While it is never a good idea to upset your customers, and therefore probably not the best idea the Slideshare people have had, I feel that those that fell for this might also have had unrealistic expectations in regards to their presentation's importance. April 1st or not, if your view count shoots up that quickly and unexpectedly, I think you need to eliminate the possibility of any technical glitches, human shenanigans, etc. before publicizing this sort of thing on your Twitter feed, blog, etc.
Kelly Cree
· 8 months ago
i think people whine too much.
oh wah wah wah they made me look like a fool in front of my networks.
maybe they just helped reveal your true colors.
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
I'd say brilliant if controversial. Slideshare has little to lose (a couple thousand low usage hard to monetize disgruntled users) vs. much to gain. I bet their site traffic today is a record - as is new customer views.
micah
· 8 months ago
haha. <3 great idea. people need to take a chill pill. i mean, it's april fools, you're supposed to look like a dumb at least once during the day.
Timothy
· 8 months ago
I think it is hilarious. Hilarious for me. Not for them. Pretty mean, but funny from a spectator seat.
Heath Row
· 8 months ago
Count me in the "all in good fun" camp. I didn't promote myself having become the best of SlideShare, but I _did_ go in to check my view counts and see what was up -- actually didn't think much of it. While the prank might not be the most elegant of japes, the people who do SlideShare are good people with big hearts, so I'm sure no malevolence was intended. In the end, this feels like people feeling upset they got outed for seeking attention... thinking they had gotten attention. It's April Fools Day. Grain of salt, grain of salt. Next time, let's not be so quick to toot our own horns, mayhaps. That's what I think hurts.
George
· 8 months ago
I think it is fine. The only people who will look foolish are people who need the validation of telling strangers that they are popular. I wish this happened more often, maybe we can drive the narcissism out of the online world. We are all becoming that guy in the yellow Hummer who blasts Kid Rock in the parking lot so people will look at him. Down with vanity! Up with lampoonery! (Besides, isn't looking foolish the whole point of April FOOLS Day?)
Sabrina
· 8 months ago
George - you clearly don't run your own business. The point is NOT whether people tweeted about it. How they use twitter is their own personal decision. the point is that slideshare made a bad call. What company is successful by doing something that makes customers look dumb? Seriously....
Bertil
· 8 months ago
Not ‘look’.
LOLER
· 8 months ago
People need to take the sticks out. Not only was it a JOKE, it was a great WOM move for SlideShare. Who cares if you fell for this? So did thousands of other people. Big deal, you all look dumb, but at least you're not alone. Embrace your gullibility and move on. No one cares.
Sabrina
· 8 months ago
you care enough to comment
Bertil
· 8 months ago
You have too much pride to work on April First.
Gertrude Moeller
· 7 months ago
I considered using SlideShare to support a job search in case of a second round of layoffs at my company, but that's out now. It seems they aren't interested in a business audience, just slackers and others with discretionary time to burn.
With my professional credibility and my family's survival at stake, I'm also "too proud" and too busy to waste time with kiddie jokes.
OK, on to the next option.....good thing I checked out these Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Players before clicking the "add app" button! Thanks for all the good info, people.
NMRK
marcovhv
· 8 months ago
I think this is a hilarious prank. It's hilarious because it shows what a whiny ass babies a lot of people are, full of vanity and 'look-at-me' bullshit. If some of these people now have made an ass out of themselves: WIN!
People take themselves WAY too seriously these days.
Cheryl Blalock
· 8 months ago
If this were a "simple" social network, it would be embarassing but not lethal. On Twitter, users are generally more serious; a really bad joke to me.
Bertil
· 8 months ago
Wasn't it sent by e-mail?
froggertv
· 8 months ago
You are right cheryl , people on twitter are more serious then other social media sites.
David C.
· 8 months ago
I personally do like or use slideshare and for them to do this is not a a good idea and they may lose people. I would not blame anyone who is upset and pulls their pictures off slideshare.
Pishabh Badmaash
· 8 months ago
I go this email this morning and decided to hire a PR firm and publicist for myself. Now I'm locked into a contract with Tom Cruise's Agent and can't get out!
Dane Sanders
· 8 months ago
Kind of reminds me of a Michael Scott moment - hilarious in a cringing kind of way... unless their you're slides.
JJB
· 8 months ago
Don't think you mean "diffuse," which means "scatter or spread widely." "Defuse," maybe? Or "decode"?
Adam Ostrow
· 8 months ago
you are correct :-) fixed
daveyank
· 8 months ago
I think the prank was not cool at all. As a business, you should NEVER run the risk of embarrassing your customer; only yourself. In this case, looks like Slideshare embarrassed both parties.
BocaJuniors
· 8 months ago
Yeah...
It's questionable for a business to run the risk of embarrassing its customers.
It's downright weird that they would set out to do it.
Gerald Weber
· 8 months ago
Oh man this is just wrong. Yeah I suppose I would have been pissed.
tyfn
· 8 months ago
I don't know what the "rules" are about April Fool's Jokes as I have never understood them. It is more of a challenge today it seems, especially when combined with social media where the reach is extended beyond your classroom, work, or home. Receiving an email about my enhanced views sounded believable and I didn't think it was a joke but a bug as the views numbers where not consistent across the different pages that showed my slides.
I'm sure next year, Social Media companies will reconsider the value of an April Fool's Joke beyond the internal confines of their office.
Granton
· 8 months ago
Reading the comments amuses me as much as the prank itself...lol. It appears that many people take themselves wayyy too seriously. I don't do business with people who don't have an ability to laugh at themselves....they scare me.
@pattipds
· 8 months ago
Poor taste, shame on SlideShare. Folks have lots of other options on where to post their photos. I know who I won't be using. Way to ruin your customer relationships. Nothing say "I don't care about you" more than a cheap joke at someone expense.
