In the age of viral tweets and lightning fast newsfeeds, I often wonder how
modern technology would have impacted on stories before the advent of social
media? The same stories now would yield interesting results.
At a recent summit on the Future of Banking, The City Bin Co.’s social
media guy, Oisin Browne told one of his favourites from way back when working
on the back of the bin truck.
They say there’s money in rubbish! There certainly was one July Friday
back in 2004. While servicing Galway’s commercial sector, they picked up from
an anonymous bank a little earlier than usual. Shortly after they clocked off
for the day the phone rang and said some money had been thrown out by accident.
It transpired the bank had mistakenly put €18,000 into a bin bag which had
already been collected. Within no time The City Bin Co. super staff began a
frantic four-hour search rooting through the rubbish before they found the
large sum of money neatly tied into cash bundles.
Their efforts paid off, and the money was found and returned to the bank.
To this day the finer points remain a mystery. The nameless bank remained
tight-lipped about the embarrassing slip, and the branch manager claimed “human
error”. Conspiracy theories abounded about a botched up inside job!
It is not the first time The City Bin Co. has had to mount an emergency
operation to recover valuable goods. Three years earlier a precious set of
Claddagh rings especially commissioned and worth €6,000 was saved several
minutes before they were to be compacted.
Twitter could have communicated the news of the missing rings faster to
the company then the string of phone calls, headaches and panic attacks. In
both cases there was a positive result and both stories became news items.
Although each story made headlines, Oisin believes there’d have been completely
different reactions if they happened today. Twitter would have equipped each
story with legs and they’d have snowballed within a quarter of an hour. The
ring saga would have gone viral and created a goodnews buzz for all affected
parties. Social media has moved the power from the journalist to the public and
from the companies’ to the customers. Nowadays stories are tweeted in real time
and the public decide what’s worth tweeting and reposting. The bank involved in the missing money drama
would have been better served owning the story from the outset, tweeting the
“human error” element, and likely avoiding any runaway legs and conspiracy
theories altogether.