Social Media is such a fickle beast. One day people are Tweeting a revolution and the next a stalker takes a liking to Facebook’s CEO. However, Social Media, or at least Sony’s use of it, hasn’t been consistent leading to a massive blunder on the company’s part.
If you’ve been following any technology or gaming blog, you may know about Sony’s borderline lawsuit against George Hotz (Geohot). Sony is relentless pursuing every legal avenue available to fight Geohot’s publicly released PS3 Jailbreak. While the suit let alone the thought of suing Geohot for developing and releasing a Jailbreak of the PS3 seems ridiculous, Sony’s Social Media presence has ironically reflected the company’s publicly perceived image of insanity.
One of the biggest blunders is Sony’s marketing character Kevin Butler (Jerry Lambert) retweeting the code needed to Jailbreak a PS3. The response posted by Kevin is posed as a Battleship joke and contains the original reply, Jailbreak code and all. While Kevin/Jerry or whoever is managing the account went for a quick laugh, it only highlights how disorganized Sony’s Social Media presence is.
To make matters worse and further insinuate a PR blunder, Sony asked YouTube to not only hand over Geohot’s personal information but to disclose the personal information of anyone who has commented or viewed his video on Jailbreaking the PS3.
Casting its evidence-gathering net far and wide, SCEA has demanded that YouTube surrender not only information for Hotz’s account where his jailbreak video was posted, but also how many users accessed the video, the usernames of those with access to the video, and all usernames and IP addresses of everyone who posted or published comments to the vid.
Consistency is one of the most crucial aspects of a good Social Media strategy. Sony’s inconsistency coupled with its attempt to sue for something Apple hasn’t even considering bringing legal action against has only been amplified through Social Media.
