When a post on the Ashbury Eyewear site featuring Kr3w’s new snowboard team started a blazing 114 comment flame war between people claiming to be from Comune, Ashbury, and Kr3w it did more than waste time for everyone involved. It sent one more reminder to other companies that what their employees post online from work can come back to bite them.
In the comments the Ashbury Eyewear site admin eventually exposed all the posts that were coming from what they believed was Comune’s IP address. A similar thing happened last month when Yobeat.com’s Jared Souney called out Burton employees for posting anonymously to the Yobeat.com comments.
This debacle caused at least one manager to take action. “After I saw those comments I seriously sent an email to my staff telling them not to do shit like that,” one company executive told us. “With online you always have to try and stay one step ahead on shit like that. Employees can screw things up without even realizing they’re doing it.”
Most employees understand that whenever they speak, they’re in some ways “speaking for the company,” but with social media taking over it becomes more important that ever to remember that what is Tweeted, facebooked, myspaced, or posted to comment boards has a far larger audience than just talking shit between friends at an after party.
It’s not all downside, however. Conflicts are great for traffic and we’re guessing this feud probably ended up helping Ashbury get more traffic than they’ve had in a while.
three more pointless companies with nothing really to offer. argue away with each other.
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