This morning the Burger King Twitter account was hacked by someone claiming to be McDonald's. The hacker said that Burger King had been sold to McDonald's and many obscene tweets were posted throughout the course of the morning. A lot of re-tweeting and around 20,000 more followers were added to the Burger King account. Twitter suspended the account a few hours after Burger King reached out to them. Later this evening Burger King finally responded and opened their account back up. They tweeted "Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we're back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!"
Bryson Thorton, the spokesperson for Burger King issued an apology tonight saying, "Earlier today, our official BK Twitter Account was compromised by unauthorized users, Upon learning of this incident, our social media teams immediately began working with Twitter security administrators to suspend the compromised account until we could reestablish our brand's official Twitter page. We apologize to our loyal fans and followers, whom might have received unauthorized tweets from our account. We are pleased to announce that the account is now active again."
A lot of people were wondering why it took Burger King so long to respond and why they weren't monitoring their Twitter account. I watched the page most of the day, seeing how long it would take Burger King to respond. I personally thought it took way too long. Do you think this will effect Burger King's reputation. Has it already?
Yes, I think that this particular Twitter compromise has, indeed, negatively affected Burger King's professional reputation. As they say in the realm of social media, particularly with Twitter, "a minute's worth of Twitter content would take an hour to generate in the physical world." Similarly, a day's worth of unresolved, negative Twitter content automatically equates a month's worth of negative press within the "real world."
ReplyDeleteI agree. Way toooooo long to respond. A big company like that should be on top of things more. Now, will it hurt their bottom line? Unlikely over the long term in my mind. People may think they are stupid, but when they want a whopper, they'll get a whopper. A company like Burger King is so powerfully branded in our consciousness it would take more than this to break them.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Burger King took way too long to respond to the situation. It is no secret that there has always been competition between Burger King and McDonald's. If McDonald's adds something to their menu, Burger King isn't far behind. I have to agree with Dr. Chen that it won't hurt them in the long run simply because people have their preference, and if they hate McDonald's and refuse to go there but they monitor Twitter, they know the whole thing was a hoax.
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