Social Media - The Art of the Prank

When Pawngo, an online pawn shop based in Denver, dumped hundreds of Butterfingers yesterday in Copley Square in Boston with a note: “Thank you Wes Welker,” to memorialize Wes Welker’s dropped 4th quarter pass in the Superbowl on Sunday, they thought they were being cute. Wrong! Boston sports fans were less than thrilled to be mocked and got really miffed, which led to a social media s**t storm reaching far beyond the relatively simple citation they received from the City for making such a mess. The makers of Butterfingers apparently had nothing to do with it. Read more at CBSSports.com.

Pranksters Make Short Work of GOP”s URL Shortener for Conservatives
by Eliot Van Buskirk
Wired
December 15, 2009

The Republican party took down its innovative link-shortening tool Tuesday for several hours after pranksters had a field day using the tool to associate the GOP with bondage sites.

As part of its new media strategy, the Republican party launched a new site called GOP.am on Monday. It”s a URL shortener designed to make it easy for conservative web surfers to exchange links to web pages.

Pranksters almost immediately began using the service to link to controversial or ironically intended websites, such as the official site of the American Communist Party, a bondage website and a webpage advertising a sex toy in the likeness of Barack Obama. GOP.am apparently started blocking such links at some point Tuesday morning, and the GOP.am homepage was taken offline. Continue reading “GOP URL Shortener Pranked”