Cameron
· 8 months ago
What would have been funnier is if they'd REMOVED two zeros from everyone's traffic. I think it went over the line from funny to not-so when they asked everyone to tweet or blog about it with the special hashtag.
Phil Bradley
· 8 months ago
They were too slow off the mark to respond to comments. There were a lot of angry and confused people on Twitter and they didn't get out a blog post early enough, or a general Twitter apology. Most AF jokes do have a link to make it clear that you've been caught out. This one didn't, and more to the point was encouraging people to market on their behalf. You can argue that the people who fell for it were fools; that doesn't matter. What does matter is that if they have lost users as a result, it's not a good joke. Finally, if you do anything which makes your resource unusable (which it was for much of this morning) it doesn't seem to be a sensible way to use your time.
snowkitten
· 8 months ago
I think that is a good point. Although users should have questioned the viability of their number increase (especially with the date), their joke was too close to the realm of possibility. When something does go viral, it can increase exponentially very quickly. If you're going to do an April Fool's joke as a company, than go way over the top so that most people will realize it's a joke. Google did that very well today as did Palm.
Kathy Herrmann
· 8 months ago
I'm not seeing the upside in embarrassing your customers.
Chris - You make some good points but Slideshare's joke idea is a lousy one. Any customers who did check wasted their time digging into a joke. Any way you slice it, Slideshare undermined the trust they'd built with customers.
Timi Siytangco
· 8 months ago
Many things made it uncool: It was spammy; anyone who pays proper attention can tell if their presentation is trending; and the addition of two extra zeroes was just lame.
Rob Permeable
· 8 months ago
Agreed. It seems ill-judged. Designed specifically to mock the "vanity" of its users, as the comment above illustrates, it has scored an almighty own goal with its users. Don't bite that hand that feeds, etc. Slideshare is an influential - and great - tool, with embeds into professional sites such as LinkedIn. Those using it to promote their educative and business reach, like an organic curriculum vitae, have been made to appear vain, whereas in fact they were goaded (through entrapment by Slideshare) to - not just an isolated bout of public embarrassment to their networks - but an altogether more global one via the somewhat cruel hashtag. I have since seen a rep fro Slideshare giving out their email on twitter to begrudged users - perhaps in an attempt to prevent the rather unsavoury problem they have now of tweeters publicly threatening violence against them and retweeting ad nauseum. Lesson? Perhaps Slideshare could have got away with it (and even excused it as an error at the first sign of aggravation) had they not so royally set-up their users. But as it stands, Slideshare's comms team have made a rod for their own backs in cooling the embarrassed anger of the very people that breathe life into the service through uploading their content. Who's the fool now...?
ready2spark
· 8 months ago
First, their April Fool's joke took place on March 31st here in the US/Canada - which probably added to the confusion by their subscribers.
As someone who was the recipient of this little hoax, I have to say that I'm not impressed. I have spent countless hours trying to help my organization understand that social media is a credible, measurable and highly effective tool in the marketing mix.
Having just recently uploaded a slideshow that saw over 1,300 views in one day, I used this is a case study to show how quickly good ideas can spread...and how many impressions our brand can make. Well, I guess the joke is now on me. When those views jumped to 100,300+ a few hours later, guess how credible and measurable that tool was in the eyes of my organization.
April Fool's jokes have no place in business. This sounds like a classic case of a company (Slideshare) loosing sight of who their subscribers are. I suspect many of them, like me, are business people. As I said on Twitter: This hoax of putting 2 extra 0s next to my number of views is about as funny as sending an invoice to my client with a few extra 0s...letting them stew over it for a day...then telling them: "don't worry, it was just an April Fool's joke!".
Bertil
· 8 months ago
You are seriously inflating your story, and should consider that Web 2.0 never meant visibility stats were a straightforward affair. If you can't check such prank, how can you be sure any of your result is not spam?
Todor Christov
· 8 months ago
I was caught by this joke today - I received an email too and Slideshare statistics was 40 000 for a very unpopular presentation of mine.
30 minutes later I was almost sure that there is something going on... :-))
shiny
· 8 months ago
Wow -- I'm the 2400th commenter on this thread! :)
It just wasn't funny. Perhaps it was funny to the vendor, but there was no real "laugh value" for anyone watching. Certainly not a great image a company would want to show...
DJMeta4
· 8 months ago
IT'S APRIL FOOLS DAY. People expect you to get fooled, it's not such a big deal. The people complaining need to go out and buy themselves a sense of humor. This didn't hurt anyone, it was a harmless prank. Now just do damage control, compose a tweet explaining how you were fooled and laugh it off.
bradleyf81
· 8 months ago
Read "ready2spark"s comment a few above yours and you'll see that it had real world employment impact. Slideshare hosts serious business.
Bertil
· 8 months ago
Someone got fired for that? That would be news!
I'm sorry that some people still think that makin jokes prevents you from being a credible source; I was educated with humour being treated as a sign of confidence.
sundeep
· 8 months ago
I think it's smart if the visitor number goes up on this blog :)
BuckD
· 8 months ago
I read the first couple of comments and I disagree. It was funny! Also shouldn't people be on guard for April fool's Joke. I stopped reading blogs today bc of the rampant April fool's Joke. Develop a sense of humor.
Jim
· 8 months ago
While may not have been the brightest idea, the folks at SlideShare had. It was a joke in the theme of the day. Shows your networks you are human and should endear you as more like them and more believeable. Laugh along with them and get over yourself.
Richard
· 8 months ago
Now watch how my email and site info is set loose, lol. This is the worst kind of joke to play on people because when sales are scarce, seeing a mirage like that can give you hope we haven't felt since Obama ran... lol. NOT cool and don't do this again! To your room and no dinner for you!
