33 Brands That Suck on Twitter
Published by Rodney Rumford August 12th, 2008 in Branding, business, twitter.
Brands That Suck on Twitter: I don’t write this post to be mean spirited; I write this post to simply call attention to brands and companies that are totally missing the boat and not listening on twitter where millions of conversations are happening everyday. Do companies think about or even care what people are saying about them, their products or services on twitter? If they don’t, then they are about to be rudely awakened soon enough.
Brands and businesses have a huge opportunity to reach out & extend their brand and create evangelists. There are over 20 business use cases that we have document for twitter. We will be posting soon on brands that are embracing twitter and the several use cases that we are seeing emerging that are quite interesting. Some of these use cases on the twitter social network by companies are ok, some are crappy and some are simply amazing.
Some might argue that a brand just publishing their newsfeed and saying they are on twitter is fine. I think if you just publish your news stories or blog/rss feed updates through twitter; then you suck. Why? I have a feed reader and don’t need your noise on twitter.
Additionally if your brand follows zero people then twitter is simply a distribution channel for you to promote your stuff. You suck.
The brands that are marked hijacked are ones that we “suspect” are hijacked based on our research criteria. Brands that are marked “parked” might actually be hijacked. If you are on the marketing team or person in charge of these brands please let us know.
34 Brands That Totally Suck & Don’t Get Twitter
BritishAirways 4 updates in 4 months
Starbucks - parked: UPDATE. SEE Below
HPNews - parked
iPhone - hijacked
Budweiser - parked
Sony - hijacked & parked?
NBCNews - hijacked? last update a month ago
Wellsfargo - hijacked
Bankofamerica - parked
Absolutevodka- go steal it
Padres - parked
Monsterjobs - parked
Vivendi - hijacked
Motorola - hijacked
eBay - hijacked
IBM - quiet Wants you to direct message?
WindowsXP - hijacked
Intel - hijacked
Nokia - hijacked
Disney - hijacked
Marlboro - hijacked
Cisco - hijacked
Nike - parked
Pfizer - hijacked
Ikealiving - hijacked
HarleyDavidson - parked
Nissan - parked
Reuters feed 1 month since update
Hertz - go steal it
Deltaairlines - no tweets for over a year
McDonalds - hijacked
Verizon - hijacked/parked
Sprint - hijacked
Paypal - hijacked
This list could go on and on but, after doing several hours of research into this issue we think we have made our point with the names mentioned above. We simply want to raise awareness of the opportunity that lies before brands to engage and really have high impact on a social level; and sometimes a whack on the side of the head is what it takes. We started with a list of the top 150 worldwide brands and walked through it. 
If you know a brand that sucks on twitter please add it in the comments. (ie. they don’t listen or interact)
Sort of Suck
Dell has so many darn channels I am not sure what to think. Someone help me find a human.
DellOutlet
Direct2Dell
DellSmallBiz
IdeaStorm
DellConsumer
I could not make this up: People are begging Dell to listen. Hellooooo? Anybody home? I know it is from their newsfeed. That is the problem with automation in social ecosystems. They inadvertently spread the message that they don’t listen or respond. How ironic.
UPDATE: Read this blog post about Dell on twitter.
UPDATE: Starbucks just got on the ball 3 hours ago and are actually listening. They are no longer on the list. Must have been the mocha cappuccino mojo vibe I was sending their way.
Our Upcoming Twitter Knowledge Package: Publish Date: August 30
78 Responses to “33 Brands That Suck on Twitter”
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These brands need to get it together like a lot of the other “big” brands on Twitter.
I wonder if they’ll see this post - probably will!
Nice job my brotha!
I follow a real-life Dell person is pretty active: check out @RichardatDELL
Web hosting company Eleven2 is probably the worst example of a corporate Twitter use I’ve come across. Their participation could only be described as Twitter spam. Check it at http://twitter.com/eleven2
Now that Starbucks is active on Twitter, you should add Peets Coffee to this list. Both @peets and @peetscoffee appear to be parked or hijacked.
How does a brand get back their hijacked name?
So many companies just aren’t getting it. (BTW Absolut Vodka is spelled without an ‘e’. There is an Absolut_Vodka twitter account, appears to be hijacked.)
