Prime Group

TechCrunch reports on a backlash among Facebook users, http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/21/cbssports-facing-march-madness-backlash-on-facebook
-this-app-blows/, for an application provided by CBS to track March Madness. Apparently, it doesn’t work very well and there are countless four-letter filled posts beating them up for it. One of the more high profile errors was not crediting Texas A&M with the win over BYU.

Here is one post from the TechCrunch article that identifies a bit of a theme from the Facebook posts minus all the f-bombs.

“this is really about brands taking the leap onto facebook and the potential pitfalls. It’s something many, many companies are exploring and this is a great example of how not to do it.”

Is this really the case of a brand who so desperately wanted to be connected to Facebook and its users that it went to market with a beta application? Maybe, though that seems highly unlikely since, as another TechCrunch poster correctly states, the same Texas A&M bug was on their main site as well.

What is almost certainly true, as anyone at CBS tasked with reading the Facebook threads will find out, is that online, social networks can serve as the world’s biggest echo chamber with one purveyor of information making a claim – e.g. CBS rushed to market because they were desperate for a Facebook strategy – only to have it repeated over and over again by like minded people until most people assume some variation of it to be accurate.

Of course “rushing a Facebook strategy” is probably better than the alternative, echo-chamber “truth” percolating on Facebook – “CBS f-ing sucks.”