With the emergence of all kinds of communication comes examples of best and worst practice. This is certainly the case for the social media space.

Revolution recently collected together a couple of these classic social media / digital marketing fails. The people over at Revolution suggest that these views shouldn’t be held against a company and that they should be worth a second chance because after all, “they frequently befall companies that are doing their best to innovate.”

However, are these mistakes actually beneficial for the community as a whole because they can inform future practice? Or, is it just ridiculous brands are being damaged due to silly and avoidable errors?

I think that such errors can certainly help other brands to avoid falling into the same traps but don’t agree that these disasters should be looked on with such a jovial “hey ho, everyone makes mistakes now and again” kind of attitude.

I agree that such mistakes have to be made in order to learn, grow and innovate but I don’t think that they should be looked upon so mildly, particularly those that are so obviously wrong and exploit such basic conventions of the social media space, like the Habitat mistake. And, those that seem to be informed on very little research or understanding of the target audience, like the Motrin disaster.