Karen Ingram
· 8 months ago
I think it's awesome. Isn't it slideshare's way of saying that every one of their users is "The best" (#bestofslideshare)? ;)
Bertil
· 8 months ago
Indeed: all winners; how American — and all the complainers sound oddly like a mother who complains about her child trauma since she noticed that *every* child also has a trophy.
Zara
· 8 months ago
Wow, if only there was a way for you to check hashtags to see what other people had posted before you posted your tweet. Or, even better, a way for someone to delete their own tweet? Or maybe, had they done this on a day when people knew not to take things seriously.
Carmen Holotescu
· 8 months ago
Hi,
Not the best joke of April, 1, but before tweeting a message it's better to check the validity of what will be your statement: check the number of visitors for your presentation, seach the suggested hash #bestofslideshare.
Here is a result just noted: just deleted all my slides from slideshare #bestofslideshare
Carmen
AlexinHouston
· 8 months ago
If you don't find this funny, then I'm sorry that you've lost your sense of humor. I'd have to laugh at myself if it were me. Great April Fool's prank.
Lemonade
· 8 months ago
I was puzzled/cross because the slideshows they said had all these views were 'private'..... And no way to contact anyone. I nearly took them all off the site...
Tabitha "Tabz" Smith
· 8 months ago
I love it. I love April Fool's and it's hard to pull one over on people -- but Slideshow did it. So Kudos to them.
dpbkmb
· 8 months ago
Hey, it's called April Fools Day. It takes one to know one & to be one & who doesn't like to fool around? It's like President Bush said fool me.. and.. uh..
Adam Ostrow
· 8 months ago
hah, that W quote is legendary ...
Neal
· 8 months ago
My vote goes for "funny". People need to lighten up a bit.
drewolanoff
· 8 months ago
Jerk move in my opinion. You don't mess with your customers data or their protected work. Googles jokes are just that, it never ever involves anything about you personally....my opinion of the company has really dropped.
Nicole M
· 8 months ago
It wasn't a good prank because it wasn't actually funny, but honestly, how much harm did it cause? I didn't think my colleague was an idiot for retweeting her *rockstar* status; I thought she was in on the joke.
I think folks will only look foolish if they make a big deal out of it.
Dustin Pitcher
· 8 months ago
Well I'd have to side with shareslide and the epic prank on April fools. But that's just me, sometimes people get p*ssed when they get pranked and they look kind of foolish but the next guy in the networks just going to get a laugh out of it and write it off as what it is: An april fools prank! I'm sure nobody's reputation has been scarred for life over this one! BTW if it is, I'd like to hear about it. LOL
vikram
· 8 months ago
to learn from google- make sure its OBVIOUS tht ur pulling a prank- something that would make ppl check out their desktop calendar for the date... and if it is a serious release, make sure its not on april 1!!
vikram
· 8 months ago
and then again, @sathya2000 's fall for the prank and mud-on-the-face experience is getting a lot more hits here than it cld/wld ve on twitter! :-)
bharath
· 8 months ago
Really bad (gross) prank. I feel sorry for the people who fell for it , and that includes me too. What people want on April fools' day is not to be branded as a fool, by friends,co-workers or family members. Its not a motivating thing to be fooled by some stupid slide uploading site that we happen to upload our slides once in a while. Shame on Slideshare, i hope they get the humiliation they brought upon their users.
Steve
· 8 months ago
At the end of the day, SlideShare has minimal awareness in the broader Web world and needs the goodwill of its user base to help spread the love. More importantly, there is NO WAY these guys are making any money right now. So...making fun of its loyal user base is not the way to grow its business. I'm seeing select posts here crapping on folks who don't have a sense of humor. But for those of us who use SlideShare professionally and report on its metrics, this was not a ha ha moment. I've had very positive feelings about SlideShare until today. Now I'm neutral at best. What they'll get out of me is silence. And BTW, I'm typically an extremely funny and good humored son of a bitch. What would have worked is self-deprecating humor.
Jon Hansen
· 8 months ago
As I had openly admitted on Twitter, I too fell for the "prank" hook, line and sinker.
I also indicated that some would feel that anyone who expressed disappointment are limited to those who take themselves far too seriously.
I have never been reluctant to use self-deprecating humor - after all if we cannot laugh at ourselves as the saying goes . . .
However, I truly do rely on SlideShare's numbers to inform clients about read activity. And while 20,000 reads was an hugely "optimistic" number, one also considers the source in weighing the veracity of the information. And as a side note, meteoric increases are possible as my blog's syndicated readership base grew from 0 when it was launched in May 2007 to reaching 300,000 syndicated subscribers each month worldwide by August 2008.
Perhaps that's what made it a great prank was the fact that no one could see it coming. On the other hand, to arrive at that point of creditability (re being a trusted source of info) is something that is earned and maintained through an organization's conduct or actions. Ultimately, SlideShare's hard earned creditability is what created the degree of trust that opened the door to making one susceptible to the prank in the first place.
In hindsight, is this really the way SlideShare wanted to leverage that trust?
Once again, and as demonstrated by a couple of comments below, there will certainly be some to tell others that they have to get a life and not take the situation or themselves so seriously. In the end however, SlideShare has to ask if their little joke furthered their organization's best interests (i.e. added to the trust that people have in the company), or as it hurt it?
That is a question that should have been asked before hand.
As for me I will take my lumps because I am a big boy, and that's life. But I will never view SlideShare in the same light, nor will I honestly look at the their statistics with the same level of confidence I had prior to this morning.
