The development of social media has opened many doors, connecting people from all over the world.  It is only natural that businesses would take advantage of social media to gain positive rewards.  However, social media can also lead to negative results as there are little to no censors on the internet and a situation can quickly spiral out of control if companies are not careful.

New York Times Blog, DealB%k, illustrated J.P. Morgan’s attempt to utilize social media which ended in a terrible #fail.

On November 7th, J. P. Morgan orchestrated a Q&A on twitter with one of their senior executives, asking people to send questions via tweets using the hashtag: #AskJPM.  The company expected to receive career-advice related questions, so they were surprised when the tweets were anything but.  Many people took the opportunity to insult and make fun of the company by tweeting about J. P Morgan’s shortcomings or unsuccessful endeavours.

Social media is indeed an amazing tool that should be utilized, but it is important to remember that the internet is unpredictable and uncontrollable and in order to use it successfully, businesses must be able to plan for the unexpected.