’s up from 1 in 3 last August. So now they’re turning all shoppers into “deputized inspectors” to report malefactors. [More]
Eating Mini-Donuts Is Like Child Murder, Tweets Entenmann's
By 7.6.11
Attention, brands trying to be hip to the “Twitters”: while it can sometimes be good exposure to mention one of the trending words or topics publicized on the right sidebar of the site, make sure that you know what that trending topic is referring to. At minimum, make sure that it doesn’t refer to anything negative or potentially offensive. Such as a highly publicized murder trial. [More]
PR Company Tells Reviewers To Write Nice Things Or Don't Get Review Copies In The Future
By 6.15.11
The publicist for the long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever video game isn’t too thrilled that the video game reviewers of the world haven’t crowned the game as the greatest thing since the wheel. But instead of internalizing his frustration or making whispered threats and promises to reviewers, he went ahead and Tweeted to the entire world that overly negative reviewers would be in jeopardy of not receiving review copies of games in the future. [More]
Laptop Thief Caught Thanks To Spy Program, Twitter, And Eventually, The Oakland PD
By 6.1.11
After Joshua Kaufman’s Macbook was stolen from his apartment in Oakland, he notified the police. Due to budget cutbacks, Oakland PD don’t respond to many non-violent crimes anymore like burglary, grand theft, and car wrecks, so initially they couldn’t help him. Then Josh activated a tracking program on it called Hidden. Like other similar programs, it gave him real-time remote access to his computer, letting him take pictures using its webcam and capture screenshots. He set up a Tumblr to post them, his story went viral, he gave the tracking info to the police, and they ended up trapping the thief and getting the laptop back to Josh. [More]
Twitter Faces "Super-Injunction" Challenge Over User Privacy
By 5.23.11
Thousands of Twitter users have posted comments about a rumored affair between a British soccer player and a reality-TV star, and have included the athlete’s name, despite a British law that allows individuals to get a “super-injunction” blocking publication of their name. The player has now used that injunction to get a court order demanding that Twitter reveal the account information of users who’ve posted his name. [More]
Comcast Pulls $18,000 Donation Over Tweet About FCC Commissioner Turned Kabletown Flunky
By 5.20.11
Comcast is apparently very unhappy with the fact that it was eliminated in the Final Four of this year’s Worst Company in America contest. First, it goes and makes the ethically questionable move of hiring a still-active FCC commissioner, and now comes a report that the Kabletown Krew have pulled $18,000 in funding to a non-profit organization all because of a Tweet about that commissioner’s hiring. [More]