One final note: I have a number of secured documents re papers which can only be accessed through the utilization of a tightly controlled password. Unfortunately, it would appear that SlideShare deemed these documents to be a target as well as they are showing a higher level of reads than warranted by internal verification. I hope that someone from SlideShare will get back to me to let me know that it is indeed part of the prank and not a more serious security breach with their system.
Jon Hansen
· 8 months ago
As I had openly admitted on Twitter, I too fell for the "prank" hook, line and sinker.
I also indicated that some would feel that anyone who expressed disappointment are limited to those who take themselves far too seriously.
I have never been reluctant to use self-deprecating humor - after all if we cannot laugh at ourselves as the saying goes . . .
However, I truly do rely on SlideShare's numbers to inform clients about read activity. And while 20,000 reads was an hugely "optimistic" number, one also considers the source in weighing the veracity of the information. And as a side note, meteoric increases are possible as my blog's syndicated readership base grew from 0 when it was launched in May 2007 to reaching 300,000 syndicated subscribers each month worldwide by August 2008.
Perhaps that's what made it a great prank was the fact that no one could see it coming. On the other hand, to arrive at that point of creditability (re being a trusted source of info) is something that is earned and maintained through an organization's conduct or actions. Ultimately, SlideShare's hard earned creditability is what created the degree of trust that opened the door to making one susceptible to the prank in the first place.
In hindsight, is this really the way SlideShare wanted to leverage that trust?
Once again, and as demonstrated by a couple of comments below, there will certainly be some to tell others that they have to get a life and not take the situation or themselves so seriously. In the end however, SlideShare has to ask if their little joke furthered their organization's best interests (i.e. added to the trust that people have in the company), or as it hurt it?
That is a question that should have been asked before hand.
As for me I will take my lumps because I am a big boy, and that's life. But I will never view SlideShare in the same light, nor will I honestly look at the their statistics with the same level of confidence I had prior to this morning.
One final note: I have a number of secured documents re papers which can only be accessed through the utilization of a tightly controlled password. Unfortunately, it would appear that SlideShare deemed these documents to be a target as well as they are showing a higher level of reads than warranted by internal verification. I hope that someone from SlideShare will get back to me to let me know that it is indeed part of the prank and not a more serious security breach with their system.
Jon W. Hansen
· 8 months ago
As I had openly admitted on Twitter, I too fell for the "prank" hook, line and sinker.
I also indicated that some would feel that anyone who expressed disappointment are limited to those who take themselves far too seriously.
I have never been reluctant to use self-deprecating humor - after all if we cannot laugh at ourselves as the saying goes . . .
However, I truly do rely on SlideShare's numbers to inform clients about read activity. And while 20,000 reads was an hugely "optimistic" number, one also considers the source in weighing the veracity of the information. And as a side note, meteoric increases are possible as my blog's syndicated readership base grew from 0 when it was launched in May 2007 to reaching 300,000 syndicated subscribers each month worldwide by August 2008.
Perhaps that's what made it a great prank was the fact that no one could see it coming. On the other hand, to arrive at that point of creditability (re being a trusted source of info) is something that is earned and maintained through an organization's conduct or actions. Ultimately, SlideShare's hard earned creditability is what created the degree of trust that opened the door to making one susceptible to the prank in the first place.
In hindsight, is this really the way SlideShare wanted to leverage that trust?
Once again, and as demonstrated by a couple of comments below, there will certainly be some to tell others that they have to get a life and not take the situation or themselves so seriously. In the end however, SlideShare has to ask if their little joke furthered their organization's best interests (i.e. added to the trust that people have in the company), or as it hurt it?
That is a question that should have been asked before hand.
As for me I will take my lumps because I am a big boy, and that's life. But I will never view SlideShare in the same light, nor will I honestly look at the their statistics with the same level of confidence I had prior to this morning.
One final note: I have a number of secured documents re papers which can only be accessed through the utilization of a tightly controlled password. Unfortunately, it would appear that SlideShare deemed these documents to be a target as well as they are showing a higher level of reads than warranted by internal verification. I hope that someone from SlideShare will get back to me to let me know that it is indeed part of the prank and not a more serious security breach with their system.
Chani
· 8 months ago
I received the Slideshare email this morning, and even though I suspected a prank, the thrill of possibly having won the lotto lifted my spirits. I looked in the mirror and saw that rock stars are just like ordinary people. Before rushing out to twitter, I had a couple of friends investigate the possible prank, and one of them (Walt) set me straight. Overall I am delighted with Slideshare's sense of humor - a bit of humble pie never hurt anyone.
Hoopz
· 8 months ago
Great prank, mostly because of all the idiots who are so obsessive about their stats online.
Mike Mella
· 8 months ago
This just proves what I've been saying for years: We need to ban the Gregorian calendar.
kopper
· 8 months ago
Good for SlideShare! People take themselves WAY too seriously.
thewilde
· 8 months ago
Slideshare are idiots, i mean whats the point--adding two extra zeros makes my preso look like it got 100000 views. The problem here is now i'm going to call SlideShares stats in to question from now on. Idiots.
Michael Beck
· 8 months ago
Like Gregory Ng says, put me in the "not cool" camp too. I understand this was an April Fool's Day joke, but on the face of it pumping out e-mails to users with inflated statistics to get them to tweet and create buzz could also be viewed as a dishonest tactic under the guise of a joke.
Andy
· 8 months ago
I think a lot of the pranks haven't been funny. They're just stupid - it's like people feel that they have to have an April Fool's joke for the sake of it.
SlideShare_Dan
· 8 months ago
Sorry to the folks we upset. It really was meant as just a joke. We weren't trying to be sinister or to pull off a marketing rampage. I mean if we were, we'd have some PR person handling this much more elegantly instead of the co-founders mass apologizing on twitter...
