In an example of how not to conduct public relations online, Chicago based property company Horizon Group Management has sued a Twitter user with only 20 followers for the following tweet:
@jessB123 You should come anywat. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay.
The off hand remark is pretty innocuous and the amount of bad PR that has been generated by the company far outweighs any damage that could have been done by a single tweet. The company did not even ask the user, who's account has now been disabled, to remove the offending tweet.
Instead Jeffrey Micheal, whose family runs Horizon, told the Chicago Sun-Times that they immediately sued for $50,000 because "We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization,"
Twitter can be a useful tool, integrating customer service and public relations like never before. Some Australian brands are well aware of this with major often maligned telco's Telstra (@bigpondteam) and Optus (@optus) engaging directly with customers via Twitter. Maybe Horizon Realty should have tried this route before engaging in a lawsuit bringing the news of their allegedly mouldy rooms to a much wider Audience than a single tweet ever could.
