If you haven’t heard the story yet, a Chicago real estate company called Horizon Realty Group filed a lawsuit against one of its tenants on Monday. She apparently made a remark on Twitter to 20 of her followers on 5/12/09, saying that, “Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it’s okay.” The user’s Twitter account is now deleted, but as I mentioned yesterday, with the help of Google Cache, people were able to locate her exact tweet.
Horizon, worried that the tweet will be “distributed throughout the world” and that it has been “greatly injured in its reputation”, is suing her for $50,000 in damages to their reputation.
The spokesperson for Horizon, Jeffrey Michael, is quoted in the Sun-Times saying that Bonnen wasn’t contacted before the suit was filed or asked to remove the Tweet. He then made this stunning statement: “We’re a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization.”
As you can imagine, this really didn’t sit very well with the online community. Within hours after the story was first introduced, it has made its way to ALL the popular online news site and blogs. At the time of this writing, a Google search of “Horizon Realty, mold” returns 474 news articles, and 53,200 search results. And if that’s not enough, every single one of the results on the first page is linking to an article relating to the story.
What’s even worse? 5 out of the 10 first page Google search results of “Horizon Realty apartment” will also lead you to that story. If there is “bad publicity”, this is it.
All right, if your first reaction was “we’d better watch out before we do something stupid to any Twitterers”, you have got this all wrong. If your marketing personnels don’t see this as a clear indication of potentially accomplishing something remarkable online, then they oughta be fired. Take a minute and think about this: if an average person with 20 Twitter followers created such a tidal wave online, what then, exactly, should your organization be capable of generating? More importantly, why isn’t it happening?
The platforms are there; the people with interests are there; the audiences are there; they have all been there for a long time, and better yet, they are eagerly watching, searching and awaiting every minute of the day. What’s missing is you, with an extremely interest story, for them to tell.
Make something amazing, and the world will find you, guaranteed.
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