We're sorry if we hurt your feelings, we didn't mean to make you look foolish (even on April 1st).
SlideShare_Dan
· 8 months ago
Your private slideshows have stayed private. We added two zeros to EVERY presentation. Your real view counts should be restored now and are accurate.
Adam Singer
· 8 months ago
I knew it was a joke - they bumped my recent presentation that had 3,000 views to 300,000 views...I was watching it spread, but knew it couldn't go that fast. Cruel to people with 1 or 10 views, funny to those with a thousand as those numbers don't scale easily and we knew it was a joke.
erik
· 8 months ago
I think a lot of commenters are missing the point. It's not a question of whether the joke was funny or not. Humor is as subjective as beauty. Some people don't think any practical joke is ever funny, and some people can't get enough of them. We will never answer the question “was this funny or not”.
The real question is: was this a smart move? Was the guerilla marketing buzz generated worth the possible alienation of some of the site’s users? And more importantly what does this do to their brand? What does Slideshare want us to think about their brand? Do they want to be the LinkedIn of presentation sites, or do they want to be the MySpace? In that light, I think that this was not a very smart move. For me personally, it makes me think that Slideshare is a little frivolous and not entirely professional. It makes any information from SS slightly suspect in my eyes…maybe only slightly, but do you ever want your brand to be considered even slightly suspect? If you think that makes me a humorless dolt who ‘needs to lighten up and take my self less seriously…” well so be it. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. But I have to say that messing with your brand image in such unstable times is risky at best.
LJB
· 8 months ago
I think Slide Share stepped over the line. My favorite April Fool's Day prank, however, has got to be hotelicopter. Check it out @ www.hotelicopter.com. A flying hotel, what!??!
Mike Spear
· 8 months ago
Crossed the line. In fact the number of 'jokes' going across Facebook and Twitter is actually getting to be a complete pain today. Nice thing about social media is that a good idea can get a life of its own and get well-deserved attention. The bad thing about social media is that so can a silly or perhaps even a very bad idea.
Mike
LJB
· 8 months ago
I agrese that SlideShare stepped over the line. My fave April Fool's Day prank, however, has got to be hotelicopter. Check it out @ www.hotelicopter.com. A flying hotel, what?!?!?
bradleyf81
· 8 months ago
I agree with the commenter from the Slideshare blog. Making someone look like a complete fool in front of their professional peers, supervisors, and subordinates is really really not cool.
It can cause a big loss of professional respect from all avenues, and complicate or even stall a career.
On another note... I have a few presentations on Slideshare. I used it to convert some powerpoint shows into embeds for a blog, nothing serious in nature... but I didn't get one of those invitations or e-mails this article mentioned.
Roger T
· 8 months ago
It isn't even a joke. They were just trying to get their users to drive more traffic to SlideShare. It's a sh*tty marketing gimmick hiding behind an April Fool's prank. Next time they should try being funny, that tends to work too.
Or maybe they could have a good product, I hear that drives traffic.
JW
· 8 months ago
I think it's quite funny. People that are getting peeved are taking it too seriously. No it's not the best prank to pull, but come on, laugh a little.
SlideShareHR
· 8 months ago
Job Posting - SlideShare Social Media Director
You might have heard about our April Fool's joke that blew up in our face. Because of the embarrassment and damage that this prank has caused our brand, we have decided that it might be a good idea to hire someone who knows a thing or two about social media, or even just basic etiquette.
Responsibilities Include: Apologizing to current customers. Sending personal emails to all current customers who were punked and personally asking for forgiveness. Explaining to customers why they should trust your site and should re-add your application to their LinkedIn profiles. Expertise with justifying boneheaded moves by your colleagues.
Requirements: Must have at least some knowledge of social media applications as well as fluency with the following programs: Groveling 2.0, SlideShaft 4.1.09 and MiaCulpa for Windows Vista.
Hari
· 8 months ago
You should know the popularity of your stuff, if numbers get inflated for no reason in one day, and it is April Fool's day and you still can't figure it out,
you got too much EGO built up. Learn to let it go and you will get hurt less.
Great prank, IMO.
Jill Walker Rettberg
· 8 months ago
I was at a meeting on flakey internet and not able to check this out as I normally would have - I actually considered this being an April fool's joke and decided they wouldn't have played such a stupid joke and that it had to be a technical glitch. I'm not impressed to learn they thought it was funny.
chris
· 8 months ago
Uh, I didn't even know what slideshare was.
Cathy Moore
· 8 months ago
I got the email, dated if I remember right March 31. I highly doubted that even *my* wonderful slideshows suddenly had millions of views. I also wasn't about to trumpet anything on Twitter. I assumed it was a technical glitch.
But the "get a sense of humor" people here seem to miss the fact that I and many of my colleagues use Slideshare to build credibility in our professions. My slideshows have gotten me clients. The last thing Slideshare should want to do is to harm customers' businesses by damaging their credibility. This trick shows that Slideshare staff don't have the professional approach that many of us will now be looking for in a different slide-embedding site.
Your Name*
· 8 months ago
I think its funny.
Elona Hartjes
· 8 months ago
I too was declared a rock star because I had 70002 viewers. I guess there's a lesson in this April Fool's joke and that is that I shouldn't take myself so seriously.
Bertil
· 8 months ago
I'm very surprised at how badly people reacted to that — and the argument that it's a professional service is a placeholder for the fact that it's actually a service used by people with self-agrandisment tendencies (something adressed by the prank; April Fools, like all inversion rites tend to have a role of revealing hard-to-openly state truths).
