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They’re listening: A quick Twitter case study

November 11, 2009

Students in Jason Santa Maria’s Communicating Design class had a quick brush with Twitter notoriety last week, and a lesson in the immediacy of the medium.

During a guest lecture by type designer Jonathan Hoefler, a discussion ensued about the range of opinions to which a typographer’s work lends form. In exploring the example of Gotham’s use by the Obama campaign, and its subsequent adoption on GOP.gov, students noticed something else altogether on the Republican website. In two separate places, they’d misspelled the name of their party.

Jonathan quickly tweeted to Hoefler + Frere-Jones’ 5000 followers: “Can you spot the typos? @jasonsantamaria’s class did. gop.gov”. A series of retweets followed, and within the hour (at 8pm on a Thursday evening) one of the typos had been corrected. A second surge of tweets ensued surrounding the missed second correction, and by Friday morning, all spelling errors on the page seemed to be removed.

Student Eric St. Onge observed, “I think everyone was surprised by how an offhand comment in class resulted in a flurry of tweets on Twitter and by the speed of GOP.gov’s quick response to the discovery. As students, I think it provided a lesson to us in the rapid effects of social networks, as well as the value of proofreading your content before going live”.

24 Comments

  1. Interesting post. Too bad thousands of people saw the mistake before it got corrected.

    Posted by Design Informer on 11/11/09 @ 2:24pm #

    1. The power and advantages of crowds, networks, and students can trump you when you failed to hire or use a copy writer or editor.

      Despite the web being a constantly evolving entity and not a fire-and-forget print project from our not-too-distant past, cross your t’s and dot your i’s.

      A wonderful case study.

      Posted by Luke Dorny on 11/11/09 @ 2:41pm #

      1. Yeah, too bad the mistakes drove thousands of people to read everything on the website. wink

        Posted by Brian Pan on 11/11/09 @ 2:55pm #

        1. Not to be a curmudgeon, but how do we know that the Twitter flurry lead to the corrections? Perhaps this is correlation and not causation? Just sayin.’ It’s a great case study if it’s the latter though.

          Posted by Mike Rivera on 11/11/09 @ 3:29pm #

          1. Brian makes a good point here. While it probably smeared a bit of the GOPs credibility (and let’s face it, it’s not like they’ve got a whole lot of that going around anyway), it did bring thousands of of absolute new visitors to the site. Republicans and Democrats alike clicked through to check it out, and then read through the site to find the mistakes. Like our very own modern “Where’s Waldo.” Although I reject this phrase in every sense of the meaning, sometimes bad publicity can be good publicity. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how the GOP handles it.

            Posted by Allie on 11/11/09 @ 4:35pm #

            1. Easy to see the immense marketing power of social networks these days. Just misspell something on purpose and drive loads of trafic to your site.

              Posted by hamsterkäfig on 11/20/09 @ 12:00pm #

              1. It’s probably akin to that old chestnut -
                If you want to keep something a secret, it’s hard to stop people finding out, but if you want to actually tell people, none will listen.

                Though possibly it’s crediting the Government with too much net savvy to say it was done on purpose.

                Alex

                Posted by Alex on 11/23/09 @ 4:39pm #

                1. Don’t think they made it intentionally as it really harms the image. But the effect is impressive and the role of social communities and networks can not be ignored. Using the power of social networking wisely we can achieve quite tangible goals.

                  Posted by Jane Barry on 11/26/09 @ 12:25pm #

                  1. That made me smile!

                    Posted by Simon on 11/28/09 @ 12:09pm #

                    1. I think that twitter is great.

                      Posted by Rrod fix on 11/30/09 @ 5:12am #

                      1. Yeap, Social Media today is everywhere, but I don’t really like twitter and I don’t understand that Twitter mania.. But as we can see, it can be quite helpfull.

                        Fishy.

                        Posted by Fish poker on 12/01/09 @ 6:06pm #

                        1. Its a crazy world, conventional spelling has gone out the window, twitter, text etc are rewriting the rules on your language.

                          Posted by bibi on 12/03/09 @ 6:17am #

                          1. i am so agree with that guy said Social Media today is everywhere, but I don’t really like twitter and I don’t understand that Twitter mania.. But as we can see, it can be quite helpfull.

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                            Posted by topedhardy on 12/08/09 @ 4:58am #

                            1. that’s a funny story. i never know so many people follows tweeter. i guess social networking is powerful.
                              Sad Songs

                              Posted by Lover of Sadness on 12/10/09 @ 5:40pm #

                              1. Sites like twitter are really changing the internet, they not only allow instant connection, but everyone gets to have their say.  Facebook and twitter are helping to make the internet more socially connected then ever before.

                                BTW Great post ... funny too!

                                Posted by mind power on 12/16/09 @ 4:38pm #

                                1. good post,thank you ,bnbbb

                                  Posted by gucci on 12/16/09 @ 9:47pm #

                                  1. Keep up the good work. Very well put together blog. Going to check it out on the reg!

                                    Posted by Errol on 12/21/09 @ 3:42pm #

                                    1. Great Blog

                                      Tim Tebow
                                      Tim Tebow

                                      Posted by Tim Tebow on 01/02/10 @ 6:28pm #

                                      1. Twitter will be the death of us all smile

                                        Mat Stevens
                                        Los Angeles

                                        Posted by Mat Stevens on 01/03/10 @ 3:17am #

                                        1. I like Twitter because of the freshness factor, no other social media platform has such short response times. For this reason, I think Twitter is actually a utility and not a waste of time as many would argue.

                                          Posted by easiest websites on 01/28/10 @ 12:25am #

                                          1. i agree 100% twitter blew up crazy. everyone is practically using twitter, even CNN lol

                                            Posted by m65 on 02/01/10 @ 11:36am #

                                            1. Twitter is the same as any other social media - it can be a fantastic waste of time or it can be a fantastic resource for quick communication.  It really depends upon how you use it.  Either way I can’t see it going away any time soon!

                                              Posted by Wedding Photographers London on 02/02/10 @ 1:31pm #

                                              1. Thanks for posting that - It really made me smile - lovely story please keep up the great standards

                                                Posted by Norfolk Wedding Photographers on 02/02/10 @ 6:57pm #

                                                1. Great Article thanks a lot.. smile

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