Warning! You can kill your business with a tweet.

You can kill your business with a tweet. Last Sunday, #deleteUber began trending on both twitter and Facebook. Calling out the people to delete their Uber accounts, and then uninstall the app (leaving 1 star review on the app store before that). Many of those moved to Uber’s competitor: Lyft.

Everything began when the NY Taxi workers went into a protest and they were not picking up passengers to and from JFK for one hour.

NO PICKUPS @ JFK Airport 6 PM to 7 PM today. Drivers stand in solidarity with thousands protesting inhumane & unconstitutional #MuslimBan.

— NY Taxi Workers (@NYTWA) January 28, 2017

Then Uber tweeted they were turning off their ‘surge pricing’ feature, with good intentions I guess, to minimize the effect of the Taxi protest.

Surge pricing has been turned off at #JFK Airport. This may result in longer wait times. Please be patient.

— Uber NYC (@Uber_NYC) January 29, 2017

And the response? #deleteuber

Here is the situation, people perceived Uber was taking advantage of the Taxi protest, but if people were deleting the Uber app because they were ‘making a profit’ out of the airport situation, Lyft did the same thing, turning off the ‘surge pricing’ feature and operating during the taxi strike just like Uber.

If people were deleting Uber because Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick was on the Trump Advisory Council. Well, it doesn’t mean he agrees with Trump’s policies, he’s just part of an Advisory Council, along with other companies’ CEO like Tesla, GM, Pepsi, IBM, Disney and more companies.

Last tweet not meant to break strike. Our CEO’s statement opposing travel ban and compensating those impacted: https://t.co/joWvPvux9J

— Uber NYC (@Uber_NYC) January 29, 2017

This blog post is not about politics, this is not about protests or bans. The focus of this post is to highlight something important I see happening these days, people are too quick to react and make decisions without going deep into the story.

I’m talking to Small and medium business owners, people are pretending to be informed by just reading the headlines. Where’s the effort to try to understand the whole story or the background behind a Facebook post or a tweet?

Too little too late @Uber. Your CEO supports this administration – that alone is enough to give @Lyft my business. #DeleteUber #DownloadLyft pic.twitter.com/fPCxWbAMFd

— Eli Braden (@EliBraden) January 29, 2017

You must be very careful and wise to decide what to publish on your business’ social media. Your competitors are also listening, like in this case the NY Taxi workers participated on the slacktivism against both Uber and Lyft.

Make no mistake, the corporations leading the gig economy and the sharing economy will never be the resistance. Not @Uber & not @Lyft

— NY Taxi Workers (@NYTWA) January 30, 2017

Today entrepreneurs must have a new business philosophy:

“I Think, Therefore I publish”

Sources:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/deleteuber-all-publicity-good-except-when-its-erwen-zhu?

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/lyft-and-ubers-immigration-ban/514889/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/delete-uber-protest_us_588e1825e4b017637794f937