What puzzles me is how many people put bad presentations on that site, or rather presentation were slides lack too much information to make the service relevant per se. Some do include audio (usually that's disappointing, but it's a personal opinion) but it's rare; I might be missing the far more relevant use of sharing a slide on-line during a conference call — but then, a prank on stats would be toothless.
Don't blame me: I only do animation-heavy presentations, and I can't find a service to host them that would include that and needed presenter notes (and maybe sound too).
Ang
· 8 months ago
I'm going with the not-so-awesome-sauce camp here. The point about it being a professional service leads me to want to point out that April Fool's pranks are not something you do in a professional setting. Sure, among coworkers who are also friends is one thing, but to do it to people you serve and who might be gauging their ability to communicate professionally and network efficiently? That's just a little... well, unspiffy.
rob
· 8 months ago
Seriously??? Anyone who was offended by this should be more concerned they are living, breathing, productive members of society and yet show absolutely no sign of a sense of humor. If you can't laugh at yourself (especially when you fall for a prank on April Fools day) you really need to get out there, let your hair down, have a couple dozen tequila shots, and pull that giant stick out of your ass.
keep laughing, -rob
Kiki
· 8 months ago
The slide share April fools is awful! I don't even get it (although not a bad idea if you're going for the bad press is good press approach)...
However the You Tube example is really good. It's obvious, fun and you get to watch a bunch of videos upside down for a few hours. I may only be in a camp of one but I did like the Guardian April fools as well...
Amy
· 8 months ago
I followed the hashtag yesterday as a result of twitter. I thought it was humorous. People need to learn to laugh at themselves and think critically before they hit send. Lighten up and get thicker skin. If your customers are that uptight that they can't see it as a human reaction to encouraging news and get over it, you need to find better people to hang around with online ;).
Anand
· 8 months ago
Ohh..so they were trying to April fool me with that joke? I thought it was just an email to remind me that I signed up with them long long ago and were trying to woo me back..I didn't budge; but that's another matter.
Anyway, I think yes, Slideshare has indeed scored a strategic goal - so many people talking about them..amazing PR..negative publicity too, but not bad..
I empathize with those who had to look like fools in front of their networks, but that's fine..this is still way better than talking about twitter on twitter all the time, right?
Jumi Pak
· 8 months ago
tasteless, senseless joke. not cool.
Andrew
· 8 months ago
Q.Q So they pulled one over on a bunch of people who failed to take everything with a grain of salt. Any idiot not double- or triple-checking something like this on April 1st deserves to be "pantsed" in front of his/her network. I say hilarious.
tiff
· 8 months ago
Slideshare obviously completely misunderstand the power of social media and the people who use it. What a truly stupid idea.
Deirdre
· 8 months ago
I initially thought someone was scamming SlideShare because I knew I didn't have that many possible viewers. I felt humiliated when I found out it was SlideShare, as if they were making fun of my low number of viewers. I'm seriously thinking of removing my slides.
Steve Briggsbest
· 8 months ago
Excellent damage for SS. Minor damage 2 fooled. Next...
Tawny Press
· 8 months ago
All the talk about transparency and honesty went out the window on April fool’s Day. I found the SlideShare prank, in poor taste. They obviously don’t know their own member base very well. We don’t use their service for entertainment, in general, but as a way to showcase our own or learn from peers presentations, on a variety of topics.
A great deal of time and planning goes into a presentation. People are working harder for each piece of business today and every milestone is reason for celebration. To get people excited about their increase in viewing status, then ask them to broadcast it on Twitter, while SlideShare’s staff followed the joke online was in very bad taste.
SlideShare’s goal was to increase traffic and awareness to their website, at the expensive of member’s embarrassment. Good PR? I don’t believe so and they obviously realized that this “joke” wasn’t viewed as humorous, by their quick apology to their existing members.
butter team
· 8 months ago
the only people that got punk'd are people who would actually twitter about how many views their slideshare presentations get.
Oliver Wright
· 8 months ago
i don't take social media or myself seriously, and i love pranks more than most, but this was sheer retardation. it wasn't funny nor do i think it was intended to be. if i had to guess, their numbers tell them they're losing relevance fast, and they thought they'd jump on the retweet bandwagon to purgatory. they came off looking really f'in lame, and i wouldn't be surprised if they never recovered. f'in tards.
Gregory Ng
· 8 months ago
I agree with the "not cool" camp. And not because of the adding zeroes to the viewer count. Its that they encouraged you to publicly be the butt of their joke.
snowkitten
· 8 months ago
That was in very bad taste. As the commenter said, SlideShare is looked at as a professional tool and they undermined that trust.
Bertil
· 8 months ago
PowerPoint presnetations are professional? I though it was a tool invented by Kafka to keep middle-management busy. ;^)
(The real story about the program was recently featured on Wired, BTW.)
snowkitten
· 8 months ago
I think you're right about that. =D
@pattipds
· 8 months ago
Poor taste, shame on SlideShare. There are other places to share photos. I know who I won't be using. A great example of how to ruin your customer relationship.
Henie
· 8 months ago
NOT COOL and they're THE FOOL!
sundeep
· 8 months ago
continuing from my comment above; ...but i dont support this at all. there many ways to get mileage. short term gain, long term loss. bad strategy.
All Comments
oh wah wah wah they made me look like a fool in front of my networks.
maybe they just helped reveal your true colors.
(Besides, isn't looking foolish the whole point of April FOOLS Day?)
With my professional credibility and my family's survival at stake, I'm also "too proud" and too busy to waste time with kiddie jokes.
OK, on to the next option.....good thing I checked out these Not-Ready-For-Prime-Time-Players before clicking the "add app" button! Thanks for all the good info, people.
NMRK
People take themselves WAY too seriously these days.
It's questionable for a business to run the risk of embarrassing its customers.
It's downright weird that they would set out to do it.
