Category archive: Viva social
A billion dollars worth of filters
What’s going on here? Why would Facebook, with their 700 million strong user base need to buy up a mobile photo app with 30 million users?
If you’re late to the retro-filtered Instagram party and wondering what all the fuss is about, the Instagram app allows users to take very (below) average pictures on their mobile phone and turn them into vintage ‘art’. Kind of.
Read full post on The White Agency blog
DetailsOnline communities are great – unless you piss them off!
Online communities are a powerful resource for brands of all industries, but none more so than gaming. Titles can gain huge followings, complete with user generated content and insane brand advocates. But what happens when the community is not brand controlled? And what happens when this community turns against you? Just ask EA Games.
When EA rebranded their online store to “Origin” the concept seemed sound. The idea was to take on entrenched competitor Steam for control of the online game store market. Their launch day blog post talked about a unified gaming experience,
With Origin you will get access to the best content EA has to offer, across multiple platforms, anytime you want. - EA blog, The Beat
Great in theory, but the platform had bugs, most of which were exposed when mega-title Battlefield 3 launched.
Not only was there bugs with the final platform deployment, but when users turned to the online support, they found it almost useless.
In the past, this might have been the end of the story. Sales might have dipped slightly due to word of mouth reviews or possibly a negative article in a niche gaming magazine, but this was before the rise of the online community Reddit.
Horror stories emerged about web chats being cut-off mid session when things got too tough for the Origin representatives. The games section (subreddit) of Reddit has taken over with posts containing screenshots of the terrible customer support.
So what’s the moral of this little story? Online communities can turn an average product into a superstar, but they can also turn something full of potential into a PR nightmare. Oh, and don’t piss off Reddit.
Details
