SlideShare: Prank, PR or Punk
OK, my earlier post was a bit premature. It’s April Fool’s Day and SlideShare played a prank on it’s users. Read about it here and watch the Twitter reactions here.
I love a good joke. I have a pretty good sense of humor. I love April Fool’s day pranks. Usually.
My favorite April Fool’s story goes something like this:
When my friend Sheila’s two children were very small, one April Fool’s Day Blair (maybe 1st gradish) said to her younger brother at the breakfast table, “Brad, look! There’s a spider on the wall.”
Of course there was no spider. It was an April Fool’s joke. Then Sheila reminded Brad, who I think must have been pre-Kindergarten age, that April Fools is when you can say things that aren’t true, as long as what you say doesn’t hurt someone. After a few minutes Brad said enthusiastically,
“Look Blair! There’s a goat on the wall!”
I guess she forgot to tell him it should also be believable. I think of that story every year on April Fools and it still makes me laugh.
I’ll have to admit that after finding out I’d been duped, the “wind sucked out of my sails” feeling returned. But only for a moment. I’m still a SlideShare fan and will upload another presentation this week – What Chamber Professionals Should Know About Social Media.
I’m wondering, will some folks be put out? Is this a harmless prank? Is it a brilliant PR stunt? I mean, lots of folks will be talking about SlideShare today and some, like me, might write about it before they realize it’s a prank. But in the end, is it PR with a cost? Does this in any way lessen the trust that some users will now have in SlideShare?
Am I thinking it too much? Is it just PMS? I’ll let you know after I’ve had a good cry. ;-)
In reality, maybe this isn’t about SlideShare at all. Maybe God is still working on my pride.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:02 am
I might have fallen too if I hadn’t seen your earlier post — and I couldn’t even get into slideshare because of all the traffic.
April 2nd, 2009 at 7:31 am
I know this caught me by surprise as well when I checked on a presentation I had up there.
Overall my guess it probably won’t hurt SlideShare since this is becoming more and more popular with websites doing this every April 1.
For example Google always does something funny and they really go the extra mile to make everything look legit at the first glance. This year they did three: GMail Autopilot, CADIE
April 3rd, 2009 at 11:23 am
All the talk about transparency, open and honesty went out the window on April fool’s Day. Some bloggers, as well as businesses play an array of jokes on their communities.
I found the SlideShare prank, in poor taste. They obviously don’t know their own member base very well. We don’t use their service for entertainment, in general, but as a way to showcase our own or learn from peers presentations, on a variety of topics.
A great deal of time and planning goes into a presentation. People are working harder for each piece of business today and every milestone is reason for celebration. To get people excited about their increase in viewing status, then ask them to broadcast it on Twitter, while SlideShare’s staff followed the joke online was in very bad taste.
SlideShare’s goal was to increase traffic and awareness to their website, at the expensive of member’s embarrassment. Good PR? I don’t believe so and they obviously realized that this “joke” wasn’t viewed as humorous, by their quick apology to their existing members.