I'm sure next year, Social Media companies will reconsider the value of an April Fool's Joke beyond the internal confines of their office.
Way to ruin your customer relationships. Nothing say "I don't care about you" more than a cheap joke at someone expense.
Chris - You make some good points but Slideshare's joke idea is a lousy one. Any customers who did check wasted their time digging into a joke. Any way you slice it, Slideshare undermined the trust they'd built with customers.
As someone who was the recipient of this little hoax, I have to say that I'm not impressed. I have spent countless hours trying to help my organization understand that social media is a credible, measurable and highly effective tool in the marketing mix.
Having just recently uploaded a slideshow that saw over 1,300 views in one day, I used this is a case study to show how quickly good ideas can spread...and how many impressions our brand can make. Well, I guess the joke is now on me. When those views jumped to 100,300+ a few hours later, guess how credible and measurable that tool was in the eyes of my organization.
April Fool's jokes have no place in business. This sounds like a classic case of a company (Slideshare) loosing sight of who their subscribers are. I suspect many of them, like me, are business people. As I said on Twitter: This hoax of putting 2 extra 0s next to my number of views is about as funny as sending an invoice to my client with a few extra 0s...letting them stew over it for a day...then telling them: "don't worry, it was just an April Fool's joke!".
30 minutes later I was almost sure that there is something going on... :-))
It just wasn't funny. Perhaps it was funny to the vendor, but there was no real "laugh value" for anyone watching. Certainly not a great image a company would want to show...
I'm sorry that some people still think that makin jokes prevents you from being a credible source; I was educated with humour being treated as a sign of confidence.
Or maybe, had they done this on a day when people knew not to take things seriously.
Not the best joke of April, 1, but before tweeting a message it's better to check the validity of what will be your statement: check the number of visitors for your presentation, seach the suggested hash #bestofslideshare.
Here is a result just noted:
just deleted all my slides from slideshare #bestofslideshare
Carmen
I think folks will only look foolish if they make a big deal out of it.
I feel sorry for the people who fell for it , and that includes me too.
What people want on April fools' day is not to be branded as a fool, by friends,co-workers or family members.
Its not a motivating thing to be fooled by some stupid slide uploading site that we happen to upload our slides once in a while.
Shame on Slideshare, i hope they get the humiliation they brought upon their users.
I also indicated that some would feel that anyone who expressed disappointment are limited to those who take themselves far too seriously.
I have never been reluctant to use self-deprecating humor - after all if we cannot laugh at ourselves as the saying goes . . .
However, I truly do rely on SlideShare's numbers to inform clients about read activity. And while 20,000 reads was an hugely "optimistic" number, one also considers the source in weighing the veracity of the information. And as a side note, meteoric increases are possible as my blog's syndicated readership base grew from 0 when it was launched in May 2007 to reaching 300,000 syndicated subscribers each month worldwide by August 2008.
Perhaps that's what made it a great prank was the fact that no one could see it coming. On the other hand, to arrive at that point of creditability (re being a trusted source of info) is something that is earned and maintained through an organization's conduct or actions. Ultimately, SlideShare's hard earned creditability is what created the degree of trust that opened the door to making one susceptible to the prank in the first place.
In hindsight, is this really the way SlideShare wanted to leverage that trust?
Once again, and as demonstrated by a couple of comments below, there will certainly be some to tell others that they have to get a life and not take the situation or themselves so seriously. In the end however, SlideShare has to ask if their little joke furthered their organization's best interests (i.e. added to the trust that people have in the company), or as it hurt it?
That is a question that should have been asked before hand.
As for me I will take my lumps because I am a big boy, and that's life. But I will never view SlideShare in the same light, nor will I honestly look at the their statistics with the same level of confidence I had prior to this morning.
One final note: I have a number of secured documents re papers which can only be accessed through the utilization of a tightly controlled password. Unfortunately, it would appear that SlideShare deemed these documents to be a target as well as they are showing a higher level of reads than warranted by internal verification. I hope that someone from SlideShare will get back to me to let me know that it is indeed part of the prank and not a more serious security breach with their system.
I also indicated that some would feel that anyone who expressed disappointment are limited to those who take themselves far too seriously.
I have never been reluctant to use self-deprecating humor - after all if we cannot laugh at ourselves as the saying goes . . .
However, I truly do rely on SlideShare's numbers to inform clients about read activity. And while 20,000 reads was an hugely "optimistic" number, one also considers the source in weighing the veracity of the information. And as a side note, meteoric increases are possible as my blog's syndicated readership base grew from 0 when it was launched in May 2007 to reaching 300,000 syndicated subscribers each month worldwide by August 2008.
Perhaps that's what made it a great prank was the fact that no one could see it coming. On the other hand, to arrive at that point of creditability (re being a trusted source of info) is something that is earned and maintained through an organization's conduct or actions. Ultimately, SlideShare's hard earned creditability is what created the degree of trust that opened the door to making one susceptible to the prank in the first place.
In hindsight, is this really the way SlideShare wanted to leverage that trust?
Once again, and as demonstrated by a couple of comments below, there will certainly be some to tell others that they have to get a life and not take the situation or themselves so seriously. In the end however, SlideShare has to ask if their little joke furthered their organization's best interests (i.e. added to the trust that people have in the company), or as it hurt it?
That is a question that should have been asked before hand.
As for me I will take my lumps because I am a big boy, and that's life. But I will never view SlideShare in the same light, nor will I honestly look at the their statistics with the same level of confidence I had prior to this morning.
One final note: I have a number of secured documents re papers which can only be accessed through the utilization of a tightly controlled password. Unfortunately, it would appear that SlideShare deemed these documents to be a target as well as they are showing a higher level of reads than warranted by internal verification. I hope that someone from SlideShare will get back to me to let me know that it is indeed part of the prank and not a more serious security breach with their system.
