A Little Bit Of Information Can Be A Powerful Thing

The last few weeks have taught us something very fundamental yet something very simple about social media. The media has shown us that one very anonymous person with a very small piece of information can cause a whole load of trouble. With the internet now so embedded in all our lives, any information posted we can read within minutes of it being published. A perfect example was the Ryan Giggs case. Despite injunctions being made to stop those details getting out, a simply anonymous Twitter account was set up to reveal the hidden story. And once that Tweet button was pressed, it was all over.


A much more relevant example of social media being used to spread information was the recent Veka buyout of Bowater Systems. I put out a call last Tuesday night on Twitter asking if anyone had any bits of gossip so I could update my Gossip page on this site. I got a Tweet back from one of my followers just minutes later telling me that Veka was about to buy WHS Halo. This story hadn't been published on the web as of yet, so naturally as a blogger I wasn't going to miss out on this golden opportunity. So I whipped up a post within about 20 minutes and posted it just after midnight on Wednesday, ready for everyone to read in the morning. What I didn't expect (perhaps naively) was how the story exploded over the coming days. I'll post some specific stats from the last week. Each working day, including today, the story and this site spread, rather quickly. As well as usual visitors reading this story, the post reached many (if not all) employees at both Veka and WHS Halo. I had contact from many new people, via this site and via my Twitter account as I was posting updates on new comments and further developments. There was also a rumor regarding Spectus and Synseal, which turned out to be false, but this also generated a lot of interest.


As with the Ryan Giggs scenario, once the information is out there, it tends to snowball out of control. Traffic to my blog was heavy, as was my Twitter account. Then it seemed like someone wanted to shut me up for a while as I had my Twitter page attacked with hundreds of proxy-false accounts from all over the world. It had the desired effect for a few minutes and crashed my page. A quick settings change sorted that out though.


Speculation and rumor continued op until late morning Tuesday when Veka released an official statement confirming the industry's worst kept secret, that it had bought Bowater Systems.


During this frantic few days of buyouts and uncertainty, it was clear that there were some people who weren't happy about all the chatter online about what may or may not be happening with various businesses. And this is where a vital lesson must be learned if this sort of scenario (bordering on farce), isn't to happen again. If you don't want to be talked about and have people speculate on whatever might be going on, make sure the information is kept in the boardroom!


We live in an age now where people can publish information on sites like Twitter, Facebook and on blogs, and it be spread instantly around the world. If people do have sensitive information, they're naturally going to feel compelled to share it, and social media provides that ideal platform. As the title of this post suggests, if that one person has just one pivotal piece of gossip, that cat can be brought out of the bag very quickly, usually before any response can even be thought of.


I do also have plenty of private messages on Twitter, unpublished comments and email, full of further rumors and speculation. I have been reluctant to publish these as I'm not 100% sure of their accuracy, and because I don't fancy another Twitter attack so soon! But this is the world we live in now. Anonymous communication is very easy now. Businesses I'm sure will take heed of the events of these past few days.