Nice work. Help us shock the rest of them out of their complacency!
Great analysis and advice Rodney. Obviously, the list is not complete as I’m sure we could all add more sucky brands to the list. As Twitter becomes more mainstream, I am afraid we will see more brands jump in, not get it and just push out their ubiquitous broadcast messages. In fact, there are probably fewer brands that get it than sucky ones. In terms of advice for these brands, I wrote a post a few weeks ago, http://twittermaven.blogspot.com/2008/07/these-companies-get-it.html
That’d be “Absolut Vodka,” not Absolute…
you talk about Twitter like it’s “all that”, and yet you go on to list what, a whopping 20 whole companies/brands that are even using Twitter
Great post. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity jump on early somewhat early. I would like to know your’s and anyone else willing, about having multiple accounts.
As of now as long as you have an email address you can create an account making it possible to have multiple account.
Granted you can only use the SMS feature with one account, and same goes for Twinkle. As far as the hijacked question, I would imagine this is referring to people creating accounts with hope of making money in the end.Follow me @iphonedevforum
Andrew, Thanks for the heads up for richardatdell (see my follow up post)
Calimom thanks for the heads up my absolut spellling error. Either way all derivations look hijacked or parked.
Steve, how do you get anything from a hijacker? (no different than a domain name squatter), reach out and get them to give it to you (you might have to pay).
Rodney:
I have to say this is not a list that we want to be on. Yes, we do have lots of channels, but here’s the deal: the short answer is look for the face. If you go to just about any of the Dell Twitter properties, you will find at least one person that’s being followed. That person (or people) are folks that own the properties. In the case of Direct2Dell, you will see me (@Lionel@Dell) there in the Following list.
All of the Dell properties follow the other ones–which helps people make sense of what’s out there from a Dell perspective.
Regarding brands pumping out RSS feeds… I asked a few Dell customers, and at least with Direct2Dell, the feedback was generally something like, “I won’t follow an RSS feed in most cases, but it is an efficient way to keep up with a site from time to time.” So I did it.
Take a look at http://www.dell.com/twitter for a complete list of Dell Twitter properties. Now please take us off the list
Sincerely,
Lionel Menchaca
Chief Blogger, Dell Inc.
Lionel,
Thanks for responding and clarifying what you guys are doing on twitter and the logic behind the rss feeds.
If you read my follow up post you will see more on dell. Which is very positive after we spent some time decrypting what was happening.
actually it is @lionelatdell
Cheers!
Nice list. I’ll add my corporate Twitter account complaint: those companies that go out and add as many people as possible.
Yes, I set up a corporate Boingo for my new gig. I respond to people that mention the company name, seeing if there is something I can do to make them happier (if they are unhappy), helping people out stuck at airports, and other such stuff. But, I only add people if they add me first, or if they talk about the company a bit. Right now, I’m at a close 1:1 ratio.
More corporate Twitter accounts need to take that avenue - don’t randomly add to build numbers, because it does nothing.
hi rodney. Adam from IBM here. The IBM twitter account no longer asks folks to DM them - that was when it was hijacked (we didn’t know who owned it). Twitter gave the account back to us at IBM. That said, the account is dormant, which has been an active decision - so far.
Here’s why:
IBM is nothing more than a collection of a gazillion individual IBMers. Really smart ones for the most part, I think. And thousands of those folks are on Twitter. So rather than have a centralized - yet generic - IBM account, we’ve opted for a decentralized approach and let those many individuals be the IBM face to the Twitter world.
I realize this has some significant limitations - people looking for the official IBM word on Twitter won’t find it easily. And having a dormant IBM Twitter account doesn’t necessarily look the greatest (as evidenced here in your post). But I think the power of twitter are the voices of individuals, so we’ve opted to go this route. Plus, since we don’t sell anything the consumers, it isn’t a customer-service vehicle for us.
Now, all of that may very well change. And the folks reading this are welcome to provide their suggestions on how we could/should be using the @IBM account more effectively. We are listening and up for suggestions. Either let us know here in the comments to your post, or send a Twitter reply to @adamclyde.
