Bing Apologizes For Japan Quake Tweet | Hacker News Reader

Bing Apologizes For Japan Quake Tweet

searchengineland.com

12 pointsbabyface35 comments

We apologize the tweet was negatively perceived.

This is not even a real apology. This is a non-apology apology: a re-skinned "I'm sorry you feel that way."

Douchebags.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology

Did not mean to upvote this. I don't think Microsoft has anything to apologize for here (raising money and awareness via retweets?), so a non-apology seems entirely appropriate. How many people complaining about this have donated even $1?

I'll take all the karma burning you can dish out, I've got lots to spare, but calling them "Douchebags" for donating 100k is over the top.

So you are implying that one has to donate a thousand bucks to be allowed to complain about a company turning a tragedy into a marketing stunt?

/e: the parent poster edited his post. In the original version of his post, he asked whether anyone who criticizes bing has donated 1% of $100k.

I find your implication that this was a marketing stunt much more insensitive than the original controversial tweet. First off, this is a tweet, so presumably only people who follow Bing would originally see it, and it would be up to them to retweet it.

Is any public corporate humanitarian donation a marketing stunt by your definition? Should corporations keep these things secret? That seems like nonsense to me.

No, because they ask people to retweet it. Hence, they (probably?) want to achieve that people that do not follow @bing will see it in their timeline.

Not every public corporate humanitarian donation is a marketing stunt. I guess it would have been perceived very different, had they just announced that they donated a $100k instead of making the amount that they are going to donate a function of retweets. Just imagine them tweeting "Bing just donated $100k to help the people in Japan. Join us at http://blabla to find out what else we can do."?

Do you really think the people offended by this tweet would have been less offended if Bing had originally tweeted that the donation was already made? I doubt it, especially considering that their follow-up tweet which did just that has only further offended those who have chosen to be offended.

I think the idea was for the $1 donation to be an incentive for people to retweet, which would spread the link to the Microsoft Disaster Response page.

> would have been less offended if Bing had originally tweeted that the donation was already made?

I would find it more acceptable, yes. Not asking people to retweet in order for them to donate UP TO $100K would be more honorable.

There are noble ways to get 100K retweets. This is not one of them.

calling them "Douchebags" for donating 100k

Disingenuous. I was clearly referring to the non-apology. And for that you get a nozzle.

Raising awareness of an event of this magnitude? Really? Does anyone honestly think this is what Microsoft was doing?

I don't know if it's more ridiculous to think that anyone who uses Twitter or Bing need to be made aware of the destruction in Japan, or that someone honestly believes Microsoft thinks there are such people.

> Does anyone honestly think this is what Microsoft was doing?

Microsoft executives. They can honestly believe (to the extent of sustaining that under oath) whatever they want.

All I know is that I felt conflicted when I saw the tweet. "Do I retweet? It's for a good cause. But, I don't want to support Bing."

I didn't retweet and felt a bit guilty. I didn't want to be used either.

This seems like a sincere apology. Given the text of the controversial tweet (which I believe isn't the slightest bit insensitive or inappropriate), a "real" apology would likely have been insincere.

Anyway, as soon as you challenge the "realness" or validity of a specific apology, it brings up the issue of what the purpose of an apology really is, especially an impersonal apology from a major corporation. To me, an apology is not necessarily an admission of guilt. An apology is an expression of regret.

What would you propose to be a "real apology" in this case? Do you want Bing to tweet out that they purposefully did this to slight the victims of the tragic earthquake and get retweets? Do you think that would be honest?

edit: typo

An apology is an expression of regret.

And any old regret will do? How about regret for the action? They might as well express regret that there wasn't enough mayonnaise on the sandwich they had for lunch.

It's fair to regret a certain consequence of an action, but not the action itself. When you say something that people decide (irrationally, in this case) is insensitive or offensive, there's nothing you can do subsequently that will appease them. The people who have chosen to be offended by the original tweet will likely remain steadfast in their choice. Even a "real apology" according to their bizarre concept of "apology" wouldn't appease them.

Remember, people choose for themselves what they find offensive. If you do something with good intentions, and someone chooses to be offended, it's reasonable to regret their response to your action, but there's no reason to regret the action itself.

Know what? If you donate $100k to charity, you get to milk it however you want. If we dig deep enough, we can find selfishness in everything we do. Let's not and say we did.

EDIT: good god people, when a corporation donates money, it is always out of self-interest, one way or another. You can complain about their lack of subtlety, or you can take the $100k and just be glad that capitalism sometimes works that way.

> If you donate $100k to charity, you get to milk it however you want.

Let's make it clear - they didn't donate 100K to anyone. They offered to donate up to 100K if enough people promoted their brand by retweeting their message.

I honestly don't see what the problem here is. I see this kind of thing happen all the time, and no one only makes a big deal out of it. You can say the same thing with Google's People Finder site...it was just created to show people that Google "cared".

I think that sometimes people blow small things like this out of proportion for no real reason.

PS. I will probably be down-voted for this. So be it.

It's particularly striking when you compare it to what Google did: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-stands-up-japan-eart...

Can some one explain what Bing is actually apologizing for.

I've read this 4 times and all I can make out is that Microsoft is donating money if people retweet a message that they are donating to Japan.

The link embedded in the tweet even links to their disaster relief page.

Everything about this seems like it's a good idea.

What's the controversy about?

