SOCIAL MEDIA
Introduction
Twitter is a social media site which enables people and organizations to have broad conversations with people from all around the world. Users are allowed to post content provided it does not go against the twitter terms and conditions. They can therefore post a variety of things which may as well be negative posts about other people.
Problem analysis
An example of one negative post on twitter is when an employee of KitchenAid accidentally posted a negative comment about President Obama’s late grandmother. The tweet was so offensive and was removed less than five minutes after it was posted. The company and its senior members followed with messages expressing their apologies and stated that the tweet was not a representation of the brand’s opinion (Anthony, 2012).
This is a major problem in that, most of the people who read that comment immediately found it as offensive. The drama spread far and wide given the person addressed by the tweet and the nature of that tweet. This may have led to a reduction in the number of customers who eat at the KitchenAid. The response time however for the situation to be handled was less than three hours. KitchenAid’s professional response to the situation attracted the brand over 1000 new followers.
Establishment of a solution
In order to reduce instances of this happening, criteria for a solution should be established. The evaluation can be divided into stages:
Define the ‘ideal’ solution. This is the solution which is most likely to be implemented. In this case the ideal solution would be to create a validation on the source code which refuses to post any comment which contains negative language. The comment will only be posted once the statement has been affirmed by the program. The input validation would reduce chances of negative or offensive comments being posted on social media.
Eliminate solutions which cannot meet the constraints. These include automatic removal of accounts whose owners usually use inappropriate language. Such solutions cannot be implemented because they end up reducing the number of subscribers to the site and would reduce the popularity of the site. They are therefore taken off the table and better solutions are sought.
Evaluating the remaining solutions against the results required. The other solutions such as automatic detection and elimination of negative comments, sending a warning message to people who go against the rule and preventing offenders from befriending celebrities.
Assessing the risks associated with the best decision. The best decision so far is to apply input validation. This method has no risks whatsoever but is expensive as it requires new coding of the social network program. This means programmers have to be hired and new facilities may be required. It may also be time consuming as the process might come with changes which affect the whole system..
Making the decision involves actually implementing the choice decided upon. This is done from the social network help centers and then implemented, mostly as an upgrade of the previous system. The sponsors, managers and customers are informed of the renovation beforehand. The final product once functional is then advertised on their website and other web pages related to the same (ITS).
References
Anthony Brian, 2012 October 04. Retrieved from mashable.com/2012/10/03/kitchen-aid-obama-dead-grandma/#8KNX19S9Skqo
