

Did Twitter Topple Toyota?  - cwan
http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/judgments/2010/02/17/did-twitter-topple-toyota

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tlb
The author tries to credit Twitter for breaking the story: _Prior to the
advent of rapidly updated social media, bad news about cars seeped out at the
local level. A pattern of accidents here. A sudden uptick in complaints to
dealerships there. ... Sufficient evidence to warrant even a NHTSA
investigation could take years to organize. Deadly cars could remain on the
road for far too long..._

In fact, social media had nothing to do with discovering the pattern. It only
fueled the flamefest after news stories based on government investigation.

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conover
Exactly. I would say the story about the California Highway Patrolman and his
family being killed in a rental car really got the media avalanche moving.

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akamaka
No, Twitter is just another part of the media circus that has been following
this, right alongside late-night talk show hosts cracking jokes about it.

This ranks alongside the Pentium bug back in 1994, where researchers
discovered a legitimate bug, which the Intel fixed, while millions of people
who had never heard of a floating point number read stories written by equally
clueless reporters.

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martythemaniak
Yes, just like it toppled the Iranian government.

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eplanit
It's part of a trend of stories that fancy Twitter to be the End of History.

What's missing here is an important aspect of information: accuracy. That is,
while Twitter might have fomented the hysteria, did it really enlighten
anyone? Was it, perhaps, effectively nothing more than interference? I agree
with the post below in seeing it as yet another big tent in the media circus.

I'm never able to get past its very low signal:noise ratio, personally.

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wtallis
I'm pretty sure Toyota will still end up issuing more recalls, and they
probably haven't issued their biggest yet. (They haven't confessed to software
problems in most vehicles yet, despite plenty of reports that can only be
explained by either a software flaw or an unusually high error rate in
throttle sensors that also haven't been recalled.)

Astute observers have been casting doubts on Toyota's growth rate for years,
and the problems that have triggered the recalls have been around just as
long. I'm actually surprised how long it took this PR crisis to reach critical
mass, and I don't think Twitter did anything to accelerate it. In fact, I'd
say it's in the nature of Twitter that it won't be significantly involved
until a crisis has already reached critical mass.

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btilly
Here is my question. How long will it be until Toyota realizes that "Moving
Forward" isn't really the best slogan for them? :-)

