I can’t believe a social media team that should be focused on explaining travel procedures and security resorted to making lame Thanksgiving jokes on the busiest day of travel the during a time when they are under extreme scrutiny by the American public.
Thanksgiving may be over, but the holiday travel rush is just getting started. Instead of using social media to gauge what people are saying and engaging them on how it’s necessary, TSA is using its Twitter account and blog to explain how and why they delete comments from their blog.
It’s no wonder why some American’s can’t take security seriously. I’m all for having fun on social networks, but that’s for individuals, not government agencies. If the TSA can’t treat their social media communication seriously, why should we take anything else they do seriously?
Pick on the awfulness of the jokes all you want… but you plucked ONLY three awful jokes out of over a hundred in the last week
the DAY BEFORE on November 22nd they were wisely using the blog and Twitter to response to a video taken out of context on the search procedures.
If you look at their drops/adds they are maintaining their followers so as offensive as you find the jokes, others obviously are not.
They ARE serious. ARE you?
Yes, except when I’m not.
Disagree with you here; a large part of the TSA’s image problem is because they are portrayed (and often act) as a faceless Orwellian organization.
Cracking a few lame jokes on Twitter (amongst their many other messages) humanizes them, and discussing their blog moderation policy is at least something of a step towards transparency.
To me, the tweets say “We’re human too. This is a difficult period, but together we can all get through it.”
Dead on Gareth.
There are better ways to humanize than make jokes about airport security. They could replace the TSA Logo Avatar with the blog team’s faces. That instantly humanizes them.
I’m glad someone got something out of it besides the rage I got.
RAGE? Really? That’s definitely not the sense you paint the post with.
You only pluck THREE tweets out of MANY in holiday week and suggest that they AREN’T doing their “job.” Unfair and hardly full of RAGE!!!
Let’s go after the White House for this BOMB:
@whitehouse: Miss the Thanksgiving week West Wing Week? Obama on Apple the turkey: “That’s like a prehistoric beast” http://bit.ly/g3BfMU
Let’s accept this as a not so bad idea about goverment Tweeting:
http://www.socialgovernment.com/2009/02/16/twitter-in-government-agencies-best-practices/
Show me how TSA fails.
PS- how do you “humanize” a bureaucracy with just a face on Twitter?
Todd, I appreciate your criticisms.
Perhaps rage was the wrong word. Disappointment maybe? Shame? I don’t the best word to choose, but It moved me enough to write about what I read.
Yes, I pulled only three tweets out of however many others they made that particular day. But as I’ve seen many times, it takes only one tweet to make a major mistake, regardless of how many other ones you’ve had that day.
You can’t human a bureaucracy on Twitter. You humanize the TSABlogTeam, the men and women who tweet, blog and create and moderate social media for the TSA.
And with that, I’m closing comments on this.