Schmap's Social Media Marketing Introduces Michaele Salahi To Chuck E. Cheese - Sort Of
This afternoon I got a tweet from someone named @AlyssaCappen that I found rather puzzling: AlyssaCappen: @acarvin here's a 'schmap' for the party: http://schmap.it/knYS73?a (made at www.schmap.it = share places and events on Twitter) I'm familiar with Schmap (http://schmap.it); it's a tool that tries to make it easier to share a customized map with friends over twitter. But I was absolutely confused about the purpose of this particular tweet. What party was she talking about? Was there a party associated with the FTC event on journalism today? Was it for some NPR staff holiday party that I wasn't aware of? But then I clicked the link and saw what she was talking about; it was a party invite at Chuck E. Cheese for Michaele Salahi. Okay, let me parse that out a bit further. Earlier today I was reading a story about the White House party crashers kerfuffle, and one link led to another, bringing me to Michaele Salahi's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Michaele-Salahi/101907941877 The page has gotten a lot of attention, since she posted photos from their appearance at the White House state dinner there. I was curious to see how many people had become fans of her page to criticize her, and I found this particularly snarky comment: "Hi Michaele. I'm hosting a party at Chuck E Cheese on Saturday. Would you all like to attend? This email is proof of your invitation." I thought the comment was kinda funny, so I tweeted a snippet of it. Maybe it wasn't that funny, but what's done is done. Apparently, someone at Schmap was monitoring tweets for various keywords like "party." She saw my tweet, didn't see the attempted humor in it, and sent me a tweet to give me directions to the party at Chuck E. Cheese, despite the fact my tweet didn't specify which Chuck E. Cheese, let alone the fact it intended by the original author as sarcasm, directed towards Michaele Salahi. I then checked out Alyssa's Twitter account, and indeed it seems she spends her entire day sending out unsolicited tweets to unsuspected people, giving them maps related to things they've tweeted about. Hence, the map I received from her. http://schmap.it/knYS73?a
Honestly, I'm a little weirded out by the whole matter, but in a hypocritical sort of way. I'm the first to admit that if I see a random person on twitter ask a question about NPR, I'll try to send them a reply and be helpful. It's not really part of my job, but I figure I'm pretty active on Twitter so I might as well be of assistance if I can. But this is different - someone at Schmap being assigned the task to monitor Twitter for whatever events people are attending and sending them maps related to it, all in the hopes of getting them to use their product. I imagine that Schmap intends it as a form of beneficial social media marketing, but it does smack - schmack? - of spam. At least their attempt to solicit me ended in a somewhat entertaining outcome. My advice to Schmap: dig even deeper next time. If you did, you would've posted the link to @MichaeleSalahi instead. :-)
