Eurostar - Who's been at the Kool-Aid?

I, like many, was following news of the complete collapse of Eurostar services over the weekend. Again like many, I did this not by tuning into the mainstream media but by reading a series of increasingly angry tweets, blog posts and comments about Eurostar's handling of the situation from the people I follow and others.

One of the main themes - and indeed a post from TechCrunch's Mike Butcher - that emerged was criticism of Eurostar for not using social media and in particular Twitter to desseminate information to staff and passengers (none of whom, I gather, knew what was going on). There was even criticism of Eurostar's 'social media agency' wearesocial who had been engaged on an entirely separate matter for not releasing info about the crisis on the @little_break Twitter account they'd set up for Eurostar to promote weekend breaks - although confusingly Eurostar do now seem to be using their @little_break account to post updates on Eurostar services (not sure it would occur to me to look there for updates if I was a Eurostar passenger...)

I think we've all been drinking too much Kool-Aid.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am an extremely committed proponent of social media and in particular its power to spread information very effectively but I think some of Eurostar's the critics in this case have totally missed the point. The problem was not that Eurostar didn't use Twitter or didn't otherwise use social media. The problem was that Eurostar didn't release sufficient information - on ANY channel (ASIDE: It sounds like they didn't have any information because they didn't have a plan to deal with a situation like this...). That's what they got wrong.

I mean, surely all Eurostar needed to do was put a detailed statement up on their website saying what was going on, when they expected the trains to move again and what contingency plan they had to ensure that people didn't run out of water and babies had enough spare nappies. After that people could have done the rest - via the world-changing technology that is social media. Twitter users could tweet that information to any other passengers who use Twitter. People who use other platforms could pass on the information that way. I dare say a few people could even talk to their fellow passengers to pass on news.

Of course, if Eurostar had taken the trouble to ensure that any information they did release was properly seeded on platforms like Twitter, that would have been nice but, frankly, just give us the info and we're quite capable of spreading it ourselves. Isn't that the point of social media?

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