My Twitter Account Was Hacked

Well, it might have been… but my children, who seem to know a lot more about these things than I do, thought it might have been a virus.

Whatever… the net result was the same.

A variety of direct messages were sent from my Twitter account to people who are (or more accurately I suspect, were) following me.  The first message wasn’t particularly nice, saying something like this:

People are saying bad things about you… click here to find out what they are saying!

The second one was slightly funnier:

I laughed my head off when I saw this picture of you…

Anyway, I think I’ve fixed the problem by changing my password, deactivating and reactivating my account and then running round a church five times at the full moon without thinking about a lemon.

But the thing that was intriguing about the whole experience were the different reactions from people.  I had maybe a couple of hundred followers (all, no doubt, hanging on my every word) and I suppose about 30 responded to me either by email or a direct message via Twitter.

Most of them, it’s true, simply said something like: Your Twitter account has been hacked, you muppet, you need to sort it out.

But others seem to trust me to such an extent that they took the rogue tweets at face value.  A mate who I haven’t spoken with for a few years tweeted me to ask what it was all about and, as a result, I called him and we’re back in touch.

Another guy, who was responding to the ‘Laughed my head off’ tweet was simply the victim of timing.  A picture of him had just been put up on Facebook.  He was receiving an award and the camera angle made it look as though he was standing in a hole.

He responded by saying: ‘Yeah, I know… must make a note to make sure I get presented an award by someone my own height!’

Now I’m not sure what all this is saying about me or Twitter or the scumbag hackers, but how about this for a stab at analysis?:

• There’s was no rancour directed at me for getting hacked – and most people recognised the rogue tweets for what they were… meaning this is a regular occurrence

• Those who didn’t spot them as rogue tweets took what I was saying at face value which means I need to tweet more to get my message out there

• I guess about 25% of the people who were following me read the tweets meaning the reach of Twitter is much greater than I thought

What do you think?  Answers on a post card, or even better to reneemackay@taxassist.co.uk

You can see my other blogs at

www.taxassist.co.uk/reneemackay and

www.enterprisebritain.com

Number Plates: the antithesis of franchising

I think private number plates are brilliant.  The really clever ones always make me smile.  Here are some examples:

On a really smart Mercedes SLK roadster:

H12 MYX – the numbers were shuffled to read HI 2 MY X

On a fabulous, modern, smart horse truck carrying thoroughbred racehorses:

C1 NAG

I could even get into private plate spotting.  I’d like to rack up G5 POT (G 5POT).  Finally, 2 BE and NOT 2B… which are actually owned by the same person, apparently.

I’d love to buy wife a private plate (remember she’s an accountant): LE55 TAX

Or (remember her name is Renee) R3 NEE or REN 33

I suspect these would be a little on the pricey side, though.

The thing is, I’ve noticed something about private plates and franchising… they don’t go together.  Or, rather, they don’t go together if a franchisee comes with their own private number plate; it’s fine if they acquire one to promote their business.

Let me explain what I mean.

The other week I was training a group of new franchisees.  It’s more of a blue colour franchise, so the sales, marketing and business element is a little bit smaller than some other franchises.

There were 8 fellas on the course and 7 of them were fabulous; really excited and looking forward to the challenge – nervous but excited.

The eighth guy had more money and had left a high powered job (for ‘left’ read ‘made redundant’) and he still had a chip on his shoulder and a big corporate attitude.  Personally, I also believe that he was feeling a little bruised by his experience and embarrassed to find himself in the position he was in.

This manifested itself in an aggressive attitude in the training room.  And guess what?  Yep, on this occasion, you’re quite right.  He had a private number plate.

This got me thinking and I kept my eyes open.  A trend soon emerged.  Private plate = less compliant franchisee.  In most cases this doesn’t show itself as aggression, rather as less willingness to follow the system because, quite clearly, they have a private plate and therefore, they know better.

Do you think I’m on to something and franchisors should follow this new approach to franchisee recruitment?  Even if everything else stacks up, you can’t join the network if you have a private number plate!

Perhaps not, but it would be interesting to do a formal study about the relative success of franchisees who didn’t have a plate that reads J4 SON (J4SON)… or their own equivalent.