They're apologizing that some people chose to be offended by the tweet. I agree, that is perfectly reasonable. I too regret that people would choose to be offended by a helpful, charitable action.

I think the most offensive part is that Microsoft would limit itself to donating a mere 100k.

If they don't want to donate, that's fine, nobody really expects them to. But if they are, don't make it chump-change...

I agree that the marketing thing is in horrible bad taste, and the non-apology lame, but I've always disliked it when people have an opinion about where, or how much money others should donate.

Trying to put aside the circus they've created around it, what's it to you if they donate $0, or $100000, or $10000000? How much of a companies revenue should a company donate for this? How much should an individual? Who should decide? Who's business is it?

Given that you find the amount the most offensive thing, I take it you are also offended by the billion of companies and individuals who have donated nothing? How much have you donated? How much should I?

I agree with the parent poster and would like to add that I think it's great that bing donated a $100k today and it does not seem stingy at all to me. Moreover, I doubt that this is the only thing Microsoft does with regard to crisis response. The link from the original tweet illustrates this.

I don't think it's a big deal, just a hastily conceived idea that someone should have reworked a bit before releasing into the wild. But yeah it is offensive, when the dust hasn't settled and people are trapped in buildings, to try and cash in on the "opportunity" with a message that said, in effect, "Hey everyone look how we're generous we are and if you spread the message about how generous Microsoft is (by retweeting this message) we'll donate an entire dollar (up to the level of the salary of a low level flunky at our company)."

I think if Bill was still running things, he'd have a) made a bigger donation and b) wouldn't come across as trying to exploit the situation.

It's perfectly fine for a company to seek recognition for it's contribution to the public good, but if it's not handled well, it can come across as a crass and cynical exploitation. If they had just tweeted "Hey Microsoft is donating $100,000 to Japan relief, here's how you can do the same http:\\bit.ly\xxxx" they may have gotten more retweets, and certainly a lot more respect.

The offensive tweet:

"How you can #SupportJapan – http://binged.it/fEh7iT. For every retweet, @bing will give $1 to Japan quake victims, up to $100K."

Using a national tragedy for marketing purposes is just sickening. Really really sickening.

EDIT: Given the amount of downvotes, I suppose I should clarify that this is my perception, and this is probably perceived as many in this way. Marketing is about perception. This was a fail for Bing.

I would agree, but this seriously doesn't look like an attempt at marketing.

It looks like a way to let people be involved in Microsoft's giving.

You're free to look at it in the worst possible light, but I'm having a hard time believing that's what they intended.

But then why did they @bing themselves, and why base it off retweets? Their support is entirely based on other people's willingness to spread @bing by Bing 100 thousand times. And what the heck is with that "apology"? Though they're now flat-donating 100k, doing it to make up after-the-fact doesn't change things, especially when it's so small from such a phenomenally wealthy company.

Why is their support based on retweets? Why not state they're donating 100k and request retweet for the binged.it link for purposes of finding ways to help? Or better: make it two tweets, so they're not advertising their generosity with their support link. They don't even mention what the binged link is. Why didn't Microsoft bother to make it a more prominent link than one that's 166 characters long and nested in their "community involvement" section?

This is a very nice comparison between Google's response and Microsoft's. "Resources related to the Japanese earthquake and tsunami." is right on the Google front page. Microsoft's mention is nested a dozen layers deep, with a banner of "Corporate Citizenship".

> why base it off of retweets?

Because the link in the tweet is to Microsoft's Disaster Response page, and retweets will help spread this link. Google also uses their site to spread information about the disaster.

But Google's information contains no blatant advertising of how much Google is doing to provide aid. It just provides information about how to help.

I don't think their tweet was all that bad, but it is absolutely an advertising attempt. Intentional or no, they're clearly attempting to use people to spread how much they're helping, and their name. And information. But all that is useful is the information (and it's not even mentioned aside from an obfuscated link) - why is the rest there?

In any case, the twitter world is already ablaze with help links: http://twitter.com/#!/search/help%20japan How many of the results there mention how much the tweeter has donated, much less corporate twitter accounts?

I think the idea is that the $1 donation is used as an incentive for people to retweet, which will draw more attention to the Microsoft Disaster Resources.

Besides, is your argument that corporations should never publicly disclose charitable donations? If so, it's a pretty bold claim, and the vast majority of corporations are guilty.

Not at all. Just that there are more and less tasteful ways of doing so. This isn't one of the more tasteful ones. It could have been an accident, but it is what it is.

It is all about perception. You may not think it looks like marketing, but it does to me and I am sure it does to many others.

"For every dollar donated by twitter users, Bing will match it up to $100k" would have been appropriate, and gotten them a lot of retweets.

Instead they took the same approach that SEOs and "social marketing experts" use. "If this retweets \d+ times, we will give you a chance to (win|donate) (ipods|ipads|cash)".

> looks like a way to let people be involved in Microsoft's giving.

Is there any other reason to get people involved in Microsoft's "generosity" than to promote it? As it is, they are holding their contribution for ransom (if you don't retweet their message, Japan will get less donations). How that's not a clumsy attempt to profit from the deaths of thousands of people?

I imagine just about everyone who might see that retweet has already heard of Bing, so at worst they are just marketing their own generocity, and that may actually provoke more generocity from their competitors.

Nice, they were sorry about our "perception" of what they were actually doing, not about their intention to begin with.

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