I have been light in blogging while on Safari in South Africa (the Internet has been slow and you know, I was on a safari), but this one is too good to pass up. Last night I was checking my Facebook feed and saw references to the “Epic US Airways Social Media Fail” and “Biggest social media fail ever!”
Since just about every article on social media talks about this type of Epic failure, I figured it was just another cookie cutter post about someone using the F-word.
Oh boy was it much much crazier than that!
The team at US Airways tweeted a not safe for work (NSFW) image that is not only NSFW, but probably not safe for anyone’s mental health to look at it.
Of course, I had to look at it on a ridiculously slow Internet connection, so I was kept in suspense as I waited for it to download.
Now that I am back in Johannesburg I figured I would write a blog post about the topic, because it represents the convergence of my day job (Internet marketing with some social media sprinkled in) and my hobby of writing about travel.
I’m not going to provide the image here on the blog, but here are some articles that helped me understand the impact of this gaffe by the US Airways Twitter team. I hope that they go with the American Airlines Social Media team once the merger completes.
38 Priceless Twitter Reactions to That NSFW US Airways Tweet
The US Airways Twitter Team Gives Us the Greatest Gift We Could Ask For
And if you want to see the image, do a Google search for “deadspin us airways twitter”
At least one person is looking for a new job as a social media community manager.
Do you think that this is the worst thing that someone can do with social media? It has to be pretty high up there!
Update: The employee who made the mistake will not be fired. I think that it is great that US Airways is recognizing what is an honest mistake and not firing the employee. I’m sure it’s embarrassing enough to have made the posting.