Glad that LionelatDell chimed in… was just going to say that Dell seems to be doing some pretty innovative stuff involving Twitter. I thought their online press conference yesterday was very clever: http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/08/11/dell-global-mobility-event-amp-twitter.aspx
Being the person behind @rubbermaid, I’d liked to say that Twitter has, without a doubt, added a personal touch to our communications. I follow people who have an interest in Rubbermaid and organization, they follow me, and we’ve begun to build good relationships. These Twitter relationships have begun to evolve into offline relationships/partnerships as well.
I can attest to the fact that people enjoy hearing from a brand (when appropriate). I’ve been able to help and inspire other Twitter users and they have helped and inspired me.
So, to all brands that aren’t participating, go ahead, jump in…. but be real. It works.
Defending Reuters here; http://twitter.com/Reuters 19500 updates????
However ThomsonReuters does suck - 6 updates in 4 months. Think that’s parked.
Btw, NBCNews might be hijacked or parked, but those guys use: NBCNewsCrew instead
So follow @NBCNewsCrew at Twitter for updates 
Hey, cut these companies some slack. One: It’s sometimes hard to justify putting a blogger or social media person on the payroll. Culturally, most companies on Wall Street are still in P&L/concrete ROI mode. It’ll happen, but it’s hard to turn the wheel on a big ship. Give it time. (This is the kind of forum that can help speed things up though, which is a good thing.)
Second, I don’t mind newsfeeds on Twitter, personally. I follow a few that way and it’s kind of convenient. If it works for some people (I’m sure I’m not alone here), why not use Twitter as a channel? If twitterati don’t want the noise, they can unfollow the @ccount. Simple enough.
Third, any company should understand the channel and medium before assigning someone to use it. Having a blog or a presence on Twitter = more than just creating content and an occasional touch. It can quickly become a full time job, and it takes skills. Not something you can assign to just anyone, and not something you can easily outsource. Everyone needs to understand that.
Bear in mind that communicators (marketing, PR, social butterflies) in an organization are rarely on the same wavelength as the no nonsense business execs who actually drive the company to a number ($$$) for Wall Street. Getting buy-in from these folks on developing a solid social media strategy (and putting the resources behind it) is a pretty tough battle. I wish it were as easy as “OK, Chuck, here’s a big bucket of cash. Now go build us a top notch social media practice to help us connect better with our customers.” Most companies aren’t quite there yet.
Keep up the good work.
How arrogant. You twitter tards need to realize that you’re the vocal minority and basically meaningless to big $$ corps. Most of the country doesn’t know what twitter is. I know you’ll vehemently deny this, because you’re too close to it, forest/trees. Companies are moved by money and the ROI isn’t there in their eyes.
Buy a box of tissues and get over yourselves.
While I think that many of these brands do suck at Twitter - Disney, for example, is doing nothing with their account — I’ve seen some on there that don’t belong. Like Intel for example. I follow a few of their Tweeters, and like the folks at Dell, they intersperse personal and business info. When I was running a corporate Twitter account, I used it to let people know what we were doing, or to reply to others that we followed. I am thinking if I had been with a bigger company - like a Dell or Intel or Starbucks — I would be one of those brands that suck too.
And if we are complaining that companies are using Tweets to hawk things, everyone is doing the self-promotion ego Tweet — I tweet about a new blog post or a panel I am on at a conference, someone might tweet about a discount they offer, heck, even @jowyang tweets about new reports he’s written that are for sale at Forrester. So, I think there is a double standard here.
To me the issue is personality — its hard for a big company to have a single personality, and they shouldn’t even try. Like blogging, let individual people explore, make mistakes, be helpful, etc.
My one complaint is, if you are using Twitter for customer service, list the account on your customer service or contact page of your web site. Why set up a separate page for Twitter accounts? That makes no sense.
I hear you on this issue, and I agree totally. But something that came to mind as I was reading over this list: they are all huge successful companies. Twitter is a great way to keep up on public opinion of your brand/company/product etc…but I honestly believe that these companies don’t view the issue as a damaging. Regardless of whether or not Nike uses Twitter, they will still have a multi-million dollar commercial during the super bowl.