I also indicated that some would feel that anyone who expressed disappointment are limited to those who take themselves far too seriously.
I have never been reluctant to use self-deprecating humor - after all if we cannot laugh at ourselves as the saying goes . . .
However, I truly do rely on SlideShare's numbers to inform clients about read activity. And while 20,000 reads was an hugely "optimistic" number, one also considers the source in weighing the veracity of the information. And as a side note, meteoric increases are possible as my blog's syndicated readership base grew from 0 when it was launched in May 2007 to reaching 300,000 syndicated subscribers each month worldwide by August 2008.
Perhaps that's what made it a great prank was the fact that no one could see it coming. On the other hand, to arrive at that point of creditability (re being a trusted source of info) is something that is earned and maintained through an organization's conduct or actions. Ultimately, SlideShare's hard earned creditability is what created the degree of trust that opened the door to making one susceptible to the prank in the first place.
In hindsight, is this really the way SlideShare wanted to leverage that trust?
Once again, and as demonstrated by a couple of comments below, there will certainly be some to tell others that they have to get a life and not take the situation or themselves so seriously. In the end however, SlideShare has to ask if their little joke furthered their organization's best interests (i.e. added to the trust that people have in the company), or as it hurt it?
That is a question that should have been asked before hand.
As for me I will take my lumps because I am a big boy, and that's life. But I will never view SlideShare in the same light, nor will I honestly look at the their statistics with the same level of confidence I had prior to this morning.
One final note: I have a number of secured documents re papers which can only be accessed through the utilization of a tightly controlled password. Unfortunately, it would appear that SlideShare deemed these documents to be a target as well as they are showing a higher level of reads than warranted by internal verification. I hope that someone from SlideShare will get back to me to let me know that it is indeed part of the prank and not a more serious security breach with their system.
We're sorry if we hurt your feelings, we didn't mean to make you look foolish (even on April 1st).
The real question is: was this a smart move? Was the guerilla marketing buzz generated worth the possible alienation of some of the site’s users? And more importantly what does this do to their brand? What does Slideshare want us to think about their brand? Do they want to be the LinkedIn of presentation sites, or do they want to be the MySpace? In that light, I think that this was not a very smart move. For me personally, it makes me think that Slideshare is a little frivolous and not entirely professional. It makes any information from SS slightly suspect in my eyes…maybe only slightly, but do you ever want your brand to be considered even slightly suspect? If you think that makes me a humorless dolt who ‘needs to lighten up and take my self less seriously…” well so be it. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. But I have to say that messing with your brand image in such unstable times is risky at best.
The bad thing about social media is that so can a silly or perhaps even a very bad idea.
Mike
It can cause a big loss of professional respect from all avenues, and complicate or even stall a career.
On another note... I have a few presentations on Slideshare. I used it to convert some powerpoint shows into embeds for a blog, nothing serious in nature... but I didn't get one of those invitations or e-mails this article mentioned.
Or maybe they could have a good product, I hear that drives traffic.
You might have heard about our April Fool's joke that blew up in our face. Because of the embarrassment and damage that this prank has caused our brand, we have decided that it might be a good idea to hire someone who knows a thing or two about social media, or even just basic etiquette.
Responsibilities Include:
Apologizing to current customers.
Sending personal emails to all current customers who were punked and personally asking for forgiveness.
Explaining to customers why they should trust your site and should re-add your application to their LinkedIn profiles.
Expertise with justifying boneheaded moves by your colleagues.
Requirements:
Must have at least some knowledge of social media applications as well as fluency with the following programs: Groveling 2.0, SlideShaft 4.1.09 and MiaCulpa for Windows Vista.
you got too much EGO built up. Learn to let it go and you will get hurt less.
Great prank, IMO.
But the "get a sense of humor" people here seem to miss the fact that I and many of my colleagues use Slideshare to build credibility in our professions. My slideshows have gotten me clients. The last thing Slideshare should want to do is to harm customers' businesses by damaging their credibility. This trick shows that Slideshare staff don't have the professional approach that many of us will now be looking for in a different slide-embedding site.
What puzzles me is how many people put bad presentations on that site, or rather presentation were slides lack too much information to make the service relevant per se. Some do include audio (usually that's disappointing, but it's a personal opinion) but it's rare; I might be missing the far more relevant use of sharing a slide on-line during a conference call — but then, a prank on stats would be toothless.
Don't blame me: I only do animation-heavy presentations, and I can't find a service to host them that would include that and needed presenter notes (and maybe sound too).
keep laughing,
-rob
However the You Tube example is really good. It's obvious, fun and you get to watch a bunch of videos upside down for a few hours. I may only be in a camp of one but I did like the Guardian April fools as well...
Anyway, I think yes, Slideshare has indeed scored a strategic goal - so many people talking about them..amazing PR..negative publicity too, but not bad..
I empathize with those who had to look like fools in front of their networks, but that's fine..this is still way better than talking about twitter on twitter all the time, right?
A great deal of time and planning goes into a presentation. People are working harder for each piece of business today and every milestone is reason for celebration. To get people excited about their increase in viewing status, then ask them to broadcast it on Twitter, while SlideShare’s staff followed the joke online was in very bad taste.
SlideShare’s goal was to increase traffic and awareness to their website, at the expensive of member’s embarrassment. Good PR? I don’t believe so and they obviously realized that this “joke” wasn’t viewed as humorous, by their quick apology to their existing members.
I though it was a tool invented by Kafka to keep middle-management busy. ;^)
(The real story about the program was recently featured on Wired, BTW.)
and they're
THE FOOL!