Category: higher education

Crisis communications, uSphere-style

Just as I was about to log off for the evening Tuesday, this Twitter post from uSphere CEO Dave Van de Walle flashed across my screen:

@usphere issues apology, pulls all ads – http://ublog.usphere.com

I had no idea what that statement meant, so I clicked on the uSphere blog to read. (uSphere, by the way, is a service designed to help students in their college admissions search.) According to Dave’s post, one of the firm’s advertising partners had exposed visitors to the uSphere site to pornographic ads. Dave didn’t go into detail, but was quick to apologize for the “egregious error by one of our advertising partners” and added that “we’ll shoulder the blame, as it’s our site and our partners should have been chosen more carefully. Especially on a site that serves students.”

The entire blog post is also now on uSphere’s homepage.

Dave did the right thing by taking quick action to communicate the situation to those who use his service. That’s rule No. 1 in crisis communications: get your story out quickly and completely, before the rumor mill has a chance to act. And in the online world, the rumor mill works quickly and can spread bad news far and wide. (Just think back to how quickly Brad J. Ward and a few interested bloggers were able to break and spread the news of Facebookgate a few weeks ago.)

But Dave needs to update his blog post to make it clear that he has indeed pulled all the offending ads, as his Twitter post claims. After reading the blog post, I didn’t see anything explicitly stating that the offending ads were no longer a part of the uSphere site. I know from experience that in our rush to get the word out, sometimes we omit important pieces of information. But Dave needs to edit his post to include that important piece of information.

Other than that critique, I think Dave and uSphere did an admirable job in managing a potential crisis.

Take this survey about Twitter usage (even if you don’t know what Twitter is)

Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures is starting his new year with some research on how colleges and universities use Twitter, and he’s looking for our help. So, please take a few minutes to complete Andy’s short, anonymous survey about Twitter. It really doesn’t take much time at all.

“Even if you don’t know what Twitter is – or you do know what it is, but you do not use it – I’d appreciate your participation (awareness is one of the things we’re trying to measure),” Andy writes. To that, I’d add: Even if you think Twitter is a complete waste of time, your insight will be valuable.

The survey closes at 5 p.m. PST next Tuesday, Jan. 13, so don’t dawdle. He plans to incorporate the survey results “into a brief upcoming white paper about possible uses of Twitter in higher education advancement.”