Corporate Hack Attack!

A stream of corporate Twitter hacks has flooded the news the past two days. Monday late afternoon, Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked and renamed McDonalds as a prank. There was speculation the competitor company was the hacking culprit, until early Tuesday when the account of Jeep was also hacked and renamed Cadillac.

Both hacks stated that the company whose accounts were hacked had been sold to the other; Jeep to Cadillac, and Burger Kind to McDonalds “because the whopper flopped.” Both accounts included tweets with the hashtag “#OpMadCow,” but it wasn’t immediately clear in either case who was responsible yet.

All four companies have received quite a bit more attention than usual from the media and consumers alike, which has been great for business. However, this unexpected marketing aid triggered two more hacks; these were just poor attempts at cheap publicity stunts.

MTV and BET, both owned by Viacom, swapped logos on Twitter and allegedly posted nonsensical tweets from their own accounts in hopes of gaining free commercial and news marketing from the stunt, just as Burger King and Jeep had. Both of the first-hacked companies were trending on the social networking site, and Burger King gained 30,000 new followers in the hour or so it had been compromised. The power of the accidental advertising exceeded what anyone would have imagined.

When Jeep and Burger King regained control of their feed, both sent out comical tweets to assure the public and their followers they had fixed the problem. The restaurant’s tweet read “Interesting day here at BURGER KING, but we're back! Welcome to our new followers. Hope you all stick around!” And the Jeep account sent out “Hacking: Definitely not a #Jeep thing. We’re back in the driver’s seat!”

These past few days recent events have certainly reinforced the power Twitter, and other social network sites as well, has over the media and the public. The one thing left to wonder is whether this was really an accident, or just a brilliant marketing and advertising ploy.