Comments on: Royal Mail calls striking workers ‘whiny’ on Twitter. Sort of

By: isemann

isemann — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 13:25:53 +0000

As a former frontline RM worker I can confirm your suggestion above Pez.

By: Pez

Pez — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:54:07 +0000

Hmmm… Yeah, you’re probably right, it’s a bit of a stretch – in my defence, I hadn’t been up long, and probably could’ve phrased it better

My reply to Matthew still stands though – it’s just not a very professional thing to do – especially as everyone can see your favourites and they appear on your Twitter page. I’m sure they didn’t realise that this would happen, but it does suggest that the Royal Mail has a less than respectful attitude to its frontline workers.

By: Warren Pearce

Warren Pearce — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:48:10 +0000

Totally agree that organisations need to be careful using Twitter. But think it’s a real stretch to say that favouriting a tweet means you’re “validating it’s opinion”. They *might* be using it that way but it’s by no means definite.

Favouriting tweets ia being used more creatively now, especially since @scobleizer’s experiment started. As Twitter search is so poor at finding old tweets, anything I’m slightly interested in I favourite so I can retrieve it later. If I don’t do that it effectively disappears after a few days.

No fan of #royalfail, just think there’s plenty of ammo to throw at them without attributing opinions to them without sufficient evidence

By: Pez

Pez — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:44:55 +0000

Yeah, I guess you’re right, but the fact remains that your Twitter account is the ‘face’ of your organisation, and having tweets like this on your account doesn’t really send the right message.

While the Royal Mail have made no secret of the fact that they disagree with the strike, they shouldn’t really be going around favouriting tweets that belitttle the situation and use coarse language – they wouldn’t put swearing on their website, so why should their Twitter account be any different?

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:35:10 +0000

I think “favouriting” can mean whatever you want it to mean. Some people use it to mark messages they particularly like; others use it to mark things they want to remember for later; others use it to record nice things being said about them so they can read it when they’re feeling down. I couldn’t say what’s going on in this instance, seems a bit silly, but I wouldn’t say that favouriting something means you necessarily validate or agree with it.