The 10 Worst Social Media Fails of 2013

The 10 Worst Social Media Fails of 2013 also includes two very honorable mentions. The ONLY reason that they didn’t make the Top 10 is because they weren’t made by brands.

This is a long list so let’s get right to it.

Honorable Mention Number 1:
The White House and the Obama Administration. In pushing Obamacare, the Prez and staffers got a little too cute in their marketing efforts and pushed out a Tweet picture that was grammatically incorrect. By itself, this is really not a big deal. We’ve all done it. But content coming from the White House has to be held to a much higher standard. For that, the Oval Office gets on the list.

Here’s the tweet that garnered them these “honors”: (at least they knew enough to not make this a bigger issue by deleting it)

Honorable Mention # 2:
Justine Sacco. If there is anything called a virtual public lynching, this was it. Yes, she made a HUGE mistake, but you had to feel sorry for this woman as she received the kind of buzz that brands, sports teams and movies can only dream about. Unfortunately her buzz wasn’t positive. AIDS isn’t something to really joke about.

Insulting an entire country adds insult to injury. And topping it off with a racist remark…all in one tweet…well that pretty much guarantees that you’ll be enemy #1 on the Internet’s Most Wanted List. Here’s the now deleted tweet that was the spark that started a wildfire.

*** Bonus Honorable Mention*** Two brands have to be included in this. Pepto-Bismol for the sheer “ewww factor“, and SpaghettiOs for the “WTF factor“. We agree with our friends at the CBC who included SpaghettiOs in the Top 10 Worst of 2013, but they omitted Pepto-Bismol.

I feel it’s necessary to show you how a brand known for what goes down the toilet, allowed their social media to go there as well.

This list could have been much bigger as we all probably know lots of brands who failed miserably this year, but for now, here’s the full list of the worst Twitter faux-pas of 2013.

h/t @CBCCommunity