My company uses Twitter, and I think it’s a great way to keep in touch with the community we target. But the difference is we are a startup, so I think that those opinions on Twitter mean more to us than to the big dogs.
If we check the weight of Twitter (quantitative) assuming there are only US accounts (I didn’t find the stats for just the USA), Twitter is about 0.4% of the population. And a targeted population then: tech people, marketing, PR, communication, and geeks (or nerds). I do say Twitter is a new channel type company should take care of, but do you really think companies suck when they don’t listen to a channel that represents 0.4% of the US population? Besides, if people are that engaged (positively or negatively), they can use other ways to get in touch.
Moreover what you’re checking are corporate Twitters, not evangelists or community managers twitters. You should.
I’m really thrilled to read your documents on company use cases of Twitter.
Cheers
Interesting to see those that are actively engaging (Dell, Starbucks) showing up here. At least some companies are trying to embrace feedback.
I wrote a short post on my thoughts (http://www.simsagency.com/?p=115 ) - I think it’s a lot like blogging. There are a whole bunch of people who attend a seminar, hear a new buzzword (blogging, a couple of years ago, twitter now) and jump on it without thinking it through.
Whole Foods is doing a great job of being involved, while the MGM Grand is worse than British Airways. So, if you’re going to fall closer to the latter, perhaps Marlboro, Bud, etc are actually better off just sitting out…at least for the time being.
As a conversation pipeline, Twitter is becoming increasingly congested as more and more people add to the conversation. I took off yesterday and missed 1500 tweets. Honestly did it really affect my life? No. Did I miss something? Maybe. Am I going back to review, Nope.
I like Twitter for the group think, and the ability to listen to and engage with some very smart people in various subject areas. I lose it when experts realize that the best use of Twitter is to pimp their business interests. That’s kind of what’s happening with many so-called experts in PR and social media, especially. They view Twitter is a way to build their brands so the conversation becomes slightly disingenuous.
Corporations have parked themselves at Twitter and have failed to engage, I agree. Maybe that says something about the impact of Twitter right now vs. other corporate customer channels. Twitter is huge in the bubble where its value and potential are known, but only starting to engage at the edge of the larger marketspace thanks largely to tech writers who play here.
I feel @RichardatDELL (Richard Binhammer) gets it right and I worked with him in 1998 when he was analog. Richard is creatively executing social media at the Dell scale. Fun to watch. Still he has 1500 followers. How many of them are truly Dell-centric or Dell customers vs the social media, marketing, and tech enthusiasts who live at Twitter? Read through his tweets; he is rarely dealing with customer service issues. Rather, he’s genuinely promoting Dell (he is a PR guy), and listening and responding to anything that comes his way. But how many of us ARE Dell customers?
I like the idea of using Twitter as a customer service channel, but the numbers are not really there for a major corporation to care. As part of a multi-platform social media strategy, sure. Richard has made that work for Dell.
Blogs (like @Mashable) that post articles and links to their posts you say suck. It’s very one way but I find those links convenient. At the same time, I’d much rather each writer posted and engaged personally rather than bundling everything into @Mashable. That would personalize it and enable more conversation with the writer.
My favorites Tweets are from the first couple of tech - @KenCamp and @SherylBreuker. Quoting Ken’s last tweet: “@SherylBreuker Come with me my babydoll. Enough online stuff for today.”
And lastly, where would Twitter or Jaiku or Plurk be without @LeoLaporte? His audiences followed him onto each platform and got the ball rolling.
Looks like you created a little bit of a storm, Rodney!
I can’t wait to see the various ways you’ve identified using Twitter to aide, grow, help, etc. your business. It’s been a great tool for us making relationships, communicating with users, even beginning partnership discussions, and I know that so few companies are using the medium effectively.
And I have two cents for Adam from IBM: use the “official” IBM Twitter account to follow and note who from IBM is on Twitter, so that the decentralized model does become more personal and people know where to find “a voice” from IBM.
Keep up the great posting, Rodney. Looks like this one’s going to be popular (and unpopular with some).
Almost as bad as Eleven2, Zima: http://twitter.com/Zimafan
I’ve yet to find a large corporation on Twitter that adds value although some of the smaller ones do (and the media outlets such as CBC are doing a good job). Magnolia, for example, uses Twitter for customer service to advise users if there’s a problem with the social bookmarking site.
