UPDATE: See the great PR response from Paul Hallett, Schmap’s CEO, in the comments below.
In the interest of privacy, I choose not to broadcast my whereabouts using location-based services on Twitter. Sure, I might use social media to share about where I went or where I’m going — but that’s for me to say, or for my friends to retweet.
This weekend, I was surprised to find that two Raleigh-branded twitter accounts (@RaleighPlaces and @Raleigh_Now) were retweeting Schmap maps of my past and future plans. Basically, the service broadcasts a truncated copy of my original Twitter message, with a link to an annotated map on their proprietary website.
The first was after I mentioned going to the North Hills mall earlier on Saturday. The second was today, after @demandycom announced plans for a networking coffee on Monday. The initial Schmap message seemed like a one-off, but two in a row felt intrusive…and kinda creepy. From a business perspective, it’s what marketing guru Seth Godin derides as “interruption marketing.”
Monitoring Twitter for Good, Not Evil
When I ask a question on Twitter and a vendor responds to promote their relevant service, that’s fine — I asked for help. Smart companies monitor Twitter and reply.
But these Schmap.it retweets? Ehh…I don’t see any mutual benefit – it’s just a benefit for the advertiser or the store where I’m headed.
In fact, even if it’s currently a free service, Schmap’s website language is entirely advertiser-focused, trumpeting benefits like “Driv[ing] foot traffic to your business/event” and “go[ing] viral with RTs, RSVPs & comments.” (Note to everyone: Play the persona game, and make sure your website’s copy is appropriate to all of your stakeholders, not just the ones you’re trying to monetize.)
If I wanted to let everyone know my 20, I’d use Foursquare or TriOut to announce it. I know Twitter is public, but Schmap’s Big Brother-ish data-scraping retweets feel too much like an invasion of privacy. Like Facebook before, is Schmap.it focusing on helping [future] advertisers at the expense of individual users?
Don’t Make it Hard to Opt Out
Disappointingly, Schmap’s website doesn’t say anything about how to opt out, not even on their Privacy page. I reached out to Schmap via Twitter this evening, to find out how I could opt out of Schmap retweets that include my @KarlSakas username. I’ll report back on what they say.
Their head of marketing, Donald McMillan, had presented on the Schmaps service at the Triangle Tweetup event earlier this month in Durham, N.C. (they’re based over in Carrboro). I missed his presentation; perhaps it would have helped me understand what’s going on. But as an individual consumer, you shouldn’t need a PowerPoint deck to understand a service that’s megaphoning your information, right? #marketingfail
Look, I’m in marketing — I’m sure there’s a lot of potential to Schmap.it’s mobile marketing service…but only for people who willingly choose to use it. Surely I’m not the only person wondering why a business (even if it’s a local small business) is [re-]sharing my plans with the world.
Considering that both @RaleighPlaces and @Raleigh_Now list Schmap.it as their website on their Twitter profiles, I assume they’re part of an otherwise smart localized marketing campaign controlled by Schmap, Inc. But if their retweets are somehow beyond Schmap’s control, then Schmap needs to have rules of conduct for its partners, including a centralized way for people like me to block being broadcasted via their service.
What Do You Think?
As community manager Angela Connor commented at the Triangle AMA‘s Social Media Boot Camp last week, “Spam is truly in the eye of the beholder.” The same is true about privacy on social media. I hope Schmap.it can use this feedback to improve their service.
Am I overreacting — does mentioning my plans on Twitter give license to any and all to republish it in any form — or should Schmap provide more control to the involuntary subjects of its advertising messages?
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
UPDATE: Schmap is fast! Even on a Sunday night, they responded within four hours: “We’ve taken care of it. You shouldn’t be RTed by @Raleigh_Now or any other accounts again.” And they apologized for the situation and asked me to email them if I had any further feedback.
Kudos to Schmap — excellent responsiveness. They did a great job handling the PR problem and I’m pleased with the outcome. Thanks, Donald! They certainly did better than Verizon last month.
Is there a way to let other people automatically opt-out from being mentioned by Schmap.it in the future? This would address the underlying privacy issue.
Karl,
Thanks for this thoughtful and balanced piece – it covers some issues we’re passionate about here at Schmap!
I’ll focus brief comments here on your central question regarding privacy:
“Is there a way to let other people automatically opt-out from being mentioned by Schmap.it in the future? This would address the underlying privacy issue.”
The answer is ‘yes’, anyone can request this, via tweet or DM (to @schmap or to e.g. @Raleigh_Now) or via email to support@schmap.com.
However, in reality, no one would think to ‘opt out’ of a possible future retweet, rather a person typically doesn’t even know a given Twitter account exists until they are retweeted, at which point it is already too late (if the retweet was unwelcome).
Our solution – which we’re iterating and improving continually – can be summarized as follows:
1. We aim to retweet content that’s editorially relevant to followers. For instance, if someone tweets to say their favorite local band is going to perform in a Raleigh bar, that may likely be of interest to @Raleigh_Now followers. When a person or business can see their tweet has editorial interest to followers of another account, a retweet is typically welcomed.
2. We aim to avoid retweeting content that the original author would naturally not want retweeted. For instance, if I tweeted about going to a friend’s birthday party in a Raleigh bar, I might well not appreciate this being retweeted by @Raleigh_Now.
3. We monitor 24/7 and – in the rare instance a retweet is unwelcome – we delete it immediately.
4. In the rare case a person or business lets us know they didn’t appreciate being retweeted, we make sure never again to retweet that person or business.
Looking at the bigger picture, tweeted content is increasingly very public: Twitter, Google, Microsoft and many others are putting huge effort into indexing and categorizing non-protected tweets, and delivering these to an audience far beyond the reach of any given account (@Raleigh_Now has 249 followers), and far beyond Twitter’s 100 million users. In this sense, we see this as far less a question of privacy, far more that we have a duty of care to avoid offending or annoying others within Twitter’s evolving ecosystem: articles such as yours here certainly help broaden the dialog.
Paul Hallett
CEO, Schmap
@Paul: Thanks for your quick and thoughtful response. Kudos to you and your team on monitoring the situation (especially considering this all unfolded over 13 hours on a Sunday evening and Monday morning!).
To answer my original question, it sounds like the answer is somewhere in the middle. It helps to know that the two Twitter accounts are staffed, rather than automated bots.
@Everyone: I emailed some expanded suggestions last night, which Paul graciously responded to this morning at 6:52am (!) and with his cell phone number, no less. I don’t expect them to necessarily implement my suggestions, since they’re my opinion, not fact. And it’s important not to fall prey to the tyranny of one.
As I commented above, I’m pleased with Schmap’s transparent response to the situation — more companies should follow their approach to responding to PR problems. Case closed!
It seems Schmap is lucky that Twitter has removed deleted tweets from the search index and the search API. If this were as recent as last year, Schmap’s “tweet first, remove later” approach might not be so easily reversed.
Glad they had such an excellent PR response, though. That is very refreshing.
Nice write-up Karl and it is always a pleasure to see when companies are listening online and respond accordingly. To be honest, I had not heard of Schmap before today, but will definitely look into it further because I don’t get what the individual gets out of them retweeting info on us.
@Brianne: Good insights, about archiving tweets. Once our tweet goes out, we can’t assume anything about where it goes (as Just Crumb discovered in Crumbgate)
@Cord: Thanks! I wondered about that, too. They have plans for an expanded service later this summer, but since Paul mentioned the details privately, I’ll let Schmap announce the particulars.