Photo Credit: iabuk
April 28th was not Dick Costolo’s (Twitter CEO) and Twitter’s Investor Relations Team best day.
The Wall Street Journal’s Yoree Koh published this article, Twitter Shares Tumble After Nasdaq Leaks Results Early, after Twitter’s 2015 Q1 Earnings Conference Call. Her story describes important challenges Twitter is confronting the company:
- Missed revenue targets
- Investor skepticism about the company’s value as an advertising platform (relative to Facebook and Google).
Real-Time Havoc Breaks Loose on April 28th Around 3:07 PM Eastern Time. Addressing these difficult issues was the least of Twitter’s problems. Selerity, a self-described real-time analytics and media company, stole the show by live tweeting Twitter’s 2015 Q1 unreleased financials BEFORE the Twitter’s earnings call.
Koh writes that Selerity’s web crawling software discovered an early and publicly available version of Twitter’s earnings release. Selerity started posting the following tweets about Twitter’s financials around 3:07 PM Eastern Time:
Here’s the Problem. Twitter’s 2015 Q1 Earning’s Conference Call wasn’t scheduled to take place until 5 PM Eastern Time. This real-time news event forced Twitter’s Investor Relations Team to ask The New York Stock Exchange to halt trades of Twitter’s stock:
A Small New Jersey, Real-Time Analytics Firm Earns Massive News Coverage It Could Never Afford to Buy. Selerity pounced on this real-time event and scored a public relations bonanza for its brand. As of 10:50 AM Eastern Time, my quick Google News Search on the phrase “Selerity” yielded 18,000+ results:
$4 Billion Evaporates in 40 Minutes. Rob Daumeyer (Editor of The Cincinnati Business Courier) writes that the 18% drop in stock price cost Twitter $4 billion in market value. The math works out to:
- Cost Per Tweet: $1 billion
- $100 million lost per minute
- $1,666,666 lost per second
Ouch. But, Give Twitter’s Investor’s Relations Team Credit for Handling and Managing this Real-Time News Crisis. They understand the implications of managing events and shaping the story in both good times and bad. Their swift efforts to work with The New York Stock Exchange on a contingency plan probably minimized even greater damage to their stock. I wouldn’t be surprised if this event and Twitter’s actions become a landmark case study in handling, learning, and recovering from a real-time public relations crisis.
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