1 for Adam at IBM’s comments. My customers don’t tweet that they hate IBM Lotus Notes, they just talk about Lotus Notes (and sometimes it is positive as well :). So I watch Twitter for Lotus Notes-related conversation, but I think that’s more effective at the individual level of a product area than an IBM-level overall view.
More here: http://www.edbrill.com/ebrill/edbrill.nsf/dx/ibm-doesnt-suck-at-twitter
@edbrill
I want to personally thank all of the people and companies that have provided additional insights to the original post. Thanks for sharing.
Lot’s of valid points were made by Dell, IBM, etc. Thanks All!
ibm = i’ve been microblogging?
here are some big blue links i follow.
http://twitter.com/ibmevents
http://twitter.com/ibmpulse
http://twitter.com/lotusphere
http://twitter.com/web20work
http://twitter.com/projectzero
http://twitter.com/ibmtivoli
http://twitter.com/sametime
http://twitter.com/bluechirper
however, like others said, conversations between people is our focus.
http://twitter.com/search/users?q=ibm
I write this post to simply call attention to brands and companies that are totally missing the boat and not listening on twitter where millions of conversations are happening everyday. Do companies think about or even care what people are saying about them, their products or services on twitter?
You don’t need to have an account on Twitter to listen to what people are saying about you on Twitter. There are a variety of search tools available that companies can (and do) use to monitor micromedia conversation about them, their products and services, and their competitors.
Nor do they necessarily need Twitter to respond to those people. Twitter users often link to their blogs in their profiles, and often post contact information on those blogs. I’ve contacted Twitterers on behalf of clients without using @s or DMs, because email was the most appropriate way of reaching them under the circumstances. (And frankly because @ replies aren’t always reliable.)
I often encourage clients to use Twitter as a way to connect with people in an authentic, personal way; but I strongly disagree that the lack of a branded Twitter account is necessarily an indicator of suckiness.
Wade,
True. You do not need an account to listen. But are they listening? Even having an account on twitter is no guarantee that they are listening.
“Nor do they necessarily need Twitter to respond to those people”. Umm True. But why take the conversation underground and not on the ecosystem from which it originated for all to see for the mutual benefit and exposure? Having the conversation in the open is a huge positive brand exposure for brands; look at comcast.
“I’ve contacted Twitterers on behalf of clients” So now you are telling me they outsourced their authenticity?
“I strongly disagree that the lack of a branded Twitter account is necessarily an indicator of suckiness” Fair enough; how about we just classify them as just clueless or they don’t care?
But why take the conversation underground and not on the ecosystem from which it originated for all to see for the mutual benefit and exposure?
Well, Twitter is one communication tool among many. Whether it’s the right one to use for a given conversation depends on the nature of the interaction.
For example, say that I’m part of a team that’s planning an invitation-only event in Des Moines for the Acme Widget Corporation. I notice on Twitter that there’s someone living in Des Moines who’s a HUGE fan of Acme widgets, and we decide that it would be great to have this person attend. I need to introduce myself and my agency to this person, explain my relationship to Acme, explain why I’m contacting her, describe the event, and invite her to attend. I also need a channel to answer her questions and work out any logistical problems that may come up. Email and phone are really good for that sort of interaction. Twitter, not so much.
So now you are telling me they outsourced their authenticity?
Not at all. I think one stumbling block is the word “conversation”, which carries different meanings here. In the conversation I describe in the scenario above, it just makes sense for me to be the point of contact since I’m part of the event planning team.
But if we’re talking about an ongoing conversation in social media between a brand and the public, I totally agree - authenticity depends on people from the company being part of the conversation. (Continuing the example above: Maybe at the Acme event, our Twitterer meets the CEO of the company who immediately gets out his mobile and Follows her on Twitter.)
The major beer brands are also not leveraging Twitter or Facebook either. Check out my blog entry from today about Web 2.0 and Beer - http://tomhumbarger.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/web-20-and-beer/
Tom
I started to write a comment here, but really it started to reach a size where it was a blog post all of its own - http://andypiper.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/ibm-and-the-twittersphere/
Rodney:
I want to job in on a couple of fronts.
