Check out the war of words (or Tweets) that flared this month on Twitter.com between the official Kamehameha Schools persona (@KSNews) and a cyber squater that has grabbed onto a related name (@KSBE).
The official school site says:
Aloha. Please do not follow @KSBE. This is not an authorized representative of our organization. Thank you.
The imposter responds:
Do not trust @KSNews. KSBE is the only Kamehameha Schools news source.
One entry from the imposter last week:
As Pauahi’s will clearly states: “Fuck da haoles.”
11:01 PM Jan 26th from web
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Twitter Fight!
Kamehameha Schools challenges a tweeting imposter.
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5 comments:
I saw this same sort of activity when I tried to follow Stephen Colbert on Twitter. Colbert's people had something of a better attitude about it, though. This also happened to Burger King.
Just spent a good chunk of the weekend talking about Twitter and other microblogging/wiki/collaboration/web two point oh technologies. One common thread is the utopian sense of democracy that seems to be embedded in all of these systems. It's almost like the systems themselves automatically reject any sort of corporate marketing use, and tend to punish any entity attempting to grab any kind of authority (except for Wikipedia, which is run by a bunch of draconian ass-monkeys).
That's interesting... there's a fair about of corporate marketing on Facebook though. But I guess Facebook is a different animal than Twitter.
Anyhow, I thought it was funny to see Kamehameha Schools, which has a $9 billion endowment, try to fight off some punk with a lame warning like "Please do not follow @KSBE. This is not an authorized representative of our organization."
It's strangely satisfying to see a powerful organization challenged like that.
I think Facebook (frantically in search of an exit strategy) is more set up for corporate marketing. Twitter (with a more interesting and fanatical user-base) doesn't give a shit about how it's going to retire.
You hit the nail on the head, though, I think--what's great is seeing these entities assuming that their powers work here, when they really don't.
And fuck you, Wikipedia!
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