Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Gertrude Moeller — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:06:59 -0000

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

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Dheeru — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 11:40:33 -0000

You are right cheryl , people on twitter are more serious then other social media sites.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

oliverwright — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 05:22:14 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

butter team — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 21:14:40 -0000

the only people that got punk'd are people who would actually twitter about how many views their slideshare presentations get.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Tawny Press — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:42:01 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Steve Briggsbest — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:32:57 -0000

Excellent damage for SS. Minor damage 2 fooled. Next...

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Deirdre — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 19:09:45 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

tiff — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:16:05 -0000

Slideshare obviously completely misunderstand the power of social media and the people who use it. What a truly stupid idea.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Melissa D — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 12:11:27 -0000

I think you're right about that. =D

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Andrew — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:25:28 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Jumi Pak — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 10:39:04 -0000

tasteless, senseless joke. not cool.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Anand — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:49:01 -0000

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?

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Amy — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:24:31 -0000

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 ;).

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Kiki — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:46:40 -0000

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...

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

rob — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 03:17:30 -0000

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

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:18:57 -0000

Wasn't it sent by e-mail?

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:18:05 -0000

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.)

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:11:56 -0000

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?

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:09:36 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:05:20 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:03:32 -0000

You have too much pride to work on April First.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:02:25 -0000

Not ‘look’.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Ang — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:01:47 -0000

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.

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Bertil — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:00:37 -0000

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).

Re: SlideShare’s April Fool’s Prank: Cruel, Or Just Unusual?

Sabrina — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 22:47:54 -0000

you care enough to comment