* I’m a former Monster employee who did park the @MonsterJobs account last year. However, there’s another Twitter account that did actually get some use: @MonsterCareers. Admittedly, I struggled with providing a whole lot of value from that account, and preferred to use my personal account (@BryanPerson) to talk about some of the things I was doing at Monster. That included blog posts I was thinking about for Monster, events I might be attending, people I was preparing to interview for the Monster Podcast, etc. So, I’d argue that I did a decent job for Monster on Twitter — most certainly above the “suck” level.
* In my new gig at LiveWorld, I’ve gone ahead and parked the @LiveWorld Twitter account — for now — with plans to ramp up tweeting from there starting next month, to coincide with some other more visible projects we’ll be launching. And I don’t think LiveWorld sucks, either
** previous comment didn’t properly close a link, so posting this again **
—-
I want to chime in on a couple of fronts.
* I’m a former Monster employee who did park the @MonsterJobs account last year. However, there’s another Twitter account that did actually get some use: @MonsterCareers. Admittedly, I struggled with providing a whole lot of value from that account, and preferred to use my personal account (@BryanPerson) to talk about some of the things I was doing at Monster. That included blog posts I was thinking about for Monster, events I might be attending, people I was preparing to interview for the Monster Podcast, etc. So, I’d argue that I did a decent job for Monster on Twitter — most certainly above the “suck” level.
* In my new gig at LiveWorld, I’ve gone ahead and parked the @LiveWorld Twitter account — for now — with plans to ramp up tweeting from there starting next month, to coincide with some other more visible projects we’ll be launching. And I don’t think LiveWorld sucks, either
I think you’d agree that reserving your handle on social networking sites is just smart business. Looks like you’ve done exactly that with @FaceReviews.
It is unfortunate for the companies whose names have been hijacked on Twitter - What’s even worse is that I haven’t found a way to actually contact the owners of the hijacked Twitter names via email, no way to post a reply when the Twitter account “hasn’t updated yet”. Any ideas anyone? Thanks!
Hi Rodney,
I manage the Social Media team at Wells Fargo. We reserved our brand name (and variations) early on, because we recognized the power of Twitter, and we also realized that hijacking could be a serious issue–particularly as a financial institution where phishing and other scams are persistent.
We’re not ready to discuss specific plans, but please know that we do listen to all forms of social media (including Twitter), and we find the discussions and sentiment people express valuable.
Cheers!
-Ed
Good discussion - Thanks for getting it started.
While I’m certainly glad that twitter.com/EMCCorp didn’t make your list, I think it likely because you simply didn’t come across it.
A couple of points to your criteria tho -
“I think if you just publish your news stories or blog/rss feed updates through twitter; then you suck. Why? I have a feed reader and don’t need your noise on twitter.”
I’m of a mind to cater to the audience. Some will want to consume via readers, some via email subscriptions, some via Tweets, etc;. I don’t look at a push of such information to be noise - If you’re not interested in consuming this type of information via the channel, don’t follow the account. From my POV, it’s all about delivering the information to the audience the way they want to receive it.
“Additionally if your brand follows zero people then twitter is simply a distribution channel for you to promote your stuff.”
Because a brand doesn’t follow followers, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re simply using Twitter as a push tool. We use Summize quite extensively to learn from and engage our audience. There’s as much if not more opportunity to learn by listening to conversations about the brand as opposed to conversations at the brand.
Again, thanks for starting up this convo…
Cheers,
Len D
As for the Cisco hijacked name, our social media team was able to contact Twitter to gain rights to the account… this is all great feedback and we’ll look forward to utilizing the tool! FYI, we do have several other Cisco channels on Twitter, including: http://twitter.com/NewsCisco
http://twitter.com/ciscoDC
http://twitter.com/CiscoLive
http://twitter.com/CiscoPress
We had been trying for months to find out who the owner of the CiscoSystems Twitter account was - Twitter determined it was a case of Trademark Infringement.
Just wanted to clear that up - we’ll look to be removed from the “Sucky” list soon!
Thanks for the great info everyone!
Great post. Great list! I love those few companies that get social media. Hopefully more of those on your list will take note.