My Twitter Account Was Hacked

Well, it might have been… but my children, who seem to know a lot more about these things than I do, thought it might have been a virus.

Whatever… the net result was the same.

A variety of direct messages were sent from my account to people who are (or more accurately I suspect, were) following me.  The first message wasn’t particularly nice, saying something like this:

People are saying bad things about you… click here to find out what they are saying!

The second one was slightly funnier:

I laughed my head off when I saw this picture of you…

Anyway, I think I’ve fixed the problem by changing my password, deactivating and reactivating my account and then running round a church five times at the full moon without thinking about a lemon.

But the thing that was intriguing about the whole experience were the different reactions from people.  I had maybe a couple of hundred followers (all, no doubt, hanging on my every word) and I suppose about 30 responded to me either by email or a direct message via Twitter.

Most of them, it’s true, simply said something like: Your Twitter account has been hacked, you muppet, you need to sort it out.

But others seem to trust me to such an extent that they took the rogue tweets at face value.  A mate who I haven’t spoken with for a few years tweeted me to ask what it was all about and, as a result, I called him and we’re back in touch.

Another guy, who was responding to the ‘Laughed my head off’ tweet was simply the victim of timing.  A picture of him had just been put up on Facebook.  He was receiving an award and the camera angle made it look as though he was standing in a hole.

He responded by saying: ‘Yeah, I know… must make a note to make sure I get presented an award by someone my own height!’

Now I’m not sure what all this is saying about me or Twitter or the scumbag hackers, but how about this for a stab at analysis?:

·         There’s was no rancour directed at me for getting hacked – and most people recognised the rogue tweets for what they were… meaning this is a regular occurrence

·         Those who didn’t spot them as rogue tweets took what I was saying at face value which means I need to tweet more to get my message out there

·         I guess about 25% of the people who were following me read the tweets meaning the reach of Twitter is much greater than I thought

What do you think?

Tacit agreements are useless, make it explicit

I was out walking our woofer the other day, in the snow and sleet, obviously, now that we’re in the middle of a drought.

The route, which was a new one, took us along a woodland walk towards a high school.  As we came to the exit of the walk we had to run the gamut of smoking teenagers.

Er… the teenagers weren’t on fire, they were smoking cigarettes.

Now, I’m no evangelist and, although I don’t smoke myself, I’m not going to judge those foul and disgusting youths in any way.  Besides, they were a fair bit bigger than me.  And, as they seemed to be ignoring me I decided that discretion was the better part of valour (in the same way that cowardice is the better part of discretion), put my head down and walked passed.

A couple of hundred yards later (metres, for Europhiles) I entered another part of the woodland walk and guess who I saw?

Nope, you’re quite wrong.

It was a group of teachers, hiding in the woods, just like their students and all of them were smoking a fag.

Quite clearly, there was a tacit agreement between teachers and pupils:

We’ll smoke in this location, you smoke in the other place and we’ll all get on famously.

Unfortunately, in HR, these tacit agreements just don’t work.  You know the sort of thing… you don’t actually say anything, but everyone just sort of understands that the agreement is in place.

All well and good until there’s a problem.  I know of a case where there was a tacit agreement not to stand on a desk to change a light bulb.  But a member of staff did, the inevitable happened and they sued their employer for the injuries they sustained in the fall.

The employer’s defence; that there was a tacit agreement not to stand on the desk like a muppet, held no water.  The tribunal said the instruction should have explicit, i.e. the employer should have physically said (and preferably written down and got the employee to sign to say they’d read it) ‘Don’t climb on the desks to change the light bulb…’

Unfair?

Maybe and we might see some changes to this sort of ruling in the future, but don’t hold your breath…

There you are: you can’t sue me now for holding your breath too long.  I’ve explicitly told you not to.

I need three bitches

Well, to be strictly honest, it’s Barney, my wife’s office dog who needs them… not me.

She thinks she’s hit on the perfect marketing campaign for her business. I’m slightly more wary of her plans, so I thought I’d run them past EB before seriously pitching the idea to her franchisor.

My wife runs a franchise, based from shop front style premises in Edinburgh. We have a Labradoodle (for those of you not in the doggy know, that’s a cross between a Poodle and a Labrador.)

I know I’m off script a bit here, but here’s a little quiz… what is a:

• Cockerpoo?

• Puggle?

• Poolly?

Answers below.

Anyway, Barney has been our office dog since May last year and has proved to be a great hit with the clients.

So much so that we now get people going passed on the bus and ringing the Franchise Support Centre to ask what breed he is.

Brilliantly, everyone in the FSC knows Barney and can give intimate details of his pedigree (or lack of it, given he’s a cross.)

We decided to take this a step further and had some professional photographs taken of him doing the things dogs do and turned them into posters, which form our internal marketing (all approved, of course). Barney also writes a DogBlog with his insights into business and is available for weddings, birthdays and Bar Mitzvahs.

So successful has this marketing been that Barney is truly famous and we think that every office should have one… and therein lies the sales opportunity.

If we can find Barney 3 bitches, he can produce enough little Barneys to provide one to each new franchisee as part of their franchise package.

Think about it for a second…

What a way to enhance the package: a free Labradoodle, 3 months dog food, pet insurance included for 3 months, marketing support to help you make the most of your new dog?

Okay, maybe not. We are being tongue in cheek about this.

However, Barney has worked for us. He has provided a focus for our marketing and creates a talking point around the local community. Children stop on the way home from school to see him and people come in to help him. For his part, Barney knows just what to do, he sucks up to clients royally and makes them feel welcome in the shop.

You don’t really need a Barney, but you do need a focus to help you keep you marketing tight and effective.

Cockerpoo: Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle

Puggle: Pug and a Poodle

Poolly: Poodle and a Colly (although we’ve never heard of this before and made it up!)