Did bloggers and social media sites such as Social Media Today, Valleywag and The True Dirty Laundry jump the gun in jumping all over social games publisher Zynga regarding its reported “confirmation” to Brazilian blog Folha Online that it withheld donations to Haiti?
Courtesy: United Nations Development Programme
It’s been a hot topic, with a string of angry comments going back and forth from Zynga CEO Mark Pincus and Valleywag’s blogger Ryan Tate. You can see the exchange in the comments section at the bottom of Tate’s post.
The quick answer: Yes, we jumped the gun and sadly, relied on one source’s interpretation of basic facts, which resulted in repeated distribution of a completely inaccurate and vicious headline by Folha: “Company “Farmville” admits withholding donations to Haiti, but denies coup.”
As Zynga explained to Valleywag, Folha confused the details of two separate fundraising campaigns.
Zynga’s MarCom Manager Lisa Chan wrote:
“Hey Ryan-saw your post I’d like to bring some clarity around this asap. There’s confusion surrounding two very separate campaigns – one before the earthquake and one campaign that ran FOR the earthquake. In our efforts to help Haiti during the recent tragedy, FarmVille users could purchase a virtual good, white corn, of which 100% of the proceeds went to the World Food Programme (WFP) to benefit Haiti.”
You can see Chan’s entire response here.
Zynga says Farmville players were clearly informed during its 2009 campaign that 50% of their donations would go towards helping the children of Haiti.
In addition, Pincus later posted several comments to Tate (scroll to comments section). Courtesy Valleywag
Here is one of his responses:
“ryan, you should be ashamed of yourself. do you even care that the social media today blog you refer to has been taken down?
the facts are that zynga gave 100% of funds raised to haitian relief. we ran a prior program in the fall that gave 50% of funds raised to school lunch programs and micro loans. both were clearly stated to users. i guess no good deed is left unpunished on gawker. thx for the wonderful service you provide to us all. you are clearly making the planet a better place.”
sincerly,
mark pincus
ceo
zynga
Social Media Today did, in fact, remove its previous post on the story and followed up with this post, saying their posts did not accurately articulate the nature of that controversy and that the tone of SMT’s posts implied Zynga has admitted wrongdoing.
Digital Beat came out with this post: “No, Zynga did not keep 50% of its Haiti earthquake relief donations,” saying Zynga had confirmed with its team that it did not keep 50 percent of its earthquake relief donations meant for Haiti and explaining the issue stemmed from confusion of the two charitable campaigns.
So, case closed on the 50% withholding accusation. (If I am missing something, please set me straight).
Courtesy: Sabrina Dent
Now, did Zynga dance around issues in its responses? In my opinion, they haven’t adequately address questions regarding potentially misleading Farmville players in the “white corn” campaign. Obviously, there is confusion. And, there is already so much scrutiny on charitable fundraising across the board. So, why not try to clear it up?
At the very least, Zynga could have said it believed it had clearly spelled out the campaign details and apologized to any users who may have felt confused or misled. That’s PR 101.
As a PR person/former journalist, like Folha, I still want to know if the duration of the campaign and/or the amount of purchased virtual currency had any impact on its “100% of proceeds” goal. I think it’s a legitimate question (and one that may actually have a simple explanation). I honestly don’t know. I have never played FarmVille or anything Zynga, so a little clarity from Zynga to any reporter could only be advantageous to them, unless there is a reason behind the lack of clarity.
My biggest issue, however, is that my own blog, the True Dirty Laundry, failed to follow its own mission of holding journalists, and others, accountable. As I chronicled all developments of this story, I, too, took Folho’s story at face-value from the get-go: Writing a blog post, sending it out to all my social media networks and encouraging Zynga users to boycott the games. Wrong in all ways possible.
While my follow-up posts did highlight responses from Zynga and others that shed new light on the confusion and inaccuracies of Folho’s original story, I should never have jumped to conclusions from one single source. No one should. For this, I sincerely apologize. I guarantee you, this will be the first and last time I have to say this.
So, while I’m holding myself accountable (as did Social Media Today), what about Folho and Valleywag? Are you going to hold yourselves accountable too?
I appreciate your feedback. Again, if I am missing something in my analysis of this story, please let me know.
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Related posts:
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