controversy

How to prevent and respond to a user revolt

The last thing you need as an entrepreneur is for your company to be engulfed in a public controversy. Just ask Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Path, Airbnb, Geeklist, and the countless other companies, big and small, that have been the target of press backlash and user vitriol.

It doesn't matter how careful you are: the more successful you become, the more likely it is that you'll make a mistake that ignites the blogosphere. There are ways to minimize the fallout and, more importantly, ways to prevent a large-scale user revolt in the first place.

Let's take Instagram's recent Terms of Service controversy … Read more

Did Twitter alert NBC to Adams' Olympics criticism?

The drama surrounding Twitter's suspension of a U.K. newspaper reporter over his criticism of NBC has taken a rather surprising twist.

The Daily Telegraph is reporting today that it received an e-mail from Christopher McCloskey, NBC Sports vice president of communications, who told the news outlet that his company was alerted to tweets The Independent reporter Guy Adams sent out criticizing NBC over its Olympics coverage by Twitter itself.

"Our social media dept was actually alerted to it by Twitter and then we filled out the form and submitted it," McCloskey told the Daily Telegraph.

Adams … Read more

Huawei: You don't need to be afraid of us

For a company that builds telecommunications equipment and smartphones, Huawei has--in its own admission--not been so great at communicating its story.

Huawei's focus on serving its customers in the past came at the expense of establishing any kind of presence with the media or consumers, something its executives believe opened the door to a misinformation campaign that has stunted its progress in the U.S.

"We realized we were not good with communication," said Charles Ding, the senior-most Huawei executive based in the U.S., in an interview with CNET. "We didn't clarify who we … Read more

The 404 840: Where we're going nomad (podcast)

Stoopid Andy fills in for Justin Yu today, and we talk about the Duke Nukem Forever reviews fallout and an advertising first for Time magazine and Modern Warfare 3.

The 404 Digest for Episode 840

Things get heated after Duke Nukem Forever gets reviewed. Time magazine lends its iconic branding to Activision.

Episode 840 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

B&N fires back at Amazon over Kindle battery life

This morning, CNET posted a story about how Amazon--after Barnes & Noble had claimed that its new Nook e-reader offered two months of battery life--had changed the battery life figures on its Web site for the Kindle WiFi and Kindle 3G to match the new Nook's.

Apparently, Amazon felt that Barnes & Noble had come up with its numbers using an equation based on having the wireless completely turned off and reading for just 30 minutes a day. Amazon's original one-month battery life for the Kindle was based a user reading for one hour a day with the wireless turned off. So it went ahead and updated the Kindle's battery life numbers to reflect Barnes & Noble's equation and clarified the new numbers with the following promotional copy on the Kindle's product page:

Paul Allen says new book isn't revenge on Gates

The controversy over Paul Allen's new book, which hits stores next week, has taken a different turn, with Allen playing defense against critics over the memoir's sometimes negative portrayal of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

In an interview with "60 Minutes," which airs this Sunday, Allen rebuffs criticisms from last month, saying the book is not an act of revenge against Gates, and is instead meant to serve as a record of what happened.

"It's not about [revenge]," Allen told Lesley Stahl in the interview. "I just felt like it's an important … Read more

For EA, Fox News and controversy are good things

When it comes to controversy and Fox News, Electronic Arts is glowing in its praise.

Speaking to IndustryGamers in an interview published yesterday, EA Games Label President Frank Gibeau said that drumming up some controversy around a game isn't "a bad thing." In fact, Gibeau told the gaming publication that he believes developers trying to build an audience around a new title "should court controversy."

Controversy is nothing new in the gaming space, especially when it comes to shooters. Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, once the most popular game ever released, allowed gamers to participate in a massacre … Read more

Groupon cans its Super Bowl ads

Even when the group in question is slightly whiny and humorless, if enough people band together, they can pull off a revolution.

In this case, I happen to be referring to critics of the Groupon Super Bowl ads. You know, the ones that looked like charity ads at first, but then turned out to be ads for charity at home.

After five days in which Groupon managed very successfully to drown out any public knowledge of something called LivingSocial, which also advertised during the Super Bowl, CEO Andrew Mason declared in a blog post today that the ads are being … Read more

Controversial Medal of Honor nixes Taliban

After a long battle with critics, the embattled Medal of Honor game will not have Taliban fighters in its multiplayer mode, the game's executive producer announced in a blog post today.

Medal of Honor Executive Producer Greg Goodrich said that he and his team have been receiving "feedback from friends and families of fallen soldiers who expressed concern over the inclusion of the Taliban in the multiplayer portion" of Medal of Honor. He said that he and his team "care deeply about" those opinions.

"Because of this, and because the heartbeat of Medal of … Read more

Mint posts, then pulls controversial immigration chart

Intuit-owned online financial tool Mint.com posted an item entitled "The Economic Impact of Immigration" to its MintLife blog earlier this week that quickly caught attention for all the wrong reasons.

The story, which featured an "infographic" and has since been taken down by the company, detailed the monetary impact that undocumented immigrants currently have on the U.S. economy, citing such numbers as 43 percent of all food stamps and 41 percent of unemployment benefits going to these individuals.

Besides being controversial, the numbers behind the imagery turned out to be questionably sourced. The Atlantic, … Read more